Tel Dor 2004 Overview

Publication of the Tel Dor Area B Iron Age Fortifications
Dr. Ilan Sharon
Dr. Elizabeth Bloch-Smith

Tel Dor (Kh. el-Bud), a large mound located on Israel's Mediterranean coast about 30 km. south of Haifa, is identified with D-jr of the Egyptian sources, Biblical Dor, and Dor/Dora of Greek and Roman historians. The documented history of the site begins in the Late Bronze Age (though the town was founded in the Middle Bronze Age) and ends with the Napoleonic campaigns.

Excavation of the site between 1980 and 2000, directed by Professor Ephraim Stern of the Institute of Archaeology of the Hebrew University, exposed inter alia extensive remains of an Iron Age urban settlement. Previous and on-going research has demonstrated that the Iron Age occupation at Dor is crucial for the resolution of several controversial issues including the circumstances of the Late Bronze-Iron Age transition, the identification of non-Philistine "Sea Peoples," the emergence of Phoenician civilization, the chronology of the Iron Age in the Levant, and the nature of Assyrian interaction with the Phoenicians.
The Iron Age phases of Area B 1, including the city gates and fortification wall on the east side of the mound, are the subject of this proposal. Area B yielded three superimposed fortification walls, the last of which had two superimposed city-gates in it. These fortifications, and adjacent livinghorizons span the period from the beginning of the Iron I period, through the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian eras.

The first expedition to Dor produced numerous journal articles and several unpublished manuscripts, some of which address facets of the Iron Age occupation, but no synthetic report or final publication of Area B l. Final publication entails preparing a comprehensive stratigraphic sequence and pottery typology. Extant studies in Hebrew (Hebrew University M.A. theses on the stratigraphy and pottery typology of the Iron I in Area B1 (Sveta Matskevich) and the Assyrian levels in Area B (Ayelet Gilboa)) require translation, re-evaluation, and revision in accordance with the finalized sequence. Lacunae for phases/areas not dealt with in these studies need to be filled - the most glaring one being the gate-sequence itself which has never been published. Small finds and eco-fact reports must be commissioned and completed, final artifact plates prepared, plans and sections finalized, synthetic chapters written, and the completed manuscript edited.