Inauguration Day!

A group of the IAS fellows gathered at Marie-Henriette Gates apartment to celebrate the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama.

I May Be All Wet, But My Martini's Still Dry...

About once a week, usually on Shabbat, I migrate to the American Colony for drinks. This time I was joined by Ann Killebrew, Albright Fellow Penelope Mountjoy, and IAS fellows: Jeremy Rutter, Marie-Henriette Gates, and Robert Schiestel.

Ashkelon in November & My Close Encounter with a Qassam

In November Dan Master showed our Institute research group around Ashkelon. Here, we're standing in front of the Canaanite Gate. Over the last few weeks, it hasn't been safe to go there.
Last week, we went to a conference at Beersheba U on the Philistines.

On the way south to Beersheba, we could see the smoke rising over Gaza, which may be from the destruction of the UNRWA facility there.
One of the most interesting things about the talks was hearing about Philistine regionalism.

Afterward, some of your group wanted to look at some pottery stored in a nearby area called Omur. There was an air raid there and we had to spend some time in a bomb shelter and heard 3 loud booms.

These bomb shelters are a fact of life for Israeli's, especially in the south and the north, and for Palestinians.

Study in Jerusalem: Visiting Safi & Megiddo

I've been doing research at the Institute of Advanced Study at Hebrew University in Givat Ram since Nov 1. Our theme is Regional Narratives and our time is divided between weekly field trips and seminars, and doing our own research. There is a broad range of regional specialization among the different participants including Turkey, Greece, Egypt, the Canaanites, the Israelites, and the Philistines. In addition to interacting with each other, there has been interaction with fellows at the Albright and with members of the other IAS research group on urbanism. This has included joint seminars and fieltrips. We also had a mini conference in early December. I would say my teaching will have benefitted as much from being here as colleagues have been very generous with sharing information and circulating offprints, especially of items not readily available on JSTOR.

In November it was nice and green at Tell es-Safi and the bedouin tent was pitched below Area A.

Aren Maeir took us around Tell es-Safi, which is now a national park. The tell was very green - looking very different than it does in the summer.

There was also time to discuss the Goliath inscription.

A couple of days ago, Israel Finkelstein gave us a 4 hour tour of Megiddo, which included some interesting historical anecdotes about research there. Here we're near the entrance to the site at the Late Bronze Age gate.

Costco comes to Melbourne!

Costco is finally due to open in Melbourne in 2009 at Docklands. Yippeeee!

Happy New Year from the Judean Desert!

Today I had a a great time. I went to the the Judean desert with my friends Norma Franklin and Shimon Gibson to help Shimon measure an Iron Age building in the area of Buqeah. We found some unrecorded features and measured lots of walls. The best part was being warm! I'm going to try and bring my earlier activities up to date since arriving in Israel on Nov.1 very soon. It has been a very busy year for me that has involved publishing 2 books, writing some articles, organizing the 12th International Aegean Conference: DAIS, The Aegean Feast that brought 48 speakers from 14 countries to Melbourne, seeing my husband join me in getting dual Aussie/US citizenship, going to a conference in Cyprus, digging in Israel in July, then returning for 4 months in November, breaking my toe last February, and of course, teaching my students. I plan to gradually update my activities chronologically.