Inside BAR

Trude and Moshe Dothan never have to ask each other, “Did you have a nice day at the office, dear?” Few couples can have interests as intertwined as they. Senior archaeologists both, the Dothans have dug together and have collaborated on a book together. In this issue we present, p. 22, the first of a two-part interview with this remarkable couple. Trude and Moshe describe the early days of Israeli archaeology and the great figures—Albright, Yadin, Kenyon, de Vaux, Mazar—who shaped their intellectual outlook. In Part II the Dothans will describe how their work has helped bring to light the underappreciated achievements of the Philistines.

Trude Dothan is the E. L. Sukenik Professor of Archaeology at Hebrew University and directs the university’s Berman Center for Biblical Archaeology. She co-directs the excavations at Tel Miqne, Biblical Ekron (which she described in “Ekron of the Philistines,” BAR 16:01), and has dug at Athienou, Cyprus; and at Tell Qasile, Hazor, Ein-Gedi and Deir el-Balah, in Israel. In 1991 she received the prestigious Percia Schimmel Award from the Israel Museum for her contributions to archaeology. She is the author of The Philistines and Their Material Culture (Yale Univ. Press, 1982) and, together with her husband, of People of the Sea: The Search for the Philistines (Macmillan, 1992).

Moshe Dothan was for many years director of excavations and surveys for Israel’s Department of Antiquities. In 1983 he helped found the department of archaeology at the University of Haifa and served as its first chairman. He has excavated numerous sites, notably Akko, Hammath Tiberias, Ashdod and Nahariya. He and Trude have two sons.