Call for the 2025 season

Goals of the 2025 season:

1. We will continue digging in Area B, into the early Iron Age levels (circa 1200-1000 BCE), to flesh out the architectural plans and to facilitate spatial analysis of houses and neighborhoods, to understand lifestyle, economy, social identity (ethnicity) and political organization.  We are especially interested in retrieving carbonized grain from the Strata V and IVA destruction levels and to submit them for C14 dating (we have dates from wood, but the wood might already have been old when the town was destroyed).
2. We will continue digging in the new area in the center of the site, Area L, in the 8^th cent. BCE levels destroyed in an earthquake.  What does a town look, one minute before disaster strikes?  How to people react to such a catastrophe? We will also be emphasizing “household archaeology” here. Is the earthquake mentioned in the book of Amos (Chapter 1)?

Daily schedule:

• 5:00    wake-up
• 5:30    transport to site
• 5:45    begin work
• 8:30    breakfast (on site)
• 11:00  short break
• 13:00  back to kibbutz for lunch and rest
• 16:30  pottery washing
• 18:00  lecture
• 19:00  dinner
• 20:00   free (occasional lecture or film)

Field trips: As part of the educational component of the program for all participants, one day each week we will embark on an afternoon field trip. Sites visited may include Hazor, Et-Tel/Bethsaida, Caesaea Philipi/Banias, the Herodian Omrit Temple, and Nimrod’s Ayyubid-Mameluke Castle, and are in some cases led by the excavators of these projects. Weekend and post-dig tours may also be arranged upon request.