Canadian government awards large-scale grant to Bar-Ilan excavations at Tell es-Safi

Date: 2012-06-24 Hour: 14:41

Prof. Haskel Greenfield, of the University of Manitoba, and Prof. Aren Maeir, of the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University, have been awarded a seven-year, large-scale grant from the Canadian government’s Social Science and Humanities Research Council for the study of Early Bronze Age remains at the site of Tell es-Safi/Gath in Israel.

The project is entitled “The nature of early urban neighborhoods in the southern Levant: Early Bronze Age at Tell es-Safi”, and will involve five years of excavation and two years of post-excavation analysis.

The CAN$2.7 million grant (with institutional matching actually reaching close to CAN$4 million) aims to carry out an interdisciplinary study of the Early Bronze Age III city at Tell es-Safi/Gath, with particular focus on the non-elite neighborhoods. In collaboration with a diverse group of scholars from Canada, Israel and other countries, and utilizing macro- and micro-archaeological perspectives, the team plans to study facets of daily life in one of the larger cities of the first stage of urban culture in the Southern Levant. The large-scale funding will enable a broad range of cutting-edge technological and analytical techniques to be used in this research, as well as comprehensive training of the next generation of students.

This research is conducted as part of the Tell es-Safi/Gath Archaeological Project, directed by Prof. Aren Maeir, which is a long-term project (commenced in 1996) aimed at studying the cultural and environmental history of the site of Tell es-Safi/Gath (the biblical Gath of the Philistines) and its environs.