In 2010 two watchman’s huts were excavated south of the planned route of Highway 1, east of the bend in the road in Moza. The excavation was conducted in the wake of widening Highway 1 by the National Roads Company of Israel, Ltd. (formerly the Department of Public Works). The watchman’s huts are situated in an open area, on the side of a spur that slopes down gently toward the south. They were excavated by the Israeli Institute of Archaeology and were found in a poor physical state with their surroundings dug up and inaccessible. Due to their proximity to the main road and the settlement at Moza, it was decided to preserve and rehabilitate them in order to restore the structures to a physical condition so that visitors could safely enter and explore them.
The watchman’s huts are evidence of an ancient culture deeply rooted in the country’s landscape which existed from the time of the Mishnah until almost the modern era. Even today the remains of thousands of watchman’s huts in the form of stone towers, small strongholds or small stone houses can be seen in the hills of Judea and Samaria.
The watchman’s huts served as temporary shelter in the agricultural areas during the summer season, especially while harvesting crops. In addition, the watchman’s huts were used at that time for guarding the crops from the vineyards and the orchards, and they were also where the picked fruit and the produce that was processed while staying there were stored. What’s more tools, equipment and materials were kept there which the farmers required in the vineyards and orchards. Usually the women of the family slept inside the hut, while the men-folk stayed in a sukkah that was built on its roof.
The watchman’s huts are built of thick stone walls that form a single or multiple spaces. They were always constructed of indigenous stones that were collected in the immediate vicinity of the structure, usually fieldstones that were cleared from the adjacent fields. The size and shape of the stones were matched to conform to the structure of the hut and the height of its courses. The stones used in the lintels, doorjambs and some of the corner of the walls were coarsely dressed so as to fit each other better, as well as to provide the structure with maximum stability.
Like the farming terraces, the watchman’s huts were also built of dry construction, without the use of mortar or cement. This construction necessitates thick walls and fitting and balancing the stones that make up each part of the structure. Building the stone roof above the large interior is the main difficulty in the dry construction of the hut. The roof must be stable, as well as strong enough to bear the weight of the people staying on it. Most of the watchman’s huts in our region were covered with a vaulted ceiling whose construction was complex and demanded expertise. The hut’s roof and thick walls are typically made of two rows of stones: an outer face and an inner face built of relatively large stones, with smaller stones that were loosely spilled between them. Niches and recesses used for storage were often left in the inside of the walls.
The two watchman’s huts that we conserved were preserved almost in their entirety: one also includes the roofing and in the other the roofing is missing. Although the exterior walls of the watchman’s huts had largely collapsed and their cores were missing, their interior walls remained intact.
A Conservation Department team headed by the conservator Fuad Abu Taʽa was charged with the work of conserving and rehabilitating the watchman’s huts. In preparation of the work the existing condition of the structures was documented and a physical-engineering survey was conducted in order to understand the construction technology and possible ways of intervention in each hut. In order to implement the work the team adopted traditional dry construction technology. To do so they had to prepare accordingly. Traditional five kilogram wooden hammers were built which were used to insert the stone wedges (klinim) between the building stones without damaging them. Suitable stones were gathered from the area and sorted at the site based on their suitability for the various parts of the watchman’s hut.
The low opening that led into the darkened interior was preserved in the covered watchman’s hut. The opening’s doorjambs and the large lintel were replaced with large strong stones, without veins, that were found in the surrounding area. More than half of the outside of the hut was missing and had to be completed in accordance with the structure’s original volume. Much of the wall cores were filled with soil in which vegetation had taken root thereby causing extensive damage to the dry stone construction. The conservation measures involved removing the soil from the core of the walls and replacing it with small stones only. After the structure’s foundations were reinforced by means of flat stone wedges (klinim), the wall itself was reconstructed using stones that were found around the hut. The stairs leading to the roof were completely detached from the structure and needed to be dismantled and reintegrated and bonded with the core of the building. The roof was tamped and cleaned and the peripheral stone fence that delimited it was completed to a height of c. 70 centimeters, which accentuated the borders of the building, and provided it with the required weight needed to stop the ceiling from settling. The inside face of the hut’s walls was stabilized and pieces of stone were inserted in it in order to reinforce it thereby making it possible to safely enter the structure. Thus visitors will be able to experience the darkened and protected interior of the watchman’s hut.
While building the walls by means of dry construction the conservation team became fairly accomplished at matching the different size stones into a complete and strong weave using only indigenous stones.
In the second watchman’s hut a front courtyard was identified that surrounded the entrance to it. The peripheral courtyard fence was completed to a height of one meter and an opening was breached in it. The main entrance to the watchman’s hut was dismantled and was rebuilt in a stable manner. In this hut it was also necessary to complete more than half of the outer walls that had fallen apart over time. The roof of the structure remained missing but the stones in the base of the vault were stabilized and highlighted, thereby allowing visitors to enter the structure, which is open to the sky, and examine the construction technology and the numerous niches inside it.
Many other watchman’s huts exist in the Moza Valley, most of which are in a poor physical condition and without regular maintenance are liable to collapse. The current conservation project can serve as a prototype for preserving these traditional structures which have been part of this country’s landscape for hundreds and thousands of years. The only way to treat these watchman’s huts is a deep understanding and reconstruction of the traditional building phases that make them up. The close proximity of the watchman’s huts in the Moza Valley to the nearby settlements constitutes an opportunity to create a community-educational process such as “Adopt-a-Site”. In this way, together with proper archaeological and conservation supervision, it is possible to rehabilitate the watchman’s huts and maintain them regularly, thus we will gain added value by which new generations are exposed to the local heritage and this unique construction that is rapidly disappearing.
Avi Mashiah
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April 2013
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