Stuff reports:

“We’re at the end of what I’d say is the economic cycle at the moment. There’s no question that when I look around the world and the things I’m now involved in internationally, you can start to see the pressure in the system,” Key said. 

“I was in China a week ago, it’s clear their economy is really starting to splutter a little bit. While the United States economy is doing well, they’re running massive, massive deficits – 7 per cent of GDP. Europe’s obviously much weaker than it was.

“So I think you are starting to see a slowdown in the economy and I think that, in part, reflects the business confidence numbers in New Zealand, and I think in part New Zealand businesses are looking at what the Government’s doing and they’re uncertain about that.” 

Low business confidence numbers could not be ignored, but Key said he hoped the economy remained strong “because every day, New Zealanders rely on it”.

Key and John Howard spoke at the dinner of the conference. It was interesting but rather scary to hear what he had to say on the economy. Especially considering he is now the Chair of ANZ Bank and is very very focused on the global economy.

Basically it was that the world recovered okay from the GFC as China kept the global economy going, and also many OECD countries were able to borrow against fairly strong balance sheets.

Today we don’t have the same capacity. With the welcome exception of NZ, many countries still have very high debt and are not even back into surplus. So another global shock woule be more punishing.

China is in a very different place also. It still has economic growth above most OECD countries, but weaker than in the past. But their real problem is their household debt. That constrains their ability to respond as they have in the past.

In 2008 household debt in China was under 20% of GDP. It is now almost 50%.That is a huge increase in just a decade. It is a sign of an expanding middle class but it has risks.

The household debt in China is now at 110% of disposable income. In nominal terms it is nine times higher than a decade ago.

So when the next global shock comes (now overdue – 1973, 1987, 1998, 2008) it could be really nasty. A good reminder why we need to pay off debt in good times, so we can cope with the bad times.

Stuff reports:

Retired Methodist minister Dave Mullan is fighting for his right to die with dignity. But is he committing the ultimate sin?

After 16 years, the Auckland man is sick of his advanced prostate cancer, and says he desperately supports the End of Life Choice Bill. 

As do most NZers.

Mullan looks healthy but in reality his cancer is now compressing his spinal nerves.

He can expect to be progressively paralysed and eventually made helpless. Road trips and referendums won’t benefit him.

He says it was a struggle to get through June. “I can now feel the cancer in my spine, hip and left leg. It’s difficult for me to wake up,” he says. 

“I’m only just surviving now, I’m in constant pain and feel miserable all the time.”

After an unrelated surgery, he began experiencing “appalling” spasms, he says.

“I felt as if every muscle between my shoulders and knees was tugging on the edge of the incision. I could neither move nor cry out. If that kind of pain, even in short spasms while unconscious is what I might expect when this wretched disease overtakes me, I don’t want it,” he says.

“I am being medicated for daily pain. My experience with the mysterious tetany spasms leads me to believe I may be one of the few hospice patients whose pain is simply not suitable for palliative care.”

This is a key aspect. The providers of palliative care do a wonderful job for most people. But not for everyone. And people like Dave Mullan should have the choice of ending their agonizing pain and suffering.

The Press editorial:

The biggest shock from news the superannuation payout isn’t enough to support even a “no frills” lifestyle is that anyone is shocked at all.

It demonstrates a worrying gap between what taxpayers might expect their pension to be able to cover and the reality of what it can pay for.

At about $600 in the hand each week for a couple and $400 for a single person it’s no wonder there are elderly people living in cars and relying on food banks to get by.

After all, the living wage – that level of income being increasingly adopted by organisations as a reasonable payment on which people can live – is $700 a week. And you’d struggle to find people on that wage who are doing anything more than scraping by.

That’s a silly comparison. The living wage is a calculation about what a family with children need. To suggest it should also be used as a basis for retirement income is not sensible.

It is also worth noting that the OECD found NZ has the lowest rate of elderly poverty in the developed world at just 2%.

