Yesterday, I gave a talk on the excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath at Kansas University and I was hosted on campus by Eric Welch – long-time team members and supervisor in Area F. A nice group came to the lecture – and hopefully we will have some KU students on the dig – this year and in future years as well.
I then moved on to Chicago, to give a series of two talks at the Oriental Institute. After having lunch with Prof. Gil Stein, director of the OI, and some of the OI staff and researchers, Dr. Jack Green, curator of the OI Museum showed me around the exhibits – which are simply excellent, I got to the main events of the day, when I gave the 2nd Annual David Kipper Memorial Lecture on Ancient Israel. To a packed crowd in the Breasted Hall at the OI, I talked about new directions in the study of the Philistines, mainly based on the finds from Tell es-Safi/Gath. Based on the questions after the lectures and the reactions – it looked like the lecture was extremely well received. As the lecture was filmed, it should be online sometime in the future – and I’ll notify when it is.
Tomorrow, I will be giving a 2nd talk to the OI graduate students and faculty, an overview of some of the major results of the project in the last 17 years. Afterwards, I’m going to look at some of the ivory bowls from the Megiddo ivory cache – which are very similar to the ivory bowl that we found at Safi this year.
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The Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project Official (and Unofficial) Weblog 
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