A team led by Dennis Mizzi and colleagues combined accelerator-mass-spectrometry dating at the D-REAMS laboratory with microscopic study of soil layers to pin down when the monumental, mosaic-paved synagogue at Huqoq was first laid out. Their open-access article, published in PLOS ONE on 11 February 2025, reports that a charcoal fragment embedded in the floor’s plaster bedding yields a calibrated terminus post quem of roughly 400 CE. Seven additional samples from bedding and construction fills fall before or shortly after that date, while none extends beyond the early fifth century. The results contradict the long-held view—based mainly on architectural style—that Galilean-type synagogues rose in the second or third century, before Jews came under Christian rule.
Because Huqoq’s late-medieval rebuilders raised the floor by as much as 0.8 metres, they dumped earlier village refuse and residual Roman-Byzantine debris over the original mosaics. Radiocarbon ages from that levelling fill overlap those from the Late Roman layers, illustrating how reused sediments can blur a site’s timeline if their formation is not carefully traced. Micromorphological thin sections confirmed that the overlying material was homogenous dump rather than undisturbed occupation soil, reinforcing the need to match laboratory dates with on-site formation processes.
Stratified pottery and coin finds agree with the radiocarbon picture. The deepest construction layers produced Cypriot Red-Slip and Kefar Hananya bowls that begin no earlier than the late fourth century, alongside coins of Constans and Constantius II struck between 337 and 348 CE. No artefacts sealed beneath the mosaics date later than the early fifth century, and the authors found no evidence for earlier pavements.
The study demonstrates that radiocarbon, when paired with micro-stratigraphic control, can resolve long-debated chronologies for Late Antique religious architecture in the Levant. It also highlights a caution: where builders recycle old soil or rubble, laboratory ages must be interpreted through the lens of site formation, or they risk misplacing entire centuries.
For Huqoq, the bottom line is clear. The mosaics depicting Samson, Noah and other scenes were not laid until the late 300s or very early 400s CE—well into an era of Christian imperial patronage—meaning that Jewish communities in the Galilee continued to finance large, elaborate houses of worship after Constantine’s reforms.
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