By 2030 there will be an estimated 1.1 million people retired in New Zealand and the spending on pensions has been calculated to reach $20 billion a year by then.

So you may have two million working age people paying $10,000 a year each in taxation just to fund NZ Super!

Hard decisions are coming for this country.

The retirement age will have to go up. No question. It may be politically untenable but a good government should see it as its responsibility to effectively communicate to voters when their heads are in the sand.

Sadly this Government has reversed the decision of the previous Government to increase the age to 67.

Stuff reports:

It may or may not have been a coincidence that Jacinda Ardern broke radio silence for the first time in nearly a month on the same day National leader Simon Bridges took to the stage with his own baby and young children for his first major speech to the National Party faithful.

There had been murmurs in National ahead of the weekend about whether or not Ardern would gatecrash Bridges’ big day from maternity leave.

But Ardern’s brief Facebook message talking about her return to work in the next week or so still managed to catch some of them by surprise. It was her first since a Facebook post celebrating the start of Labour’s families package on July 1.

Timing your video to be one hour after the opposition leader’s conference speech is pretty desperate stuff.

If Labour were smarter they would have done the Ardern video the next day, so it wouldn’t look so blatant.

The Herald reports:

National will reduce primary class sizes if it comes into power in 2020, leader Simon Bridges says.

The announcement to lift the number of primary school teachers in New Zealand – an issue which once badly damaged National – was the centrepiece of Bridges’ speech at his party’s annual conference this afternoon.

“All our kids should get the individual attention they deserve,” Bridges told an audience of about 600 party members at Skycity Conference Centre in Auckland.

“That’s why I want more teachers in our primary schools, to ensure smaller class sizes for our children.

“Schools currently get one teacher for every 29 nine and ten year olds. It’s lower than that for younger children.

“Those ratios should be reduced.” …

Bridges also said National wanted to improve the quality of early childhood education.

“Most centres do a good job of looking after our young children, but a few not doing good enough is a few too many in my book.

“We need to know what is happening in every early childhood centre in the country.”

National would demand the highest standards from ECE centres, he said.

I’d far rather money from Vote Education is spent on improving the quality of early childhood education and reducing primary school class sizes, than giving lawyers and accountants free degrees.

The early years of education are the most important, and that is where you can make the greatest difference for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. So National is saying lets target money there, while Labour is bribing tertiary students.

But while the focus on primary and early childhood education is welcome, smaller class sizes is not a silver bullet. In fact the impact on learning achievement is quite minor – assessed as 0.21 by Hattie. There are many many things that are more effective. I made this point in 2014 when Labour pledged smaller class sizes.

I suspect politicians focus on class sizes for two reasons. The first is it does have some benefit (all other things equal, a kid does better in a class of 15 vs 30, but the difference between say 23 and 25 is minor), but more it is something politicians can actually directly change. You can set class sizes through your funding. All the other impacts are not ones that can be set or changed so directly.

What are the factors that have the largest impact? The top 10 are:

1. Collective teacher efficacy 1.57
2. Self-reported grades 1.33
3. Teacher estimates of achievement 1.29
4. Cognitive task analysis 1.20
5. Response to intervention 1.29
6. Piagetian programs 1.28
7. Jigsaw method 1.20
8. Conceptual change programs 0.99
9. Prior ability 0.95
10. Strategy to integrate with prior knowledge 0.93

These are not as sexy as smaller class sizes, but they are more influential. Of course ideally it is not either/or. But National needs to do more than just promise smaller classes.

What is also interesting is the most important negative factors. They are:

1. ADHD -0.90
2. Deafness -0.61
3. Boredom -0.49
4. Depression -0.36
5. Moving between schools -0.34

Some of those are not easy to change but the boredom one is interesting. If a kid is bored at school it massively impacts them.

