Since my previous post, our field school participants have had several opportunities to experience “something extra” about our site, the region and the country in general. On Thursday, we visited our “sister Philistine city” of Ashkelon, as guests of the excavation director Dr. Daniel Master. We were actually met at the entrance to the national park by Josh Walton, long-time (and fulture) Safi-er who has temporarily “changed sides”. He guided us through the Middle Bronze II Age gate complex, one of the best-preserved in the world, and from there through some of the Medieval remains to the central excavation grid, where Daniel was waiting for us. Daniel gave us a very thorough explaination of the excavations there, which reflect settlement begining in the Early Bronze Age and all the way to modern times. Josh then took over as we wondered through the Roman “basilica” and back to our bus – and back to Revadim for the traditional end-of-week dinner!

Yesterday, Amit, Efrat and I took about 30 brave souls through the tunnel system of Khirbet Midras, south of the Elah Valley. There we crawled through the tunnels made by the rebels of the Bar-Kokhba war, used to hide from the Roman soldiers who patrolled the area.

On the lecture front, we had a talk about bones by Dr. Haskel Greenfield and one about the specific pottery of Tell Safi by our own Alex Zuckermann.  The weekly “Debi lectures” on registration and proccessing finds were actually done by Rotem, Jeff and Amit.

So much for the first week and a half. In our next episode: a trip to Tell Aitun and lectures by Brent Davis and Trude Dotan. So stay tuned!

Yigal

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