Inside BAR

A big excavation of a big tell naturally deserves a big article. Tel Dor, on Israel’s Mediterranean coast, especially qualifies not only because of its great height and breadth, but because of the broad span of cultures that it encompasses, now revealed by 12 years of excavation. Dor seems to be a contender for the title of “most-conquered city” in the ancient Near East. Practically everyone occupied the site at one time or another: Canaanites, Sea Peoples, Phoenicians, Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans. Despite such a tumultuous history, however, Dor was culturally dominated by the Phoenicians for some 800 years and now provides archaeologists with their best window onto that culture. Ephraim Stern’s discoveries at Dor have been so fruitful that we have given him three installments in which to tell the story of “The Many Masters of Dor.” In part one, “When Canaanites Became Phoenician Sailors,” he looks at the city’s earliest remains, the conquest by a Sea People tribe and the rise of the Phoenicians.