Preface Introduction: The "Riddle of Ramat Rael" and the Problem of Identifying the Material Culture of the Babylonian and Early Persian Periods Oded Lipschits 1. A Short History of the Site and its Excavations Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot and Manfred Oeming 2. The Excavation of the Pit Oded Lipschits, Yuval Gadot, Liora Freud and Manfred Oeming 3. Stratigraphy Efrat Bocher, Yuval Godot and Oded Lipschits 4. The Pottery Assemblage Liora Freud 5. Attic Imports S. Rebecca Martin 6. Lion Stamp Impressions from the Babylonian Period Oded Lipschits and Ido Koch 7.

"Private" Stamp Impressions from the Babylonian Period Madadh Richey, David S. Vanderhooft and Oded Lipschits 8. YHWD Stamp Impressions Oded Lipschits and David S. Vanderhooft 9. Potter's Marks and Incisions Liora Freud 10. Organic Content of Persian YHWD -Stamped Storage Jars Dvory Namdar, Oded Lipschits, Liora Freud and Yuval Gadot 11. Isolation and Characterization of Live Yeast Cells from a Mead Vessel Tzemach Aouizerat, Itai Gutman, Yuval Gadot, Daniel Gelman, Amir Szitenberg, Elyashiv Drori, Ania Pinkus, Miriam Schoemann, Rachel Kaplan, Shunit Coppenhagen-Glazer, Oded Lipschits, Michael Klutstein and Ronen Hazan 12. The Faunal Remains Dierdre N.

Fulton 13. Synthesis and Summary Oded Lipschits, Liora Freud, Manfred Oeming and Yuval Gadot.