Yesterday (July 2nd) part of the team had a day of preparations for the the season. We started the day at Bar-Ilan University, where we collected materials from the project lab, then drove to Kibbutz Revadim, where we delivered the materials and checked out the accomodations (very nice – lots of new rooms too), and then headed to the tell, to go over the excavation areas, finalizing where we will be working, and other issues.
The following team members joined for the day: Alex Zukerman, Amit Dagan, Joe Uziel, Jeff Chadwick, Louise Hitchcock, Cynthia Shafer-Eliot (PhD student from the University of Sheffield, a new member of our team), Uri and Nir Reiss, and Richard Wiskin.
The tell looks in great shape, and it looks like we will have a GREAT season.

After the tell, we all drove to visit the excavations at Tel ‘Eton, directed by Avi Faust from Bar-Ilan University. This site, which is located in the southern Shephelah, just to the west of the “Green Line” is a very interesting site and Avi and his team have found very well-preserved Iron Age layers, including a very impressive late 8th century BCE destruction level (perhaps from the 701 BCE campaign of Sennacherib).

Here is a picture of Avi explaining the finds at Tel ‘Eton to us (photo courtesy of Louise Hitchcock)

On the way back to Jerusalem, I passed by a view of Tell es-Safi/Gath from Route 6 (trans-Israel highway) and took some great shots of the site, looking east. The impressive manner in which the site sticks out from its surroundings and the clearly seen white cliffs (giving the site its names: Blanche Garde [the white fort] in the Crusader period and Tell es-Safi [the pure tell in the Medieval/Modern period]) were both very obvious.

Here is one of the views of the tell – looking east from “Route 6″

Only 3 more days to go!

Aren