Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Why Others Should Send Students to Zeitah

P6282241.JPGA great colleague of mine, James (Jimmy) Harden, came to visit the tel today with Joe Seger and a medium sized entourage. Jimmy teaches at the Cobb Institute of Archaeology at Mississippi State. He is such a good story teller, and I think he would be great to work with. Well, it turns out he is looking for an excavation to send students next summer, and he was impressed with the director's (Ron Tappy) meticulous and erudite publications. I think Zeitah would be a great place for him and others to send students. It is a relatively small excavation, usually with about 20-40 students. This means that students get the opportunity to do just about everything: excavate, draw to scale top plans and sections, record data, hear some great lectures by expert archaeologists in the region, and go on two excellent field trips, one to the Galilee, one to the Negev. They leave here after 3-5 weeks with a much better understanding about the discipline of archaeology, the background to the Bible and ANE history, as well as modern Middle East history/religion. I need to remember in the Fall to contact others I would love to work with, including Jim Anderson, Jennie Ebeling, and I would even love to try to convince my good friends Jeff Geoghegan, Mark Gstohl, Sr Stachow, and Bart Everson to join me.

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