The assemblage of liquor bottles belonging to British soldiers that was revealed in an Israeli excavation. Photo: Clara Amit, courtesy of Israel Antiquities Authority.

JNS.org – Among several other discoveries, hundreds of liquor bottles belonging to British soldiers from World War I have been excavated in a surprising find near the Israeli city of Ramla.

The bottles were found two weeks ago in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), prior to the construction of the new Highway 200. The discovery was made in the fields of Kibbutz Netzer Sereni, according to the IAA.

“The written historical evidence regarding the soldiers’ activities in the British army in Israel usually consists of ‘dry’ details, such as the number of soldiers, direction of attack, and the results of the battle,” said the excavation’s director, Ron Toueg.

He added, “The discovery of this site and the finds in it provide us with an opportunity for a glimpse of the unwritten part of history, and reconstruct for the first time the everyday life and leisure of the soldiers.”

Brigitte Ouahnouna, a researcher in the IAA’s glass department, noted that the excavation marks “the first time in the history of archaeology in Israel in which an assemblage of hundreds of glass bottles from a British army camp from World War I was uncovered.”

Also unearthed in the same excavation were several 250,000-year-old flint tools dating back to the Middle Paleolithic period.