Kerre McIvor writes:

The Domestic Violence Victim Protection Bill was passed in Parliament this week and has been hailed by its architect, Green MP Jan Logie, as a “win for victims, a win for business and ultimately a win for all of us”. …

I fail to see how this new provision for victims of abuse will save any lives whatsoever.

Every single victim of domestic abuse who has phoned me on talkback over the years has said they were so ashamed and embarrassed by their situation, they couldn’t bring themselves to let friends or family know what was going on behind closed doors. Particularly the men.

Is is often forgotten that men are also victims of domestic violence. In fact the Dunedin Health and Development Study has found 34% of men in the study have been physically abused by a partner and 27% of women.

The notion of asking for help was anathema to them and abusers know that. Despite the fact that it’s the abusers who should be feeling shame, they are master manipulaters.

So the concept of someone who has been knocked about, emotionally and physically, being able to find it within themselves to approach their boss and come clean about their domestic situation seems unlikely.

This is correct. I suspect the number of people who ever take up the entitlement will be miniscule. It’s a law that will make very little difference to victims.

And it’s not just the financial burden for small- to medium-sized employers that’s most concerning – what about the health and safety ramifications?

If one of their employees tells them they are living with a violent partner then begs them not to tell anyone, and later that employee ends up dead, will the employer be held liable for not divulging that their staffer was at risk?

They may not be held legally liable, but they will probably feel moral culpability.

I absolutely agree that our domestic violence stats are a source of shame and our violent homes are a breeding ground for future offenders. But I really don’t think Logie’s bill is the answer.

And while I don’t have a solution, I would suggest that others do. When Counties Manukau police attend a violent domestic situation, they give it a couple of days to allow all parties to cool off, then go into the home with trained counsellors and try to work out the root of the problem.

The children are asked their opinion – it’s a holistic, wrap-around approach to domestic abuse which gives the people involved the chance to save themselves and their family.

Putting money and energy into that sort of initiative makes a whole lot more sense to me than making businesses cough up 10 days extra leave.

I agree.

The GDP growth in the US has shot up to 4.1%. Generally anything over 3% is regarded as great.

In NZ the GDP growth is 2.7%. It was above 3% from Dec 14 to Sep 17 but has been falling

The Herald reports:

No free lunches, video-conferencing instead of sending staff to expensive conferences and livestock to control grassy areas and cut down on maintenance contracts are on a hit-list that could slash millions from council budgets.

As councils around the country try to tackle budget blowouts amid rising costs, the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union has published a report – 102 Ways to Save Money in Local Government – which it says could provide financial relief for under-pressure local authorities.

Councils can save money if they have the right mindset.

New Zealand’s 78 local councils collected more than $5 billion in rates revenue during the 2016-17 financial year – about $1100 per New Zealander – and the Taxpayers’ Union said it was imperative those funds were spent more wisely than, in some cases, they are now. …

Cost-cutting proposals from the Taxpayers’ Union include:

Grass cutting:

“Where appropriate use cattle and sheep to graze on council land rather than spending money on grass cutting.

“Auckland Council run sheep and cattle on Cornwall Park in One Tree Hill. The animals are an attraction for children and families. Livestock could easily by used at other parks.”

Scrap political advisers: “Political advisers don’t work for ratepayeres – they work for the mayor.

“If local politicians want political advice they should pay for it.”

The Taxpayers’ Union said that in Wellington, the mayor spent more than $400,000 on advisers and support staff in 2017; in Auckland $2.079m was spent on staff employed by the mayor’s office; in Christchurch the mayor’s office bill totalled $905,344.

Youth councils: “Abolish youth councils and standing consultative committees, which are more about photo opportunities and keeping people happy than useful public debate.

“Councils should be focused on allowing all members of society to participate in meaningful consultation processes as issues arise. Elected councillors are clearly not doing their job if they need to pay people to advise them on what sections of the community think.

