Forschungsprojekt 2024-2027 im Förderschwerpunkt “Lost-Cities” der Gerda Henkel Stiftung

Project-team

Projektleiter:

• Prof. Dr. Benedikt Hensel - Chair of Hebrew Bible – University of Oldenburg/Germany

Projektpartner:

• Dr. Erik Eynikel – Faculty of Catholic Theology – University of Regensburg/Germany
• Dr. Igor Kreimerman – Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies- The Hebrew University of Jerusalem/Israel

Project coordinator – Project office

Two Postdoc Positions:

1. Sub-Project: „Archaeology of Hazor”: Dr. Nitsan Shalom (University of Oldenburg)
2. Sub-Project „The Hebrew bible, memories in the making and the origins of Israel”: Dr. Yair Segev (University of Oldenburg)

The Task of the Project

Within this recent and crucial discussion, the “Resettlement of Ruins and Memories in the Making”-project strives to understand the resettlement processes of the lost city of Hazor in their interaction with the memory shaping and identity construction of the early origins of Israel and in its significant literary traditions, which later become the Hebrew Bible. This task will be met

1. through the lens of the megapolis of Hazor, whose complex settlement history of de- and re-urbanization as one of the largest former megacities of the Southern Levant in antiquity covers the entire period targeted in this project.
2. by bringing these detailed observations into a general and much needed overall picture of cultural and ethnic continuities, discontinuities, and LBA/Iron I-II transitions in the Southern Levant.

This task can only be met through the unique multidisciplinary approach chosen for this project, which will combine the perspectives from the disciplines of archaeology, social/cultural history, anthropology, and Hebrew Bible studies. The project has two primary objectives, leading to the two areas of research described in the following section:

1. “Resettlement of Ruins and Remembering the Past” (Archaeology; Nitsan Shalom): Hazor presents a unique case of acknowledgement, treatment and manipulation of Bronze Age remains during the Iron Age. The project plans on advancing the identification of more cases of this kind through new excavations. Did the new settlers have prior knowledge of the destroyed buildings? Did they choose specific spaces to rebuild/leave in ruins? What can be said about the (cultural or ethnic) identity of these new settlers in Hazor?
2. “Memories in the Making and the Origins of Israel” (Hebrew Bible Studies and Cultural History; Kishiya Hidaka): The project pursues the task of a historical, literary-historical, and cultural historical reconstruction of the imagination of Hazor and the Canaanites within the biblical traditions and how these memories are linked to the transitional processes of the origins of Israel, or rather the “memories of Israel” as an early tribal culture.

Each area of research will by necessity be accompanied by the archaeological excavations at Hazor where the PI and the research team are involved.

Resettlement of Ruins/Gerda Henkel Project"-Research Unit seit 2024: EABS Annual meeting Research Unit „The Origins of Israel: Perspectives from Archaeology and Biblical Studies"

Chairs: Benedikt Hensel (Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg), Kishiya Hidaka (Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg)

The question of the “origins of Israel” (which should be addressed in the plural form) in the land and the formation of the “Israelite” identity requires the interdisciplinary approach among scholars of multiple disciplines from the biblical studies, history of the ancient Israel, cultural-history, socio- political history, and the archaeology of southern Levant.

The modern archaeological investigation revealed the widely diverging views to the description in the biblical narrative literature that states that the origin of Israel was realized through the conquest of the land, a view, especially presented in the so-called Deuteronomistic history (e.g., the book of Joshua).

However, this difference sheds a new light on the question of the “origins of Israel”. Why the major biblical traditions present the origin of Israel as the conquest of land, not the peaceful infiltration of the “Israelite” population in the land? How can we interpret the socio-political and historical situation of the Late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age II, e.g., the retreat of the power of the Egyptian empire from Levant, the destruction and the abandonment of the major urban site in Levant in relation to the formation of the Israelite identities? This research unit aims to investigate the origin of Israel and the formation of Israelite identity from the multiple angles with diverging methodology as a scholarly collaborative endeavour.

