The New Expedition
to Tel Dor was launched in 2003, directed by Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University and Ayelet Gilboa of Haifa University, is planned as a broad international consortium of scholars, jointly pursuing a wide number of different but complementary research objectives. As many of the senior excavators and their students are veterans of the first campaigns at Dor, this will no longer be an exploratory excavation, but will be able to focus on specific problems, to which we know the site is relevant.
Participants are world-class investigators in their respective fields, committed to create at Dor a community of students and professionals of diverse backgrounds in different sub-disciplines of archaeology and allied fields (biblical archaeology, classical archaeology, art history, archaeological science, Bible study, classics, anthropology). The combination of this exceptionally qualified group of experts and the singularly extensive, stratified, competently excavated and recorded data base already existing at Dor is what makes this project unique.
Rather than pursue any one person’s agenda we aim to integrate multi-focal research perspectives, and engage in multi-vocal professional dialogs pertaining to issues of inter-regional and inter-cultural reciprocity within the southern Phoenician littoral, and between it and inland Israel, Philistia, Cyprus and the Mediterranean seaboard.
Previous investigations at Dor
Dor was first investigated in the 1920s, by John Garstang, on behalf of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. J. Leibowitz excavated in the lower town around the tell in the 1950s. From 1979 to 1983 Claudine Dauphin excavated a church east of the tell. Avner Raban excavated harbor installations and other constructions mainly south and west of the mound in 1979 - 1984. Underwater surveys around the site were carried out by Kurt Raveh, Shelley Wachsman and Saen Kingsley. Ephraim Stern, of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, directed twenty seasons of excavations at the site between 1980 and 2000, in cooperation with the Israel Exploration Society and several Israeli, American, South African and Canadian academic institutions, as well as a large group of German volunteers. With 100–200 staff, students and volunteers per season Dor was one of the largest and longest-sustained excavation projects in Israel. The eleven excavation areas opened have revealed a wealth of information about the Iron Age, Persian, Hellenistic and Early Roman periods.
Community Service and Cultural Heritage Mission
The Tel Dor project is committed to the preservation and conservation of the site of Dor, and to the dissemination of its finds and the cultural and scientific information encoded in them. This is chiefly done through three tools:
The historic 'Glasshouse' museum building, located in Kibbutz Nahsholim, some 500 m. south of the site itself, now houses the Center for Nautical and Regional Archaeology at Dor (CONRAD), consisting of the expedition workrooms and a museum, displaying the finds from Dor and its region to the public.
The The Israel Parks and Nature Preserve Authority has recently declared the site of Dor and its environs a national monument, in order to protect both its antiquities and endangered coastal ecosystems on the beaches north of it. The expedition is working with the Authority on turning these into a site of public education and recreation.
The expedition is committed to present to the scientific world a full professional report of the data originating in the excavations, and their multidisciplinary analyses, in a manner befitting a cutting edge scientific endeavor in the twenty-first century and the best traditions of archaeology.
Support
You can help in any or all of these undertakings by volunteering to the excavation or making a donation.