Tel Dothan 2002 Overview

Daniel M. Master and John Monson, The Excavations at Tel Dothan

Tell Dothan is a large site located ten kilometers southwest of Jenin. Joseph Free's excavations uncovered an extraordinarily rich city which was occupied continuously from the Neolithic through Hellenistic periods. Major finds include a massive Early Bronze age fortification system, a Middle Bronze age city with citadel and fortifications, and an Iron Age II storage complex. Aside from preliminary reports and several short articles, the site has never been published. And yet, most publications list Dothan alongside Megiddo, Hazor, Beth Shean, Shechem, and Samaria as one of the more significant excavated mounds in northern Israel.

Tel Dothan is strategically located. Internationally, it dominates the southern pass of the coastal highway, the critical route for armies and caravans traveling from Egypt to Mesopotamia. Locally, Tel Dothan connected the heartland of ancient Samaria to the Jezreel Valley.

The excavations at Tel Dothan uncovered a rich collection of material from the Neolithic to the Islamic, with particular focus on the Bronze and Iron Ages. Very few sites have the range of finds that allows them to address long-term geographic and social question.

The publication of other sites in the region makes a final report from Tel Dothan all the more achievable, timely, and important. The stratigraphy of this site may now be compared to that at Megiddo, Taanach, Shechem, Samaria, Tell el Farah (North), and Jezreel.