Excavations at Tel Michal, Israel.

• Author: Weinstein, James

Large-scale, multidisciplinary archaeological projects have been in vogue in Israel since the 1960s. The justification for having large staffs whose expertise covers a wide range of specialties has been the recovery and analysis of the maximum amount of data from an ancient site and its environs and the integration of the data into a comprehensive final report.

While the goal has been laudable, in actuality the outcome has often been partial or complete failure. Many team members never write up the results of their efforts, and as the years pass it becomes more and more difficult for the project director to extract reports from these individuals. Moreover, the director often moves on to begin a new excavation, leaving no one to coordinate the time-consuming and often tedious tasks associated with the production of a final report. As a result, most of these excavations have seen only limited publication--usually restricted to the site's architecture, stratigraphy, and ceramics--or none at all.

The final report on the Tel Aviv University excavation at Tel Michal between 1977 and 1980 is a notable exception to this lamentable situation. The editors of this volume have obtained contributions from several dozen authors and turned them into a handsome, nicely illustrated, and well-edited publication. The archaeological finds from the site are all documented here; so, too, is information on Tel Michal's geological, geographical, and historical setting and a host of technical studies (covering topics as diverse as the nutritional chemistry of the human bones, paleobotany from phytoliths, and the computer hardware and software used on the project).

Tel Michal overlooks the Mediterranean ca. 6.5 km north of the mouth of the Yarkon River. The main part of the site, whose ancient name is unknown, is a small tell (labelled Area A) set on a kurkar ridge; nearby are several winepress complexes and four small hills on which the excavators discovered additional archaeological remains. The tell was the only area used from the beginning of the site's history in the Middle Bronze IIC period down into Early Arab times; activity at the site was punctured by gaps in the Iron I and parts of the Iron II and Roman periods.

Tel Michal was one of many sites along the Levantine coast founded during the Middle Bronze IIC period. Lacking good agricultural land in the immediate vicinity, its primary economic activity, even in this initial phase (Stratum XVII), seems to...