1 MAARAV 16.1 (2009): 000–000 TWENTY-SEVEN NEW YEHUD STAMP IM PRESSIONS FROM THE 2008 EXCAVATION SEASON AT RAMAT-RAÌEL Oded Lipschits, david vanderhOOft, YuvaL GadOt, Manfred OeMinG TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY, BOSTON COLLEGE, TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY, HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY The 2008 excavation season at Ramat Raùel took place between July 20th and August 15th (following two weeks of pre-season work with staff members and workers). 1 During this excavation season, we worked in six main areas, three located in the eastern part of the site (D1, D4 and D5), one located at the center of the site (D6), and two located in the west (C4 and B2). We also continued to excavate inside the columbaria cave. 1 License number G-40/2008. The expedition is directed by Oded Lipschits and Manfred Oeming under the auspices of the Institute of Archaeology at Tel-Aviv University, the Theological Seminary (Wissenschaftlich-Theologisches Seminar) and the faculty for Jewish Studies (Hochschule für jüdische Studien) at Heidelberg University. About one hundred team members participated each week of the four weeks program, forty of whom were students from Heidelberg University. Other students and team members came from the USA, Canada, Germany, England, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Colombia, Italy, Spain, France, South Africa, Sweden, Australia and Israel. The stuff of the excavations included Yuval Gadot (feld director), Benjamin Arubas and Shatil Imanuelov (Architecture), Liora Freud (Registration), Dana Kats, Nirit Kedem, Keren Ras, Omer Sergey, Lisa Yehuda, Alla Volvovsky (area supervisors), Uri Davidovich, Roi Porat (excavations in the colum- barium), Yoav Farhi (metal detector), Christopher Bodine, Efrat Botzer, David Dunn, Boaz Gross, Ido Koch and Arian Goren (assistants to area supervisors), Carsten Kettering (equipment supervisor), and Pavel Shrago (photographer). Our thanks to Boaz Gross for working on the stamped handles, sorting them according to their typology, and preparing the material for this paper. Thanks also to Pavel Shrago who photographed the handles and their impressions for this paper, Rodica Penchas who did the drawings and Yulia Gotlib who prepared the plates.