Wow it feels like a while since I last wrote a blog. I hope you haven't missed me too much! The semester is officially over. All that is left are a few final essays and papers, then the summer excavations. This summer I'll be spending one week participating on the Megiddo Expedition with esteemed professor Israel Finkelstein. Starting mid-July I will then be one month at Tel Azekah with Professor Oded Lipschits's excavations. I am greatly looking forward to these two exciting experiences. But enough about the future, what have I done over the past several weeks?
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| Exploring Masada |
My last blog post previewed our departmental trip to Masada with Professor Guy Stiebel. I wrote a detailed blog post for the program, so I won't go into too much detail here. You can read all about it at
http://archaeology.tau.ac.il/internationalMA/?p=4234. It was a wonderful experience to learn the academic side of the site without all the Zionistic, Jewish view and propaganda that accompanies the site. Don't get me wrong, that side of the discussion is important, but it isn't the whole story. This tour tried to distance itself from the extravagant and the sensational, talking about the facts and discussing the debates.
We had one other tour in the last month, to the City of David in Jerusalem and to the ancient site at Ramat Rahel. Over the course of the year we had discussed a lot of different topics pertaining to the excavations at the City of David and the excavations at Ramat Rahel. The site at RR was famous in the early years of Israel's statehood, but after the 6-Day War it waned in popularity. Only now with new excavations and new discoveries is it reappearing in importance in the archaeological world. The City of David is also extremely important, and being able to actually visit these sites and see the features and structures that we read about in articles every day is very exciting.
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| Excavations in Jerusalem |
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| Learning about the Ramat Rahel gardens |
The end of the school year brings with it a lot of papers, and I have spent most of my days either in classes or in the library doing research. The classes were for the most part all very informative, interesting, and fun. I have learned a lot about biblical history and archaeology that is valuable for my future as an academic. Some of the topics of my courses this semester were administration in the Iron Age kingdom of Judah, scientific techniques and methods useful for archaeological investigations, and using pottery typology as a means for discussing bigger debates about issues of chronology and identity in the southern Levant.
Now that the year is ended, and the papers are slowly being completed, it is time for me to think about next year. It is my hope and my goal to return for a second year to work on a Master's Thesis. As of right now this is not a 100% sure thing, but as long as everything falls into place on the administrative side, it will happen. This is probably my last post until the end of the excavations, so look forward to an interesting and full post in the end of summer. It was a great benefit to have participated in this program this year, and I can't wait to see what the future holds!
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| The Sun setting over the Mediterranean Sea, viewed from the Tel Aviv port |
