Inside BAR

The Philistines have a three-millennia-old reputation for being a society of warlike pagans, devoid of aesthetic or intellectual values. But the world’s leading expert on the Philistines, Israeli archaeologist Trude Dothan, is convinced that this reputation is undeserved. In “What We Know About the Philistines,” Dothan describes stunning archaeological evidence of the distinctive artistic repertoire that made the Philistine material culture far more colorful and elaborately decorated than others in Canaan in the 12th and 11th centuries B.C.

Dothan, a native of Jerusalem, was a student at Hebrew University in 1948 when the War of Independence began and she left to serve in the Israeli army. After the war, she completed her education at Hebrew University and joined its faculty of archaeology in 1960 where she recently served as director of the school’s Institute of Archaeology.

Dothan has lectured throughout the world and has excavated at Hazor, En Gedi, Tel Qasile, Tell ‘Aitun, and at Athienou in Cyprus. She is presently director of the Deir el-Balah project and codirector of the Israeli American excavations at Tel Miqneh (Muqanna), probably the Philistine city of Ekron.

After 20 years of excavation and research, Dothan has just published The Philistines and Their Material Culture, reviewed in this issue in Books in Brief. This work is the only comprehensive study of Philistine culture from textual and archaeological sources.