GASSÖL, TELÉLÌT. - A small group of barely perceptible hills, situated in the Jordan valley, north of the Dead Sea, 5.5 km. from the Jordan toward the east, on the ancient road from the Jordan to Ma'in.
Passing through there with a group of students, Fr. Alessio Mallon S.J. had noticed an extraordinary number of fragments of ancient pottery and stone tools, and began, in Nov. 1929, on behalf of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, archaeological excavations at that place. The excavations continued and, after the death of Fr. Mallon (1934), were directed by Fr. Roberto Köppel S.J. until 1938. The excavations brought to light four strata, superimposed one upon another, of an ancient city about 600 m. in length and 400 in width. The lowest stratum is about 6 m. below the surface of the hill.
In the various strata a great many stone tools (flint), pottery vessels of very ancient forms, remains of ancient paintings (a large star, a procession [?], the image of a bird) were found; on the other hand metal objects are almost completely lacking (a few metal objects [bronze and copper] were found immediately below the surface and seem to be from a more recent period). At first the culture of T. G. was ascribed to the first period of the Bronze Age (A. Mallon, R. Neuville, A. Vincent); but today almost all archaeologists agree that it is a matter of the most ancient phase of the "Chalcolithic" or "Eneolithic" (ca. 4000-3400 B.C.), since "Ghassulian" pottery was found in the plain of Esdraelon beneath the (likewise Chalcolithic) pottery of Megiddo, akin to the type of Jemdet Nasr (ca. 3400-3100 B.C.). The Ghassulian civilization therefore belonged to the first half of the 4th millennium B.C., was destroyed ca. 3400 B.C. and definitively ceased to exist.
It has not been possible so far to establish what the origin was and what the race was of the population of T. G., which had spread, as other excavations have shown, over almost the entire southern part of Palestine, before this was occupied by the Semites. The anthropological examination of the Ghassulians has not yet been possible for lack of well-preserved human remains.
Bibliography3 works
Agostino Bea