Best of BAR: “Buy Low, Sell High”

The Biblical Archaeology Society is proud to announce “Buy Low, Sell High: The Marketplace at Ashkelon” by Daniel M. Master and Lawrence E. Stager (BAR 40:01) as the winner of the Best of BAR award for articles published in 2013–2014. The article looks at the site of Ashkelon, a powerful Philistine city on the Mediterranean coast during the Iron Age. Ashkelon’s marketplace reveals the workings of both the local and international economy before Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city in 604 B.C.E. Using the artifacts discovered at Ashkelon, the article shows how archaeologists have been able to reconstruct the daily lives of both merchants and residents.

The article was chosen by judges Mary Joan Winn Leith and Jane Cahill West. Mary Joan Winn Leith is Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. Jane Cahill West served as a senior staff archaeologist for the Hebrew University’s City of David Archaeological Project and codirected the Tell el-Hammah excavations. She is an attorney and career clerk for a federal judge in Houston, Texas.

They selected the article because it presents significant new information from recent excavations clearly and highlights the project’s multidisciplinary approach. It also recognizes the important contributions of the many people who helped to implement that approach successfully.