Biblical Archaeology From the Ground Down: Update on Tel Shiloh Excavations 2024

Welcome to our episode of Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, presented by Bible Interact and hosted by Dr. George Sparks. Join us as we explore the fascinating world of the Bible from leading experts in the field of archaeology. Welcome, everybody. My name is Dr. George Sparks, and this is Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, sponsored by Bible Interact. I have a special guest this morning all the way from Israel. I think he's in Jerusalem, somewhere in Jerusalem. He's still smiling. It is Professor Gary Byers. At this time, I'm going to do your intro, so give me a second. I got it on my little phone right here, and I want to let everybody know your background. Let's see, four years of San Quentin. I'm just kidding. Okay. Professor Gary Byers serves on the ABR, Associates for Biblical Research DIG staff as co-director and senior archaeologist of the Shiloh Excavation in Israel, which I believe that's what you're up to right now, right? Yep. He is also currently serves as the dean of the College of Archaeology, Trinity Southwest University in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His excavation and field experience includes assistant director at Shiloh Israel, 2017 till present, assistant director at Tel El-Hammam, Jordan, 2006 till present, administrative director at Kerbet El-Makartar and senior archaeologist, and this is also in Israel, 1995 to 2011, and excavation staff at Tel Mikna, Ekron, Israel, 1984, adjunct professor at Faith Theological Seminary, 2013 to 2018, member of the Board of Directors of the Near Eastern Archaeological Society, 2000 to present, serves on the Board of Directors of the Associates of Biblical Research, 2004 to 2019, and is a member of the American School of Oriental Research. Welcome to the program, Professor Gary Byers. Thank you, George. You're welcome. This is definitely a treat from your busy, busy day. Now, did you just come back from the dig today, or were you guys in Jerusalem or wherever you're at? Yeah, this is, today is Shavuot, Pentecost in Israel, and so everything shut down, so we were not allowed to go to our dig site and work, which is in a Jewish community in Judea, Samaria, the West Bank area. So we had the day off, and that's why it worked for me to do this. Otherwise, we would be getting back to the hotel around now, filthy, dirty, and usually with assignments before we could, you know, get cleaned up and stuff. So this was the perfect day for you and me to get together, so thanks for the opportunity. Well, I thought you guys look awful clean to be archaeologists, so that's kind of… Yes, we're feeling pretty good right now, I'll tell you. All right. Well, if you would, to get things started, tell us about your morning, getting ready, getting the crew ready to go all the way. Now, we already gave up the ghost a bit here, so the spoiler is, Ari said that you work at Shiloh, so you're going to get the crew ready to go to work. What all do you have to do? Okay, so we, you know, this is my, I guess I've excavated five different sites, four in Israel and one in Jordan, and every situation is different. We are staying in East Jerusalem in a hotel owned by a Palestinian, Christian-Palestinian family, and we take our bus, goes out with a Palestinian bus company, which is also owned by that same Christian family. We've got a nice setup with them. It's about a 30 to 35-minute drive in the morning out to the dig site, which is Shiloh, straight up Route 60, if anybody knows that region, looks on a map, and we go past Kirbit Nisya, where I excavated before with ABR, and Kirbit el-Makadar, where I excavated before with ABR, and we go up to Shiloh, which is about two-thirds the way between Jerusalem and Shechem. So, we like to get up early and get to the site before the dirt wakes up, so we can kind of surprise it while it's still asleep. So, I get up about 3.30 every morning of the dig, of the dig days. We have breakfast at four, and we are on the bus at 4.59 to be leaving by 5.00. I get to the site about 5.30, quarter to six, and then begin to set up. This dig site is connected with the modern community of Shiloh. Shiloh in English, Shiloh in Hebrew. I'll go back and forth as we talk, and I won't even know which one I'm saying. So, the community, it's a very secure place. Normally, when we dig, we have to pack up all of our equipment, put it away at every other dig site I've ever been. Here, we have not had to do that. So, it's a much better situation for us to get started early in the morning. We usually put screens up, kind of tents, to get us away from the sun. We're on a little bit of a hill, and we get a nice breeze. Most of the time, it's pretty decent. Sometimes, it gets a little too much, but that really does help in the 90-degree heat that we typically are digging in. So, we're up at 3.30, breakfast at 4.00, on the bus at 5.00, on the dig site by 6.00, and work. We have our lunch. Since we have breakfast at 4.00 a.m., we have lunch at 10.30. We get it from a local