Tel Dan Israel:
A summer archaeology adventure
I arrived at Tel Dan, Israel on June
27, 2018 after driving one hundred
fifty miles north from Jerusalem. I
live in the dry deserts of Utah and
I imagined Israel to be much of the
same but was surprised at the high
humidity and abundance of agri-
culture. Inland only twenty-five
miles from the Mediterranean Sea
explained the humidity though it
was Israeli ingenuity and their need
to feed its own population without
reliance on imports that turned a
desert into an Eden of fruit and
vegetables. It seemed that all usable
land was bursting with orchards or
monoculture crops, though along the
borderlands near Syria, Lebanon and
other armistice lines that land lay
fallow as they still are populated with
devastating land mines.
When King Solomon died his two
sons Jeroboam and Rheaboam
differed on how to rule, thus in 930
BCE the latter stayed in Jerusalem
while Jeroboam led a northern seces-
sion from Judah and settled in Dan
where a temple was built to keep
northern peoples from making pil-
grimages to Jerusalem’s temple. From
Israel’s twelve tribes, nine went north
becoming the Kingdom of Israel and
three stayed in Jerusalem and be-
came the Kingdom of Judah. Tel Dan
is the only surviving temple complex
from the biblical kingdom of Israel. During the eighteenth century BCE,
It is located on the Northern border the first peoples of Dan built a mud
brick city gate on the cities eastern
side. It is called the Canaanite gate
and pre dates Roman arches by near-
ly a millennia making it the earliest
archway nearly four thousand years
old.
The high humidity and winter rains
cause the area to be very susceptible
to erosion, thus excavations must
be completed quickly and preser-
vations such as the canopy over the
Canaanite gate must be placed and
maintained.
I was able to work with a great team Tel Dan, Israel
of fellow archaeology students, pro- June 25 - July 17, 2018
fessors and esteemed archaeologists. All photographs taken and owned by
The focus of the excavation was to
find artifacts that could date the area
and its inhabitants. Ceramics found
could narrow the search but it was
seeds and pollen found for the first
time at the site that will be carbon
dated giving more precise period