A shomera in the valley

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Let's continue our discussion from the previous post and look at a different example of a shomera.
Thanks to Vogon Poet who found photos of similar structures in Italy, where they call it caciara.
But VP's is beautifully built and preserved!
He has seen them in the Italian countryside.

Two friends from Arkansas.
The spring down in the valley next to our hill, the shomerot, and the canyon-like wadi are must-sees for visitors.

Dr. M commented yesterday that "watchtower" is as good a translation as any for shomera.

He says, "Some of those are leftovers from the Iron I original settlement of the Hill Country....a great legacy."

And Dr. M knows. He teaches Biblical things like this in a Texas college.

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Iron Age I was over 3,000 years ago!
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Looking up at the dome-like ceiling.

I think this can be called a corbeled vault, defined as "a masonry roof constructed from opposite walls, or from a circular base, by shifting courses slightly and regularly inward until they meet."
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The ancient agricultural system here in the hills surrounding Jerusalem was to build terraces.

That meant gathering the stones from the rocky ground and using them to build terrace walls and shomerot.

The patches of cleared flat land that were created became the farm fields.

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In the days of the First and Second Temples thousands of pilgrims came up to Jerusalem at least three times a year, and they had to be fed!

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The last sojourners in this shomera surely never dreamed that someday the view from their window would be of the chicken coops and houses of my village.
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