place, and it is from one of the Jewish communities there, so it's kosher. So, when we have hamburgers on Monday, we stop at the local store and buy cheese, and we defile our kosher hamburgers with cheese. We have Israeli excavator archaeologists with us, so they don't add the cheese, but they appreciate that it's kosher. And then, at 1.00, we have breakfast, lunch at 10.30. Then, at 1.00, we stop digging, and we wash every piece of pottery we found that day, and that typically is over 2,000 pottery sherds. So, we spend the next 30 minutes to 45 minutes washing every one of those single pieces so that they will be clean for us the next day to analyze. We call it reading the pottery, so we'll analyze what we found the day before. As a co-director, I spend most of my time, honestly, on the site, walking from square to square, offering some assistance in direction, and then sitting down under the big tent where we have lunch, analyzing pottery with the staff that does that. So, I don't spend nearly as much time in the trenches as so many of our people do. Last year, we were the largest dig in Israel with over our five-week period, we had a total number of over 225 registered diggers, plus people who just wandered in for a day and joined us. This year, with the events in the country, we're down to, the high number is this week, and it's 65 people, and so it's still a great number, and our bus is full in the morning as we head out to the dig site every day. So, that's kind of how we do it. We have folks, we've had over our four weeks, we've had half a dozen Canadians, a couple of them still here, they come and go. People can spend on our dig at Shiloh, we can spend even one week, people can spend, even if you don't make a whole week, you make four or five days, we're happy. If you want to come and dig with us, we're glad to have you. So, folks who come for one week, two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, some, there's a couple dozen of us that will be here for five weeks. And this is going to be the last week of excavation. Next week, we do conservation, restoration work, so that the things we found, or that we have found in the past that are not setting so well, we will fix them up, make them so they can last for years. And that's generally walls that need to be shored up. And we don't add modern concrete, we add an ancient kind of mortar with a little analogy with it, but we really try to keep the walls up like they've been, like God made them, like they made them 4,000 years ago, we try to keep them working the same way. And we have members from Canada, one from Sweden. This year, this year, most everybody else is an American, other than we have half a dozen Israeli archaeologists that are working with us. Don't have to, they're not required, we don't have, we're required to have any, but we like to have them work with us. And they are, they're all specialists, so they really can offer technical help to us with specific areas. As evangelical archaeologists, we don't, we want to do as good a job as we can do, because our work is under special scrutiny, as you would probably imagine. They say we dig with a bias. Well, we do. Our bias is the Bible can be trusted as a historical document. And many of our colleagues dig with another bias that the Bible cannot be trusted. And so, their bias is considered acceptable in the archaeological community, our bias is not. So, we work harder than the average archaeologist to try to do a very good job. And of course, we can always do better, but we really do strive to be excellent in our scientific approach and our interpretation. But our interpretation will include, this is what the, how what we find does connect to the Bible. And many of our colleagues don't believe the Bible is a historical book, so they don't appreciate those connections. But generally, they appreciate the archaeological work we're doing. So, that's kind of very straightforward, yes. Yeah, it is. And just for a note for the listening audience, when Professor Byers is talking about a bias, just think of the bias towards archaeology and the Bible would be what we call maximalist and minimalist. And think of it as a scale where a maximalist is like those that believe literally in the biblical text, the scriptural narrative, to the maximal point. The minimalist is on the other end of the scale that, in some cases, in all fairness to the minimalist, it depends where you're reading in the Bible. So, if you're reading about maybe the Babylonians, that's easily recorded and very well documented. The Syrians, okay, then as we get further and further back, that's when we get the little question mark. And you can say that's where the critical scholars would kick in and say, well, I don't know. Well, maybe. Well, hold on a minute. And then, oh, well, this could be a text that is edited. And this might have some what we call anachronisms. That's what Dr. Byers is talking about, folks. That doesn't mean we don't get along. And me, and if you've been in a program with me and Dr. Graves, to be aware of each other's bias and be respectful