Putting Our Money Where Our Mission Is

Through the generosity of donors, BAR has supported numerous excavations over the years. Read more about our efforts to preserve and restore excavated sites in “BAR’s Crusades”.

Achziv

Eilat Mazar’s excavation of the cemeteries at this Phoenician site on the Mediterranean coast revealed, among other things, ceremonial scepters from an eighth-century B.C. tomb.

Arad

Ruth Amiran and her colleagues excavated a mysterious shaft outside the Arad fortress and ultimately identified it as a well that had provided water to the Israelite settlement in the ninth–sixth centuries B.C. and again in the Herodian period.

Cave of Letters

Richard Freund and Rami Arav returned to this famous hideout from the second-century A.D. Bar-Kokhba Revolt (which had been previously excavated by Yohanan Aharoni and Yigael Yadin) and revealed additional finds, including coins, pottery and human remains that indicated habitation in the first century A.D. as well—perhaps by Jewish priests fleeing the Romans with Jerusalem’s cultic objects.

Gezer

Ronny Reich used ground-penetrating radar and excavation techniques in an attempt to locate the elusive source of the Gezer water system.

Hippos/Sussita

Inspired by a BAR article about this city of the Decapolis located on a dramatic height above the Sea of Galilee, Arthur Segal and Michael Eisenberg undertook its first professional excavation. Established by Greeks, inhabited by Jews, Christians and then Arabs, it was finally destroyed in an eighth-century A.D. earthquake.