Here is a good article explaining some important facts (many not well-known) about sunscreen and its importance for people exposed to the sun. This is especially relevant for those working on an archaeological excavation – even if you work under protective tarps as we do at Safi – since some of the damaging UV rays get through this as well.
Aren
Just another day on the dig…
:-)
Aren
This statement relates both to the size of the team (which if all goes as planned now is the largest team we’ve had since the very beginning of the project!), and of course, regarding our hopes for the quality of the exciting finds that we will be uncovering…
:-)
Aren
Today, Haskel Greenfield (Manitoba) and his student, Chris Neufeldt, came to BIU to work on and discuss various issues relating to the coming season and in particular to the EB project (related to the SSHRC grant mentioned previously). In particular, we moved substantially ahead with plans and implementation of the digital recording system that we will be using from this season onwards (which looking better and better!).
Very productive day.
Aren
Today, we had a very nice visit of Prof. Daniel Master, co-director of the Ashkelon excavation, and Josh Walton, senior staff member of the Ashkelon team, to the Safi lab. In addition to showing them some of the new finds (including, of course, the stone altar), we had a long conversation with them about their experiences of using a digital system for field and lab recording at Ashkelon (in use there since 2007), as a background to what we hope will be a successful implementation of the the digital REVEAL system at Tell es-Safi/Gath in the 2012 season.
While the Ashkelon and Safi system are different, we heard quite a few good ideas, suggestions, warnings and advice on what to do and what not to do in moving from old-fashioned registration to a digital system. Besides being very interesting – this was extremely helpful for us.
Aren
After waiting some two months for the official announcement from the Canadian SSHRC, we can now finally put this up:
Prof. Haskel Greenfield (University of Manitoba) and Prof. Aren Maeir (Bar-Ilan University) have been awarded a seven year, large-scale grant from the Canadian government’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council for the study of the Early Bronze Age remains at the site of Tell es-Safi/Gath in Israel.
The project is entitled “The nature of early urban neighbourhoods in the southern Levant: Early Bronze Age at Tell es-Safi”, and will involve five years of excavation and two years of post-excavation analysis.
The CAN$2.7 million grant (with institutional matching actually reaching close to CAN$4 million) aims to carry out an interdisciplinary study of the Early Bronze Age III city at Tell es-Safi/Gath, with particular focus on the non-elite neighborhoods. In collaboration with a diverse group of scholars from Canada, Israel and other countries, and utilizing macro- and micro-archaeological perspectives, they plan to study facets of daily life in one of the larger cities of the first stage of urban culture in the Southern Levant. The large scale funding will enable a broad range of cutting-edge technological and analytical techniques to be used in this research, as well as comprehensive training of the next generation of students.
This research is conducted as part of the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project, directed by Prof. Aren Maeir, which is a long-term project (commenced in 1996) aimed at studying the cultural and environmental history of the site of Tell es-Safi/Gath and its environs.
Woohoo!
:-)
Aren
Bar-Ilan University has put online a video of the first lecture in my class on the Philistines and Sea Peoples (in Hebrew), in which I give the general introduction to this topic and then talk about the Late Bronze Age background of the Philistines and Sea Peoples.
So, if you have just under and hour and a half of free time (and understand Hebrew) – watch and enjoy!
And if you enjoyed this (or not…), check out this clip (in English) in which my good friend and colleague, Ed Greenstein, of the BIU Bible Department, discusses “The Theory of Metaphor and Metaphor in the Bible” – very interesting!!!
Aren
Now that a horned altar mountain has been reported from Switzerland, more examples are popping up. Alex Zukerman has sent me word of one in Georgia (that is the FSU Georgia, not in the US)! It’s called Mt. Ushba, and here is a picture of it:
Boy – those Philistines are getting around…
:-)
Aren
Today, while going thru some of the special finds from 2007, we noticed that a very interesting find had been discovered in Area F, but had gone unnoticed until now. What we found is a part of an Aegean-style torch, which is well-known from the Late Helladic Aegean (and Cyprus), but as of yet, has only been reported very rarely in the Levant – one example from Ugarit and one example from early Iron Age Beth Shean. As Assaf Yasur-Landau wrote in his book on the Philistine migration, this can be considered an item that is typical of non-Levantine behaviour patterns appearing in the Levant with the arrival on the “western” peoples that arrived at this time.
And BTW – this, to the best of my knowledge, the first example of this type from Philistia.
Here’s a picture of Shira Kisos holding the torch
Aren
Here’s a very nice sketch of the new sieves that we have ordered for the dig, which we will have for the new season. The nice thing about them is: they can be worked by one person; they turn over easily; they have two levels of screens (one with 5 mm holes one with 2 mm holes) which can easily be detached so that the finds can easily collected after sifting. They are MAJOR improvements over the ones that we had previously used…
Thanks to Ely, Shira’ Kisos’ partner, who has made them for us (and made the sketch).
This means a lot of interesting small finds – be prepared!
Aren