towards that. And then we all, even if we don't get along, at least we go lunch together, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So, that sums that up. But you do something a little different there than some of the excavations that I've been at. The ones I've been at were old school, where we would, of course, do the sifting. You take the buckets out. Maybe I come with a handful of ones. I'm 64 now. And I have a little pocket full of ones. So, if you got the neighbor kids helping out, and they want to carry buckets, well, I'm glad to hand out $1 bills for that day. But you dry sift, and then you also do another technique. If you'd like to explain that, if you would. It's yours now. I'm shutting up. Okay. Yes, absolutely. That's good thought, George. So, we have a system called wet sifting. It was pioneered, or actually, it was first pioneered at Laquish back in the 1930s, the biblical city of Laquish. And they actually did a little bit of that. But it really got going when the Temple Mount area, which I'm just three quarters of a mile from where I'm sitting now, from the Temple Mount. I can't see it because of some of the buildings, but it's right there near me, where they began to excavate underneath the Temple Mount, the local Muslim authorities, without Israeli agreement. They did what they wanted to do. And the Israeli government, while there was a lot of complaints, they didn't do anything about it, didn't stop it. As an archaeologist, I wanted to see some control, and there was just none. And so, they dumped the stuff, the material that they took out from under the Temple Mount, just dumped it out in the Kidron Valley. And a bunch of Israeli archaeologists, not a bunch, a few, just a couple, rather than just whining and complaining, they went down there and started sifting the material. And very quickly, they decided they had water available, and they began to not only, and you mentioned dry sifting, that's when you take the dirt and just run it through a regular screen. And you keep what's still on the screen, the dirt goes through the bottom, and then you look at what's on your screen. Well, if you could wet that screen down, you could see so much more. And so, that started the Temple Mount sifting project. And Dr. Scott Stripling, the director here at Shiloh, was one of the supervisors on that project. And he just said, if I ever get the chance, I'm going to wet sift. And so, when we stopped at in about 2017-18, we were invited by the local archaeological authorities to come to Shiloh. We had connections and friends, and they said, why don't you come up here? There's plenty of stuff to dig at Shiloh, and we'd be glad to have you. And so, we did. And of course, one of the things that made it so interesting is because we would have water, and we could make our own wet sifting station. So, one of the Canadian team members on our group, his name is Steve Rudd. I refer to him as our mad scientist. He doesn't have a degree in engineering, but he's one of those guys that can engineer anything. And he made from scratch a 12-station, 12 positions where people can wet sift with a tank, a pump. We recycle the water. It's an absolutely incredible, ingenious system. And every archaeologist that comes by and visits, it drools over what we have. And so, we wet sift virtually everything. There's stuff that we say is just fill, and it's just overkill. We need to save our time and energy for the good stuff. And so, we work really hard at wet sifting virtually everything that comes from a good context in archaeology. And the benefits are, the people that dug at Shiloh before us for oh, half a dozen seasons between them, they found, between them, they found six scarabs. Because we wet sift, we have found 15. So, we've more than doubled what they found. Not because we're better archaeologists, we have better technology, and we're using it efficiently and effectively. We have found, so a scarab is a seal on the top. The top of the, it's made out of stone. It's only, the tip, you very seldom find them even an inch long. They're generally smaller than an inch. And the top looks like a beetle. The Latin word for a beetle is a scarab. So, a scarab is a beetle. A scarab is also a stone seal that looks like a beetle on the top, and the bottom has an inscription. And it depends on whose inscription as to what's on it. So, we call that whole inscription, that whole stone thing, a scarab. If it doesn't have the beetle top, we call it a scaraboid. It's a scarab-like seal. So, the important thing is not the scarab on the top. The important thing is your seal on the bottom, and you would impress it in wet clay. And so, we've actually found, this season, one of the finest wet clay sealings I've ever seen. And we don't know enough about it yet. We've only had it cleaned. We haven't had it analyzed or tried to read the inscription, but just amazing inscription. Bula, which is wet clay, in this particular case, it was a seal on wet clay. The wet clay was around a fabric which had a string around it. So, we think it probably was sealing a jar of something, some