Excavating Canaanite remains at Tel Jezreel

By: Ashley Motes, 2013 Heritage Fellow

From May to June, I spent four weeks at Tel Jezreel in Israel participating in the Jezreel Expedition. Norma Franklin of Zinman Institute of Archaeology at Israel’s University of Haifa and Jennie Ebeling of University of Evansville were the directors of the project. The focus of the Jezreel Expedition is to expand our knowledge of Tel Jezreel.

This was the second season of the Jezreel Expedition and the start of excavating the site. The first season dealt with on-foot surveying and the LiDAR surveying of the tel and the lower areas surrounding the tel to determine where the team wanted to start excavating in 2013. Being part of this season’s team, I found myself working alongside supervisors from England, France, Israel, and the U.S. The team itself was broken into two groups, one working on the tel and the other working in a lower area near the Ein Izra’el Spring. The directors picked this area to work in because the LiDAR indicated an unusual anomaly that they thought could be walls to a building.   I was a part of the group that worked near the spring. We got lucky because a month before the excavation someone had caused a fire and it burned all the thorny shrubby that would have taken a while to remove. (more…)