“Youth councils are a nice idea but, in our experience, achieve little (if anything), and are used by local politicians as a Claytons solution to youth engagement.”

Playgroups: “Do not have children’s playgroups directly run by the council.

“Instead, better value for less money can be achieved through funding this much-needed resource via the voluntary sector, community groups and independent groups of parents and playgroups.”

Sports payouts: “Get rid of professional sports subsidies disguised as ‘economic development’.

“Hamilton City Council paid around $40 million over the five years it hosted the V8 Supercar races – if residents are not willing to pay their own money to go it’s not reasonable use of ratepayers’ money. It it’s good for businesses then let businesses or the chambers of commerce pay, not the poor residents.”

Lots of good ideas.

The Herald reports:

New Zealand has tumbled down the OECD business confidence rankings to the second lowest among countries in the developed world.

Two years ago New Zealand was the second highest in the OECD with 33 of the 35 countries trailing it. Now everyone except South Korea is above New Zealand.

Amy Adams, National finance spokesperson, said it was a shocking revelation given New Zealand has typically been a haven of political and economic stability.

“Given the high level of political uncertainty around the world it is a shocking revelation that New Zealand – typically a haven of political and economic stability – has the second lowest level of business confidence in the OECD,” Adams said.

So the only country with lower business confidence than NZ is the country with a heavily armed neighbour threatening regional annihilation.

If Labour work really hard, I’m sure they can get us below South Korea also.

Joe Hildebrand writes:

But it is staggering that far-left activists are still so stupid that they consistently and enthusiastically give the far-right exactly what they want.

And it is even more staggering that the far-right and those who report on it explicitly say this

and yet still the far-left plays entirely into its hands.

I stressed this exact same point when Milo Yiannopoulos came to Australia. And lest the left-wing conspiracy theorists think this is a hate media trick, it was emphatically supported by none other than the august body that is the ABC’s Media Watch.

But as usual nobody listens to me or Paul Barry and so here we go again.

Many on the left think that the answer to right-wing extremism is left-wing extremism. That if fascists have a demonstration then socialists need to meet it with a counter-demonstration, that if the alt-right has an event then the alt-left has to shut it down. …

When it comes to these alt-right speaking tours, the left’s tactics are even more stupid and also unwittingly sinister. By attempting to shut these events down and deny the speakers the opportunity to even talk, they attract not only the ire of the alt-right but of anyone who believes in free speech — and there are a lot more of the latter than there are of the former. And of course it suddenly makes the so-called provocateur the victim.

And so the idiocy is threefold: You give priceless free publicity to the speech you’re trying to silence, you make a whole bunch of otherwise disengaged people suddenly disagree with you and you instantly turn the object of your hatred into a sympathetic figure.

That is a veritable hat-trick of own goals.

Let’s hope Valerie Morse never catches on. We really should give her a medal or something.

Matthew Hooton writes:

More important is how clumsy, incompetent yet arrogant the coalition has proven to be.

Jacinda Ardern is, of course, a political superstar, internationally more so even than domestically. So too is Winston Peters in his own unpredictable way.

Beyond the top two, David Parker is highly competent although completely overloaded, and Grant Robertson is doing a reasonable job minding the till.

But the rest of the line-up is dire.

Andrew Little was earlier picked as a top performer but the Angry Andy persona that ruined his shot at the prime ministership has now caused problems with both Australia and the Ngāpuhi settlement process.

The third-ranked Kelvin Davis is embarrassingly out of his depth.

David Clark and Chris Hipkins have mismanaged their relationships in the health and education sectors. Welfare minister Carmel Sepuloni seems to regard success as increasing the number of New Zealanders on the dole. Iain Lees-Galloway’s plans for something like 1970s national awards is behind the sharp fall in business confidence.

Clare Curran, the so-called Open Government Minister, has become something of a national joke. Even more comical is Phil Twyford’s KiwiBuild, which seems to involve nothing more than him buying houses that were going to be built anyway and on-selling them through a socially unjust ballot system. Is it better or worse if he makes a profit or a loss when doing so?

