Naqlun 2016 Hermitage EE.50: preliminary report

During the 2016 season in Naqlun, dedicated to an array of specialist studies of material in the storeroom, the team documented one of the hermitages located in the hills west of the monas- tic compound. The work was necessitated by evident illicit digging which had partly destroyed the compound. The hermitage, which occupied a small valley, appears to have comprised at least three living units, furnished with rock-cut storage pits in the floor and niches in the walls. The doorways and niches bore traces of architectural rendering. The complex may be interpreted tentatively as a residential and religious complex, and it is a good example of a mid-5th century hermitage, the dating confirmed by a study of the pottery assemblage coming from it.