Strata: In Their Own Words

Now retired from teaching but not from digging, Tel-Aviv University’s David Ussishkin has directed a seminal excavation at Lachish and another at Jezreel, has surveyed tombs in Jerusalem and currently codirects (with Israel Finkelstein) a major excavation at Megiddo. He is also a world traveler. In the photograph below, he is shown with his wife, archaeologist Lily Singer-Avitz, in southern Argentina, not far from the South Pole. Not long before that, he traveled to Hong Kong to deliver the prestigious Chuen King Lectures, from which the following excerpt was taken.ons uncovered several phases of occupation from the Persian period through the Byzantine period, including conclusive evidence of a Samaritan temple built in the fifth century B.C.E.¹