Meanwhile, the very nature of Shane Jones’ provincial growth fund will surely soon deliver a wasteful spending scandal.

It’s the least impressive Government in a generation. You have a Number 3 Minister who can’t even answer questions in the House. Look at the heavy hitters of the previous Governments:

• 4th Labour: Lange, Palmer, Clark, Douglas, Caygill, Moore
• 4th National: Bolger, McKinnon, Richardson, Birch, Graham, English, Smith, Creech
• 5th Labour: Clark, Cullen, Wilson, Mallard, Maharey, Goff, King, Sutton
• 5th National: Key, English, Brownlee, Joyce, Bennett, Power, Collins, Ryall, Finlayson
• 6th Labour: Ardern, Davis, Robertson, Parker, Clark, Sepuloni, Twyford, Hipkins

One of those is not like the other four!

Stuff reports:

Auckland mayor Phil Goff’s office has been stripped of its ability to influence the release of information following an investigation by the Chief Ombudsman.

Ombudsman Peter Boshier found the council had acted unreasonably, and in some respects unlawfully, in withholding for five months a report sought by RNZ. …

The council’s governance director said three changes had already been made as a result of the Ombudsman’s investigation, one affecting the mayor’s office where senior staff had been involved.

“They will still have an opportunity to comment on, and see decisions that are made, but they previously had the ability to take part in the process,” said Phil Wilson.

Hopefully this means Auckland Council will stop refusing information requests unlawfully.

2018 Israel archaeological excavation at biblical Gath (home of Goliath)

by John Stringer, Tell es-Safi, west of Jerusalem.

In Area M there are also lots of bones emerging as well and a staff member runs a special machine that sorts bones into grades and sizes as well as cleaning them.  They are often hard to discern from stones or lumps of clay when being excavated.

Below: early on in Area M, this unusual curricular structure appeared (left below) and at first we thought it was some sort of olive press. But it turns out to be some kind of storage container, perhaps for pots before they were fired?  Or after firing, as we find pots within as we dig down inside.  Or perhaps these pots fell inside when the room was burned and the vat contained liquid washes as part of a pottery process? Only more archaeology will tell on the Tell.

We find a lot of these broken handles, that would have been attached to a large storage vessel like this one.  Ropes would play through these holes as it was lifted from a ship or onto a cart, or carried about on poles.

The excavation at Tell es-safi is led by Bar-Ilan university in tel Aviv, but a variety of international universities participate, from Kansas, Australia, and Colorado and the team is truly international.  Here are the Diggers from Australia.

And the team from Colorado Christian University.

It’s been a great experience and I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey through this series of snippets on Kiwiblog capturing something of the process of a modern archaeological dig. Gath is a fascinating and intriguing historical site. I look forward to seeing our working finds written up in academic journals in the months and years to come as we add to the understanding of the history of the Levant.

Jim Rose writes in Stuff:

Before we decide if a zero-carbon economy by 2050 is worth the cost, we must know what the damage to our economy from global warming will be if we do nothing. …

Estimates of the cost of global warming as a percentage of GDP to New Zealand are elusive. I drew a nil response when I asked for that information from James Shaw, the Minister for Climate Change, and from the Ministry for the Environment. Both said such an estimate was too hard to calculate.

So the Government is saying it wants taxpayers to spend tens of billions of dollars on climate change mitigation yet it has no idea what the costs of the impact of climate change will be!

It is time for the Government to fund an estimate of the cost of global warming to New Zealand.

If it is as small as the OECD suggests, a zero-carbon economy is simply not worth the cost. I cannot see how the Government can do a benefit-cost analysis of the zero-carbon economy without calculating the cost of doing nothing and the global warming avoided by us having a zero-carbon economy in 2050.

