Inside BAR

Blacksmiths, university presidents, coroners, kibbutzniks, scholars, drop-outs, mayors, ministers and grade-school students—this is just a sample of the hundreds of BAR readers whose letters have appeared in Queries & Comments over the last 13 years. Readers’ letters praise, cajole, complain, cavil, berate, extol, inform and illustrate. We love them, and so do our readers. So we devote far more space to letters than does any other magazine we know. We even include readers’ letters in our index. To inaugurate our 14th year and to say “thank you” to a group as knowledgeable as you are diverse, we offer 7 pages of Queries & Comments—peppered, as always, with outrage and wit.

Whenever some new discovery is made in the field, you probably read about it first in BAR. But the excavation volunteers who are at the site of the discovery learn about it even sooner and get to see the find for themselves. “1988 Excavation Opportunities” lists 23 digs that you can join as a volunteer—digs that span the length of Israel (and a few in Jordan, too), from Banias at the foot of Mt. Hermon to Tel Nizzana in the Negev Desert, and digs that span the millennia, from the Neolithic period to the time of the Crusades. If you do decide to volunteer, you may, with a little luck, make a discovery that will appear in some future issue of BAR.