Tel Dor

View of Nahsholim from the top of the tel

This is the view from the Tel Dor archaeological dig site, where I spent my July and August. Tel Dor is located just 30 km south of Haifa on the northwest coast of Israel. The site has been active since the 1920s, but the current expedition project was launched in 2003. There are several field schools that work in Dor each summer, without them the excavation would not be possible. I found Dor through my major advisor, Professor Andrew Stewart, who used to run a field school there through UC Berkeley. However, he pointed me in the direction of Sarah Stroup who now runs a field school through the University of Washington. While I was at Dor there were 3 different field schools; altogether I would say there were around 120 people.

Dor was an ancient port city that connected the East and the West. The site is a tel site, meaning that successive layers of civilization built on top of previous settlements, creating a man made mound. It was inhabited during the Phoenician, Persian, Greek, Roman, and Hellenistic periods. There are several dig sites located on Dor, this past summer areas D2, D4, and D5 were being worked on. As part of the UW field school, when I dug, it was in area D4. But more on the specifics later.