This should be absolutely mandatory – the benefits and costs of actions vs the benefits and costs of the status quo.

Barry Soper writes:

Greens co-leader Marama Davidson put out a statement about their changed position on the bill saying they’re supporting it “because the confidence and supply agreement holds us to it”.

That’s simply not true. There’s no mention of it in the agreement, so her explanation’s more of an excuse than reality.

It is very clear that the Greens are not obliged to vote for the waka jumping bill. They have decided to do so, because they place a greater priority on placating Winston than on their own principles.

This is a bill that would have probably prevented the Green Party from ever being in Parliament in their own right. Yet they are backing it to please Winston.

Imagine what they’ll do in the future to keep Winston happy.

15 years ago I launched Kiwiblog with my first post on 27 July 2003.

Since then Kiwiblog has had:

• Over 40,000 posts
• Over 2.09 million comments
• Over 75 million visits
• Over 7,100 photos

Not bad for a non-commercial endeavour.

Newsroom reports:

Mediaworks staff have been told by their CEO that television is an “uneven playing field” and that the company’s position is challenged by TVNZ’s position in the market.

CEO Michael Anderson told staff in an email leaked to Newsroom that “now is the time to get this message out”.

Anderson’s email was sent to MediaWorks staff after a Stuff.co.nz story published remarks Anderson made to a ministerial advisory group on public media.

He told the advisory group “there is a genuine risk that the Government, through its owned media channels, may become the only broadcaster in New Zealand”.

In his email, Anderson reassured staff that the company was not about to pull out of television broadcasting, but said that now was “the time to get the message out” and implied they might want to raise the role of TVNZ in the market when discussing their company’s position with other people.

“This will no doubt be something you are asked about externally whether that be by clients, suppliers or even friends,” he wrote.

“And the truth is that we are going to continue to fight for our future and for a level playing field, which we think is in the best interests of advertisers, agencies and the viewing public.”

Seems unremarkable. A company sharing its view of whether Government policy is good for the company, and encouraging staff to know that when talking with clients, suppliers or even friends.

Curran said the email was evidence of a campaign to influence and change Government policy.

“I am concerned that MediaWorks appears to be running a campaign to influence the Government,” Curran said.

Wow this comes across as so intolerant. Why is a campaign to influence the Government a bad thing that should cause concern? Thousands of organisations every day are campaigning to influence the Government.

The Guardian reports:

A government led by Jeremy Corbyn would pose an existential threat to Jewish life in the UK, a joint editorial published by the country’s three most prominent Jewish newspapers has claimed.

The Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph each produced similar front pages for their Thursday editions attacking the Labour party’s decision not to fully absorb an internationally accepted definition of antisemitism into its code of conduct, and its wider record on the issue since Corbyn became leader in 2015.

UK Labour is trying to use its own definition of antisemitism.

The papers said: “The stain and shame of antisemitism has coursed through her majesty’s opposition since Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015.” They produced the joint editorial “because of the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.

“With the government in Brexit disarray, there is a clear and present danger that a man with a default blindness to the Jewish community’s fears, a man who has a problem seeing that hateful rhetoric aimed at Israel can easily step into antisemitism, could be our next prime minister.”

Corbyn has of course shared many platforms with Hamas and Hezbollah.

The three papers’ editorial said Labour faced a “binary choice: implement IHRA in full or be seen by all decent people as an institutionally racist, antisemitic party”.

The Labour peer Melvyn Bragg said in a letter to the Times that Corbyn had failed to tackle antisemitism within Labour effectively. “The virus of antisemitism is growing in the UK and Corbyn is in a strong position to stamp it out without any equivocation,” the former South Bank Show presenter said.

“Jeremy Corbyn’s feebleness on this matter is a disgrace to the Labour party and shames its traditional creed of tolerance, as well as grossly insulting some of our fellow citizens.”

I shudder to think of a Corbyn led UK Government.

