Daniel M. Master is Professor of Archaeology at Wheaton College and is co-director of excavations at the site of Tel Shimron (Israel). He co-directed the work of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon from 2007-2016 and currently oversees the publication of the Ashkelon Final report series. His publications also include the First Final report on the 1953–1964 excavations at Tel Dothan and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Bible and Archaeology (as general editor).
Bible & Archaeology Fest XXV, October 8 & 9, 2022
Tel Shimron: A city state in the Jezreel Valley
Archaeologists have long known that Tel Shimron was one of the largest ancient cities in the Jezreel Valley, located on the main east-west routes linking the Arabian Desert with the Mediterranean, but no one had every systematically excavated the site. The entire site represented a huge gap in our understanding of the history of the Galilee and the Jezreel Valley. Beginning in 2017, a modern excavation led by Daniel Master (Wheaton College) and Mario Martin (Tel Aviv University) started the process of uncovering almost five thousand years of history across this strategically located mound. This lecture will present the results of four seasons of excavation, with important new results from Bronze Age through the Roman Period.
Bible & Archaeology Fest XIX, November 18 – 20, 2016
The Cemetery of the Philistines at Ashkelon
On July 10, 2016, the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon announced the discovery of the Philistine cemetery at Ashkelon, a crowning achievement of more than thirty years of excavation at the site. Archaeologists and scholars have long searched for the origin of the Philistines, and the discovery of the cemetery is poised to offer the key to this mystery. Excavation at the Philistine cemetery completes the story of the Philistines at Ashkelon, complementing the early discoveries of Philistines houses, shrines, wineries and markets. The excavations at Ashkelon are able to tell a complete story of the Philistines from their arrival in the twelfth century to their destruction in the seventh century, from the complexity of their lives to the patterns of their death. Before the work of archaeologists, all we knew of the Philistines was the reports of their enemies, whether Egyptian, Israelite, Assyrian, or Babylonian. But the archaeological work at Ashkelon and elsewhere is filling out the picture by telling the story of the Philistines from another point of view, told from the clues they left behind in their cities and even the clues from their very bones.