Tel Gerisa sits on the southern bank of the Yarkon, in the territory of present-day Ramat Gan, on the kurkar ridge near the intersection of the Ayalon and the Yarkon. The mound covers an area of about forty dunams and was inhabited from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Islamic period. The ancient name of the site is unknown and its modern name is derived from the name of the village of Jarisha that was present nearby until 1948. The site is also known as Givat Napoleon. The researcher Binyamin Mazar suggested that this is the biblical Gath-Rimon. The mound was excavated for five seasons by Eliezer Sukenik in the years 1927-1950, by Ze’ev Herzog in the years 1981-1995, and areas at the foot of the hill were excavated in 2015 by Dor Golan.
The beginning of the settlement at the site was in the third millennium BCE. During the Middle Bronze Age, strong fortifications were erected on the site. In the Late Bronze Age, a prosperous city with many buildings arose at the site, including a large building with a wall twenty meters long and four meters wide. In addition, a large paved courtyard was discovered, which may have been used as a market yard. From this period, many finds were discovered in the city that testify to its wealth – tools from Greece and Cyprus, Egyptian scarabs, jewelry, weapons and the remains of smelting furnaces that indicate a copper industry in the site. The city was destroyed at the end of the Late Bronze Age around 1,200 BCE.
During the Iron Age I the settlement was in rebuilt but on a smaller scale, and the small area of the settlement and the agricultural character of the remains indicate that it was a village. In these layers, Philistine pottery was discovered, which may suggest the identity or political affinity of the site’s inhabitants. The remains from this period are similar to the remains from the same period at Tel Qasile. The Philistine village was destroyed in a fire, and in the second half of the tenth century BCE, a new settlement, with no Philistine characteristics, was built over it. The new settlement was even smaller than its predecessor and similarly had agricultural characteristics and is understood as a farm estate. This settlement was also destroyed in its turn, according to Sukenik, at the end of the tenth century BCE during Pharaoh Shishak’s campaign. The fact that in the Iron Age there was only a small village and then a farm at the site leads researchers today to not accept the identification of the site as a Gath-Rimon.
After that the tenth c. BCE destruction, the site was not inhabited for almost two thousand years until it was inhabited for a short time and in a small scale in the ninth century AD during the early Islamic period.
Sources
הרצוג ז’ 1992. גריסה, תל. בתוך א’ שטרן, עורך. האנציקלופדיה החדשה לחפירות ארכיאולוגיות בארץ ישראל 1. . עמ’ 359–364.
גולן ד’ 2016. תל גריסה. חדשות ארכיאולוגיות 128.