liquid, wine, whatever. And so, it was just an amazing find. I've never seen one quite like it. So, that's just an example of what comes out of our wet sifting, as well as we find metal objects. We have found gold on three occasions. It's just amazing what can be seen once you can put spray, water spray, to an item. And of course, the smaller the screen makes it harder to get the dirt through, but the more you save. And we've saved some just absolutely amazing things. This season, which I actually talked about that sealing, that Bula, where you make the sealing from the seal. We found a number of things I can't talk about yet, but George, as soon as it's allowed, I will come back on and have pictures of what I can show you. When the dig puts out stuff, if you don't put it out the right way, people take it and use it even before we've had time to discuss it. And they come up with whatever their own ideas and theories are. So, archaeologists have just come to the conclusion it's better to hold it until you're ready. And so, that's what we'll do. So, we will be spilling things out from here to there. And when I can, I will get on and share in detail with some pictures, some of the cool stuff that we have found. Most of it from wet sifting, but also from metal detecting. We've developed, and we've been one of the pioneers in the country to use it. And we've really found very discreet, effective ways to use a metal detector. So, if there's metal in the ground within three inches of where the detector is probing, we can identify it. And we have found, we found, I guess, six pieces of gold that way. Very small, small gold items that you'd miss, other than in the wet sift. So, it's been very exciting what we've been able to do with the modern technology that our predecessors did not have available to them. Okay, fair enough. That's very exciting. So, you got a new technique. Well, not a new technique, but you're taking advantage of the wet sifting technique. And also, you incorporated metal detecting. Yeah. And that's interesting. That's, you know, I never thought of a metal detector at an excavation, but you know what? That makes a lot of sense. It really does. You know who I had on the program several months ago? It's probably, he's probably a friend of yours, Frankie Snyder. She is our Small Finds, Director of Small Finds. She is amazing. Is she with you now at all or no? Yes, she's here on the site. I don't know where she is today, but she's on the site for all four weeks of the excavation. Well, in that case, tell her that George Sparks said hi, because I just wrote it down. You mentioned wet sifting. I wonder if Mrs. Snyder's there with you guys, you know? She's our guest. If so, then yeah, that's great. So, you're finding things as small as scarabs. Now, a scarab could be like the size, let's say, of my knuckle in this space right in here. You can wear it as a ring, or they can wear it as decoration. Yes. And it could stay in circulation. We'll just say circulation, like a penny. It could be in there for decades. That's very exciting. And you could have what we call, you said hieroglyphs, or have some kind of Egyptian designs. And scarabs would be a really fun find. Yes. Since you mentioned scarabs and you mentioned, you know, just items, gold, but you didn't mention any type of coins, so I imagine that you're not in the Roman period. You're not in the Hellenistic period, maybe not in the Persian period. So, by listening to you, I'm going to throw, you don't have to say, I'm thinking Iron Age, maybe Iron Age II. That's where you guys are at, maybe. Well, it's a good question. In fact, we just had last night, we had a presentation by one of the professors here who has been studying the Roman material at our site. Okay. Based on the militaria that we've identified, that he's identified from our excavation, he has reconstructed a Roman battle at Shiloh on the Romans as they're heading towards Jerusalem in 69 AD. And the amount of things that are left over from what we believe correctly interpreted are from the Romans is just amazing. It's not tons of stuff, but it's the small this, that, and the other, and just amazing. So, we actually have Roman, a bunch of things from the Roman battle at Shiloh, which probably by military estimates took about an hour. We have pottery, small pieces of pottery, glazed green pottery from the Islamic periods after the Roman and Byzantine periods. We have some Byzantine material. We actually have a few Crusader, a couple of pieces of pottery, and some items from the Crusader period. And this year to date, we have found 50 coins. Oh, I see. Now, you're slowly putting the puzzle together for us, right? Yeah, we are. But you didn't say what coins, you go quarters, nickels, dimes, shekels? Yeah, yeah, they are. They're all ancient. Now, I can tell you from last year, we just found out we had four silver coins from last year, two Muslim, one Roman, and one Persian. If you got a Persian coin. You know, the coinage started in the Persian period. Okay, but if you found a Persian coin, those might be really, really tiny. Was that with the metal detector that you found that one or what? You know, I think either the metal detector or in the wet sift. Yeah, you wouldn't find it in the ground, you wouldn't find it in dry sift, you would take one or the other. And I don't remember where they came from. Those are hard to find, even if they're on your desk. Well, I'm going to take it. Once again, this is just this guessing a Yahud coin, they call them Yahud. Yes. And it could be a Sumerian Yahud coin, but from the Persian period, they are so super tiny folks. They're like fingernail size. The button on my shirt was larger, it was about twice the size of the smallest of those four coins that I got to see. And I think that was the Persian coin that was the smallest. That's exciting. