Tell Keisan Excavations

Location: Israel

Season: July 30, 2022 to August 27, 2022

Application Deadline: May 1, 2022

Deadline Type: Rolling

Website: https://keisan.uchicago.edu

Program Type:
Field School, Volunteer

RPA Certified:
No

Affiliation:
University of Chicago

Project Director:
David Schloen

Project Description:

Tell Keisan is a prominent flat-topped ruin mound located 15 kilometers (9 miles) northeast of the modern city of Haifa in Israel. Buried in this tell are the remains of a long series of ancient settlements that were built, destroyed, and rebuilt, one on top of another, over more than two millennia, from ca. 3000 to 150 BCE. During the Iron Age, in the period of the biblical kings of Israel, Tell Keisan and the surrounding coastal region of the Akko Plain were part of a Phoenician kingdom (Tyre, or perhaps Sidon) that engaged in far-flung trade as far west as Spain and had close economic, political, and cultural ties to the neighboring Israelites. Tell Keisan was first excavated briefly in the 1930s and then for several years in the 1970s by the École Biblique et Archéologique Française in Jerusalem. The current excavations began in 2016 and are co-directed by Prof. David Schloen of the University of Chicago, Prof. Gunnar Lehmann of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and Prof. Bernd Schipper of the Humboldt University of Berlin. An international team of 50 to 60 archaeologists and students dug at Tell Keisan in 2016, 2018, and 2019, and we plan to dig there again from July 30 to August 27, 2022.

Period(s) of Occupation: Iron Age and Late Bronze Age

Project Size: 50+ participants

Minimum Length of Stay for Volunteers: two weeks

Minimum Age: 18

Experience Required: None

Room and Board Arrangements:
$3600 for 4 weeks (7 days per week) or $1800 for 2 weeks.

Academic Credit:
100 units of academic credit are available through the Summer Session of the University of Chicago.