Dr. Andrea Berlin

Since 1997, the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota have conducted excavations at Tel Kedesh, the largest tel site in Israel's Upper Galilee; a tel is a conglomerate of rocks, soils, and past building and habitation materials which, over time have formed a mound. Dr. Andrea Berlin co-directs this excavation, and in her lecture New Light on the Period of the Maccabees: Excavations at Tel Kedesh, she will discuss both the initial misconceptions about Kedesh and the new findings there.

The lecture will take place on Monday, March 23, 2009, at Trinity College in the Life Science Center Auditorium. It will begin at 8:00 PM.

Kedesh was long thought to be a simple farming town, and literary sources identify the inhabitants as Phoenician, who fled from the town in 145 B.C. as the result of a battle which is described in the First Book of Maccabbees.  The site is also mentioned in historical sources as an outpost of the Phoenician city of Tyre in 66 A.D., when the Jewish Revolt against Rome began, and as an encampment for the Roman general Titus. The Michigan-Minnesota project was originally conceived to investigate rural Phoenician life in the Hellenistic period, and especially the inhabitants’ interactions with neighboring Jewish towns; however, Berlin and her team’s investigations found far more than a farming village.   An initial magnetometric survey revealed the outlines of a single enormous building at the far southern end of the site, and excavation found that this construction served as an administrative supply depot and international archive. Among the finds were a storeroom with 14 large jars for grain, a deposit of about 20 oil flasks and—most amazing—almost 2000 stamped clay bullae (clay seals) bearing the carry images of Seleucid kings, Greek deities and mythological figures, and Phoenician officials.  The discovery of this large complex undermines the initial characterization of the site as a simple farming town, and provides new evidence concerning political and social interactions between Jews, Phoenicians, and Greeks in second century B.C. Palestine.

Dr. Andrea Berlin received her PhD in Classical Art and Archaeology from the University of Michigan.  She has taught at Georgetown University, George Washington University, and the University of Virginia, and now she is the Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Archaeology at the University of Minnesota. She is currently co-directs the excavations at Tel Kedesh in Israel with Sharon Herbert of the University of Michigan, and has also excavated in Turkey, Cyprus, and Egypt.

Dr. Berlin will be giving a Joukowsky Lecture, named for Martha Sharp Joukowsky, past President of the AIA and Professor of Old World Archaeology at Brown University.

About AIA
The Archaeological Institute of America is North America’s oldest and largest archaeological organization. With more than 8,000 members and over 100 societies across the U.S. and the world, we are united by our shared passion for archaeology and its relevance to our present and future. Visit us at www.archaeological.org.