Ekron of the Philistines, Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin, Biblical Archaeology Review (16:1), Jan/Feb 1990.

Trude Dothan. Original uploader was Tzahy Lerner at he.wikipedia, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3356902

How they lived, worked and worshiped for five hundred years

The first joint American-Israeli archaeological expedition was conceived on a hot summer’s afternoon in 1980. Seymour Gitin, director of the William F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, and Ernest Frerichs, the Albright president, were having tea with Hebrew University professor Trude Dothan at her home in Jerusalem. We were discussing joint American-Israeli academic programs. Everyone agreed on the mutual benefits of these programs for American and Israeli scholars, as well as their students, and we asked each other why there weren’t more such programs. None of us recalls who suggested it, but before we knew it, we were talking about a joint Albright/Hebrew University archaeological expedition.

Americans and Israelis had often worked together on archaeological digs, but there had never been a project in which both groups equally shared the responsibility for all facets of the expedition. The more we talked about it, the more attractive the possibility sounded—a joint American-Israeli expedition from conception and planning to execution. Why not really do it together? That was the beginning of the Tel Miqne-Ekron project.

Read the rest of Ekron of the Philistines in the online Biblical Archaeology Society Library.