Authors

Aren M. Maeir (“Excavating Philistine Gath”) directs the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project and teaches at the Institute of Archaeology of Bar-Ilan University. He has excavated at numerous sites in Israel, including Hazor, Jerusalem, Beth-Shean, Qasile and Tel Yavneh. His co-edited volume, Settlement, Civilization and Culture (Bar-Ilan Univ.), was published this year. Co-author Carl Ehrlich, an associate professor of humanities at York University in Toronto, is co-director at Tell es-Safi and the author of The Philistines in Transition: A History from ca. 1000–730 BCE (Brill).

Vassilios Tzaferis (“Monastery of the Cross”), author of several BAR articles, recently retired as director of excavations and surveys at the Israel Antiquities Authority. Having joined the Greek Orthodox monastic community in Jerusalem as a young man, Tzaferis lived in the Monastery of the Cross while studying archaeology at Hebrew University. Tzaferis directed digs at Kursi, Shepherd’s Field (Bethlehem), Tiberias, Ashkelon, Beth-Shean and Capernaum. He has also written extensively about monks and monasteries of the Byzantine era.