Check out some nice YouTube videos on the Philistines, Tell es-Safi/Gath, and other issues.

For those who may not be familiar with them, check out a few of the videos out there in YouTube land, where I discuss the Philistines, the excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath, and other issues. There are many more – but that’s for another time!

Enjoy!

Ashkelon College visit to lab

Today, a class of students from Ashkelon College, led by Dr. Ayelet Levy (former Safi staff member), came to visit the lab. I gave them a talk about different analytic techniques that are used in our research, and then Shira gave them a tour of lab.

Here are some pictures:

Historians of the Jewish People and the State of Israel join together to sign a petition against the proposed upheaval of the democratic system of Israel!

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More pictures from the IMJ visit

Here are some more very pictures from our visit to the IMJ today (taken by Maria)

Safi lab team outing to the Israel Museum

Today, the Safi lab team had a very nice team trip to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

We visited the excellent Adornment: Jewelry and Body Decoration in Prehistoric Times exhibition, and received an excellent explanation about it by the exhibit’s curator (and curator for prehistory of the IMJ), Ahiad Ovadia. The collection of items in the exhibit is quite spectacular, and I highly recommend visiting it!

We then went on to visit the IAA State coin collection which is located in the IAA offices at the IMJ. There, Yaniv Levy, former Safi staff member, and currently one of the coin collection staff, gave us an excellent tour of this totally fantastic collection of coins. He showed to us (and let us handle) some really unique coins, from various periods, cultures and sites. A real treat!

See some pictures of our visit below:

Workshop on Agrotechnological Transfer at BIU

Prof. Joel Roskin (archaeological geomorphologist at BIU) has passed on to me the schedule of the super-interesting workshop that he, Itamar Taxel (IAA) and Shira Albaz (BIU) are organizing, that will be held on Feb. 6-8, 2023, at BIU.

Leading scholars in the field, from Israel and abroad, will be participating.

The workshop’s title is:

“Continuity and Discontinuity of Agrotechnological Transfer in the Eastern Mediterranean Region between Late Antiquity and Early Modern Times”

Check it out! Looks very interesting

New clip about Safi on the Kedem Channel premieres today!

A new video clip about the excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath is about to premiere (at 21:30 Israel time, Jan. 22, 2023) on the Kedem YouTube channel.

Check it out! Should be fun and interesting to watch!

Project funds at the IES

All those running archaeological projects know of the difficulties and complications running project funds, and the need to have an accredited institution taking care of bookkeeping. For years, funds that I received for the Safi project which were not connected to the University, I handled through the Israel Exploration Society (IES), who provided excellent service. Then, unfortunately, they raised their overhead and I took my business elsewhere.

But now, Dr. Rona Avissar, the new director of the IES (and a former senior staff member of the Safi project) has announced that the IES is substantially lowering the overhead for projects, and even more so for those of young scholars!

So, if you are looking to start a project and need a place to handle your funds, do check out what the IES has to offer!

Shani in the young scholars conference

As previously noted, today we have the “Young Scholars conference” of our department.

As part of the conference, Shani is giving a paper on music in Philistine cult.

Go Shani!

“Young Scholars” conference at BIU

This coming Thursday (Jan. 19, 2023), the annual “Young Scholars” conference of the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology of Bar-Ilan University will take place. In this annual event, “young” scholars (that is research students, not all actually young, age wise) present results of their research.

The papers, which will be presented in Hebrew, represent a broad cross-section of the periods (prehistoric until modern) and disciplines (archaeology, history, paleography, numismatics, botany, geography, gender, etc.) that are covered in our department.

Among the various presentations, Shani Guterman from the Safi staff, will give a paper on musical instruments in Philistine cult! Go Shani!

A very interesting guest lecture will be given by by Itzhaq Israel, who is one of the team of the enormously popular “Baim el-Haprofesorim” video clip series, and he will talk about the background and results of this very popular video channel.

In addition, at the end of the meeting, several prizes will be presented to selected students from the department, to mark excellence in their studies

Do join us! See the conference schedule below