Related project: „Hazor Digital” (PI: Benedikt Hensel) 

In der Archäologie sind digitale Methoden seit Jahren vielfach erprobt und in Teilen bereits etabliert – darunter Geoinformationssysteme, Datenbanken, Digitalfotografie, digitale 3D-Dokumentation und 3D-Scanning, virtuelle Rekonstruktionen, Retrodigitalisierung analoger Altdokumentation (Tagebücher, Pläne, Zeichnungen) sowie Statistik, Machine Learning, Künstliche Intelligenz und agentenbasierte Simulationen. Zugleich bleiben diese Verfahren in archäologischen Projekten häufig als Einzelfalllösungen organisiert: Sie adressieren einzelne Aspekte (Planum, Profil, Objekt, Fundinventar, Bilddaten, Auswertung), sind methodenspezifisch zugeschnitten und greifen nur begrenzt als integrierter Gesamtprozess der Feldforschung ineinander. Das Oldenburger Forschungsprojekt „Hazor Digital“ setzt genau hier an und adressiert zwei zentrale Kernaspekte digitaler Feldarchäologie: 1. Ein Dateninformationssystem – eine (feld-)archäologische Processing Pipeline  und 2. KI-gestützte, (teil-) automatisierte Auswertung der feldarchäologischen Befunde und Fund im Dateninformationssystem und der Pipeline (Siehe die Projektwebsite).

Das Oldenburger Forschungsprojekt „Hazor Digital“ setzt 2026 seine Arbeit fort und erprobt zentrale Bausteine einer integrierten digitalen Grabungspraxis direkt im Feld. Im Fokus stehen modernste Vermessungstechniken, tägliche georeferenzierte 3D-Erfassung der aktiv bearbeiteten Schnitte (inkl. Orthomosaiken „next day“ für die Dokumentation), Geovisualisierung sowie KI-gestützte Auswertungsansätze – insbesondere automatische Bildsegmentierung, Mauer- und Steinerkennung. Die Arbeiten konzentrieren sich 2026 zunächst ausschließlich auf die Oberstadt und dort auf Areale mit Befunden der Eisenzeit I–II (M22, M4, M68, M69). Gemeinsam mit Spezialist:innen der Jade Hochschule (IAPG) und der Digital Technologies in Heritage Conservation (Universität Bamberg) werden unterschiedliche Verfahren (statische und mobile Scanner, Photogrammetrie, Smartphone-Workflows) systematisch verglichen und zu einer leistungsfähigen processing pipelineweiterentwickelt, die Dokumentation und Auswertung in einem gemeinsamen Dateninformationssystem bündelt.

Publications (selection)

1. Hensel, Benedikt/Kreimerman, Igor, “Neue Ausgrabungen in der Megapolis Hazor: In die Siedlungsschichten des alten Israel hinabsteigen,” in: Welt und Umwelt der Bibel 1 (2024), 62-65.
2. Hensel, Benedikt, „From Hero to Zero? The Bronze Age–Iron I Transition at Hazor: Resettlement of Ruins and Memories in the Making“, in: Zimmermann, M. (Hrsg.), Abandoned Cities – Resilience in Perceptions and Interpretations, 2026, 49–62.
3. Kreimerman, Igor / Eynikel, Erik / Hensel, Benedikt / Lhoyer, Bénédicte / Sandhaus, Débora, „Tel Hazor 2023: Preliminary Report“, Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 141/1 (2025). [peer-reviewed]
4. Shalom, Nitsan / Sandhaus, Débora / Cimadevilla, Manuel / Hensel, Benedikt / Eynikel, Erik / Kreimerman, Igor, „Between Function and Meaning: The Reuse of Bronze Age Elements in Iron Age Hazor", Levant (in press; angenommen 06/2026). [peer-reviewed]
5. Hensel, Benedikt. Forthcoming (submitted to the publisher). „Spatial Turn: Biblical Archaeology and Regional Studies." In Handbook of Bible and Cultural Studies, edited by S. Hübenthal and B. Collinet. London: T&T Clark / Bloomsbury.
6. Hidaka, Kishiya, “The Curse of Canaan (Genesis 9:18–29) as a Post-Priestly Composition: A Literary- and Tradition-Historical Reassessment,” Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 137 (2025): 467–482. 
7. Hidaka, Kishiya, “The Theme of Canaan in the Priestly Tradition,” Vetus Testamentum (forthcoming). 

Abschlussarbeiten / MA-Thesis (abgeschlossen)

1. „Josua 11, Richter 4 und Hazor: Literarische Befunde und archäologische Evidenzen” (Lennart F. Frost, University of Oldenburg; supervisor: Benedikt Hensel)