More grant opportunities

Here are two more travel grant opportunities for those who would liek to join us:

ASOR - http://www.asor.org/fellowships/excavation.html

PEF - http://www.pef.org.uk/grants/

and don’t forget the BAS (already posted) and the AIA (posted earlier today).

 

Grant for first time volunteers

For those of you thinking of joining us, and haven’t been on a dig yet – check out this grant opportunity:

http://www.archaeological.org/grants/708

Good luck!

 

First Volunteer for 2012

Christina Bregard is our first volunteer for the 2012 season!  this is not only exciting because of our first volunteer, but because Christina was with us for both the 2011 Spring and Summer season, and is not only great in the field but also a great person and a lot of fun to have with us.  here is a picture of christina enjoying her time on the dig.

Great to have you back Christina!

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

And with registration forms come scholarship opportunities

For many volunteers, the expenses of joining a dig make it difficult .  However, there are several funding opportunities that can help your way to Tel Burna.  here is the one such scholarship:

“BAS offers scholarships of $1,000 every year to a few people who would otherwise not be able to volunteer. To apply, simply send a letter to BAS Dig Scholarships, 4710 41st St., NW, Washington, DC 20016, or send it by e-mail to bas@bib-arch.org, stating who you are, where and why you want to dig—and why you should be selected for a scholarship. We require your mailing address, phone number, e-mail and the names, addresses and phone numbers of two references. Applications must be received by March 15″

Registration Forms are Here!!!

For all those of you who couldn’t take the wait – the registration forms are here – click below or the link on the left!

http://telburna.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/2012_information_registration_package.pdf

 

Rounding up the ASOR-SBL meetings

While the SBL meeting is not over yet, it is almost time for me to leave San Francisco, and I thought I’d give a rundown of events from my perspective.  The ASOR meeting included many lectures – a number of which either dealt with Tel Burna (such as those by Chris McKinny, Amit Dagan, Joe Uziel and Itzick Shai) or were given by various members of the Tel Burna team (Debi Cassuto, Itzick Shai in a different lecture, and Michael Press, with two lectures, including his talk on “(Pytho) Gaia in Myth and Legend: The Goddess of the Ekron Inscription Revisited”, for which he received the Aviram Prize).

In addition to the lectures – our close friend, colleague and advisor for many years – Aren Maeir, received the Ernst G. Wright from ASOR for his book on the Jordan Valley in the MB! Way to go Aren!

At the SBL, our lecture was part of a session on Judah in the Iron Age, chaired by Ann Killebrew and Tammy Schneider, who spoke of the late Anson Rainey and his strong presence in this session in the past.  Not only was Tel Burna featured, but so was Tell es-Safi/Gath (Aren Maeir) and Tel `Eton (Avi Faust), as well as a reappraisal of the finds from Tell Nasbeh (Jeffrey Zorn).  While the session was very interesting, admittedly the ceremony unveiling the book in memory of Hanan Eshel was even more moving, particularly the touching words by Aren and Estie.  Hanan was one of three prominent scholars that we recently lost Anson Rainey and Ehud Netzer being the other two.  At both meetings, several sessions were dedicated to the memory of these three scholars – two of which I am proud to say that I had the honor of studying with.  In general, their presence was felt throughout the meetings, as they have helped form what scholarship is in our field today. Yehi Zichram Baruch.

Lecture at SBL

Today we gave a lecture at the meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature on the finds at Tel Burna, particularly the fortifications and the ability to securely date them to the Iron Age II, and how this helps reconstruct the geopolitical situation in the Shephelah.  afterwards, we attended a ceremony announcing the publication of the volume in honor of Hanan Eshel, which will go on sale tomorrow through Brill publishers.

Here is the presentation we used for our lecture.

Burna_SBL Presentation

Day 2 at ASOR

Today, we continued to participate in the ASOR conference, meeting many friends, including Matt Suriano and hearing interesting lectures about a slew of topics, including a paper by our very own Debi Cassuto, who spoke about differentiating domestic and industrial weaving contexts.  Of course the highlight of the day was presenting our paper on the finds from Tel Burna.  The paper summarized the finds from the first two seasons of excavation.  basically we ran down the Late Late Bronze Age strata in Area B, and the Iron Age II-III sequence on the summit, including the fortifications and silos.  All in all, the paper was well recieved and generated much interest.  Here is the Power Point presentation that we gave:

Burna_ASOR Presentation

Day 1 At Asor

Today was the first full day of lectures at the annual ASOR conference in San Francisco.  Among many interesting lectures given, the Burna crowd shined, with Itzick giving a lecture (albeit not on Tel Burna) on the immigration of the Philistines, Amit gave a paper on the 8th Centruy pottery at both Tell es-Safi Gath and Tel Burna, and Chris gave a paper on the history of research of Tel Burna, including researchers from the mid 1800′s until today.  All three lectures were informative, interesting, well-presented and thought provoking.

Hopefully tomorrow will be another great day here in SF.