On the way back from Gilgal Refaim, we stopped to take a photograph of Yonatan beneath the sign to the Golan moshav of that name, and then decided to stop to get out our sandwiches and flask, just off the main road at the entrance to the moshav.
We immediately noticed an antiquities symbol on the signpost, and stopped next to Rasm Harbush, a Chalcolithic (pre-bronze, copper age, 5,500 - 3,000 BCE) site with around 50 settlement structures of an unknown culture are represented. Chalcolithic settlements have been characterized as scattered farms, small groups of houses probably the dwellings of the extended families, hamlets contain up to fifteen houses and large villages. All of theses settlements were unfortified and open, consisting of a group of houses often erected on both sides of a perennial or seasonal stream. Rasm Harbush is considered on of the best examples of a large Chalcolithic village.
Rasm Harbush was located near a source of natural drainage, and dams were used to make the most of the available water supply. The site was semi-permanent. It appears to have been occupied for most of the year, with an economy based on grain and legume cultivation, but was probably not occupied during the wetter months when the clayey soils were saturated and flooding was probably common. The settlement, the first Chalcolithic site discovered in the Golan, dates to the early 4th millennium BCE, and was initially revealed when the road to Yonatan was being built.
Rasm Harbush is a typical Chalcolithic settlement, whose residents were herding flocks of sheep and goats and growing wheat, olives, legumes and lentils and had. Their basalt stone houses were built without mortar, as a series of row houses, with internal rooms, generally rectangular about 15 metres by 6 metres. In addition to a wide range of pottery and flint used in daily life, many household and agricultural tools were found, also made of basalt, as well as basalt figures of gods, either with large prominent noses, or horns and goatee.
House U (above) is an isolated house on the outskirts of the village (most of the houses are in chains), otherwise a typical house with an entrance from the south. The inner space was partitioned lengthwise with a long narrow corridor; this is a typical arrangement allowing for shorter beams from the locally available timber to be used for the roof. The southern area is paved, and many of the daily activities would have taken place here. Some 1500 years after the house was abandoned and fell into ruins, a medium-sized dolmen was erected against and incorporated the outer face of the eastern wall of the house. The dolmen can be seen in the background of the picture, which looks east. A dolmen is a roofed tomb chamber built of unworked massive stones without mortar, used for secondary burial; there are hundreds scattered across the Golan.
The main plan of Chalcolithic houses excavated in the Golan, including at Rasm Harbush, are the so-called “chain-buildings” or “row houses,” what in England are called “terraces,” where houses abut by means of party walls. All structures are of the broadhouse type. This phenomenon of construction allows the members of the extended family to live next to one another and to add as much roofed space to the building as they need. However, the number of houses belonging to a chain-building never exceeded six structures in a row.
After Kafafi.
House 15, pictured below looking west, is a standard house, the easternmost in its chain of three, with a step down from the entrance. In the west is a narrow storeroom to which no doorway has been found. Two other small rooms open directly into the main room,with low shelves at the base of the long walls. The floor is paved throughout except at the eastern end where the natural bedrock was used. Wooden pillars set on the flat paving stones would have supported the roof frame of branches, covered with branches, reeds, mud and thatch. Ceramic and basalt vessels were found in the house, along with flint artefacts including many sickle blades.
In House 13 (below) the entrance has two steps down, and the house has shared cross-walls with both neighboring houses, and has a paved floor and low shelf along the base of the long north wall. In the west is a narrow storeroom with no door, entered from above by means of a ladder. Another larger adjoining room also lacks a doorway - how it was entered remains unknown; this room was full of pottery, basalt and flint artefacts among which were two basalt statues used in cult worship.
Below are some further views (respectively) of House 14, also with steps down in the entrance; Houses P and Q; and House G which adjoins House 12 in the east, sharing a party wall. Limited excavation of House G revealed a paved floor combined with the bedrock, along with pottery, basalt and flint artefacts.
