More Digs in ’79

Two important excavations with volunteer opportunities were omitted from the listings in our March/April issue.

The Tell el-Hesi Archaeological Expedition, patriarch of digs, will be in the field for its sixth season, June 14 to July 31, 1979. Tell el-Hesi is one of the most famous sites in the history of archaeological method; in 1890, Sir Flinders Petrie, the first scholar to recognize the dating possibilities of ceramic typologies, led the first modern stratigraphic excavation at Tell el-Hesi. The site is located where the Negev desert gives way to the gently sloping, verdant Shephelah, midway between the Mediterranean port of Ashdod and Beer-sheva. Hesi is a 37 acre tell with a fortified acropolis on which a yet unknown number of walled cities were built from the third millennium to the final destruction in Hellenistic times (third to first centuries B.C.).