Great news! Large grant for the study of the EB at Tell es-Safi/Gath

We have received some great news! On Friday I found out that a grant proposal that Prof. Haskel Greenfield (University of Manitoba; who has been on the Safi team for 3 years now, recently mentioned here) and I applied for was accepted and will be funded.

The proposed research aims to study of the Early Bronze III at Tell es-Safi as a case study of what early urban neighborhoods looked like during this period, using a broad “toolkit” of macro- and micro-archaeological perspectives, along with a large team of collaborators from Israel, Canada, the US and other countries.

Now here is the really good news:
The grant is to the sum of 2.7 million dollars (which is now worth more than the US$…) for seven years!!!! Woohoo!!!! :-)

This is very exciting news and should enable us to conduct a long-term, in-depth study of the Early Bronze Age at Tell es-Safi/Gath.

And two more important points: 1) This does not mean that we won’t continue studying other periods and cultures represented at the site, along with the various team members and collaborators; 2) This does not mean that we now have unlimited funds for whatever we would like to do on the excavation. It just means that this aspect of the project is well-funded…

Aren