Several by-elections in Australia this weekend, and the major topic seems to be Labor MP Emma Husar.

Former staff (she went through 20 in two years) have alleged:

• bullying
• harrassment
• verbal abuse including calling them f***wits and c**ts
• having to walk her dog and pick up its poos
• having to babysit her kids
• one staffer lives with her and does household and nanny chores
• she used government funded cars to meet with her divorce lawyer
• spent parliamentary funds on toilet paper for her home

The defence of her by Bill Shorten has been terrible – basically that she is a solo mum so you need to be sympathetic.

2018 Israel archaeological excavation at biblical Gath (home of Goliath)

by John Stringer, Tell es-Safi, west of Jerusalem.

Area D2 is complete and has been cleaned and photographed as a whole.  Here is a final image.  Dr Jeff Chadwick the site supervisor is pictured and you can clearly see the northern side ‘E’ structure that forms part of the Philistine reinforced ‘Nixon Water Gate’ (more understood after excavation on 4 July) that they built over Canaanite earl structures. And below that, some extrapolation.

Shifting to Area M

As my colleagues and I in 82C-D finished ahead of schedule, I moved to another site, Area M, which was newly opened elsewhere on the Tell in 2018.  This site was chosen as we detected anomalies using remote sensing in late 2017 and hoped to find evidence of oil press or brick kilning production. (“Gath” means “il press” so we thought perhaps it was a major activity of the city). The squares were laid out and first sods turned.  Almost immediately we hit pay dirt –fallen vessels laying only 5cm under the surface and where they had laid since 830BC.  This was obviously the Hazael of Aram-Damascus destruction layer when he laid siege to Gath and completely destroyed it.  I joined my colleague Olga Primakova from Russia who lives in Israel and is completing her PhD on a private collection of ancient artefacts otherwise unknown or published.

After only a few minutes in the square with Olga, I strike this, which at first I thought was a skull.  Right size, right texture and fragility.  Human remains are actually a pain, as they slow up an entire excavation in a square.  But what a find if so!

But then this delicate bottom edging appears, and it is obviously a vessel of some description.  Here is a series of pics as this pot emerges from the ground and Olga and I lower the floor of square M to uncover this beautiful vase.

Prof. Aren with the same pot (top left directly beneath the black bucket) and some others emerging around it.  My speculation is that this is probably a storage room full of pots on shelves, as Area Y across the way has almost no pots, but unusual features that may be evidence of chalk working/plaster making and perhaps brick making. When the city was attacked, this room was set on fire and the shelves burned.  The smallest pots would have been up high, and have fallen in onto of much larger vessels which I expect we will find below as we probe deeper. We might also find weaponry and perhaps Philistine victims of Hazael.  We have excavated perhaps 1/2 metre already.

Below: The ‘skull pot’ top right.  Now note the longer elongated pot in foreground and its spot decoration.  This is a type of Philistine pot we know from elsewhere (see below from a museum).  Unfortunately the earlier examples were all cleaned, but this time –speculating it may be something to do with making cheese– we whisked this away to the lab for organic analysis.  Perhaps we’ll find remains of cheese or some other substance inside the holes. Susan in archaeo-biology maybe able to tell us what it was used for to make.  It could be a smoker, or some sort of container to boil something in, that is dipped into a wider vessel of hot oil or water.

A general view of our Area M square.

Eitan joins us, and late in the dig finds this remarkable sculpted lizard crawling across the lid of a jar.  I mentioned earlier that

the Philistines were quirky when it came to art and liked animal and floral motifs.  This is a really good example.

On the last day of the dig this intact pot emerges. Aren Maeir reports…“As in the books, regarding Murphy’s Law in archaeology, today, as we finished final photographs and were about to cover over the areas, an intact jar was found in Area M. Due to the fact that it stuck out quite clearly from the balk, we had to quickly excavate it and remove it – along with a large amount of broken pottery from other vessels from its vicinity.”