Books in Brief

Biblical Dan

Avraham Biran (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society and Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion, 1994) 280 pp., $32.00)

Avraham Biran’s excavation of Tel Dan, begun in 1966, is the longest continuous excavation of any site in Israel. Located in a beautiful valley in northern Galilee, the tell has yielded an enormous amount of material spanning the Neolithic to the Late Roman periods—some five thousand years of occupational history. The excavator is the director of the Nelson Glueck School of Biblical Archaeology at the Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem and a former director of the Israel Department of Antiquities.

Although Biran has published numerous articles on various aspects of the excavation, this volume is his first book-length report on Dan. A revised English version of the author’s original 1992 Hebrew edition, it is written in a popular, non-technical style intended for a general audience.