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It's really exciting. And coins say a lot because those have been cataloged for years. So those can be easily dated, of course, using pottery typology and coins. That's pretty dead on there, folks. Not seeing any artifacts, and I understand why. And of course, the listening audience understands, of course, why too. But by your description, it does sound very, very exciting because, you know, in my mind, I'm thinking Shiloh, and I think of the biblical text. And where that is strong, of course, is in the Torah or the Christian Old Testament, if you will, and the time of, let's say, of Eli, the priest, and the Ark of the Covenant being lost in a battle because of Eli's sons being so disobedient. And the Battle of Aphek, I believe. And from there it goes to the Philistine cities, the nemesis of the Israelites. And then it's sent because of a sickness, an illness in the Philistine cities on a cart, and it heads towards Beth Shemesh. So, folks, they're excavating in Shiloh. That's very, very exciting because we've got Samuel, the book of Samuel involved, and it's very early. And I don't know if I want to call it... I'll be critical here, if you don't mind, Toto Israel. Fair enough. Fair enough. The early Israel, probably where the Merneptah still is, saying, you know, they might just be a clan. It's Israel as a determinative, right, on the Merneptah as a clan. I don't want to get too far, and I don't want to... Let's go on. So, you described the artifacts, you described how you put everybody together, you're out there at the dig, you're using the dry sifting, the wet sifting, and you got Frankie Snyder there. Yep. So, what a great time. So, what time do we got here? Okay, it's 37. How would you like to finish this up? I appreciate all your time and everything that you're doing for us here. Well, I'll tell you what, I'll just, as a teaser for the next time, the three big things that we have at the site are the possible city gate of Shiloh, and you just made reference to Eli. A second is the favisa, the sacred dump. It's a Latin word, favisa, for a pit. The sacred dump, and dump's not even a good word, but where we think offerings from the tabernacle went. So, that's the second thing. And then the third thing is we have the outline of a structure that we think might be the best location for the Ark of the Covenant at Shiloh. So, next time I'm back, we'll talk about it. Those are pretty exciting things. The gate. Now, you're putting that at the time of the judges because you said possibly, I'm just kidding. The sacred dump. Have you said sacred dump? Kosher remains. So, offerings, kosher. Outline of the Ark. Okay, that's going to be, so you're looking at the dimension. If I said Ark, I meant tabernacle. Oh, you said Ark, so now, okay, tabernacle. Fair enough. What I meant to say. If you said Ark, you did say Ark. Okay, that's a good teaser, though. You said teaser, then you come back and say, oops. But anyway, that's, you know, tabernacle, that's, you know, that's pretty good. You said the outline of it, so you got a structure. Yes, sir. Because in the biblical narrative, we're looking at a tent, and it'd be hard to find a structure if you're pulling up stakes, right? Yes. But you're saying there's an actual structure there with the same dimensions. I get it. I get it. And that's very exciting stuff. And man, I wish I could be there for that. If you can be there and have as much as I got going on, you know, this could work. This could work. Well, you and your listeners would be glad to have you with us about this same time next year. Okay, that's an invite, right? So, folks, there you have it from one of the DIC coordinators out there, Professor Gary Byers. Get your stuff together, get your backpack, get in shape, get some suntan lotion, because next season, you guys are going to be out there helping with all this excavation. And then, you know, all the stories you get to tell your grandchildren. All right. Professor Byers, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this. It's such a treat to have you. And I can see you're going to be busy today with your folks. Enjoy your day off, sir. Thank you, buddy. It's my privilege to be with you. All right. Thank you very much. I'm signing off. This is Biblical Archaeology from the Ground Down, sponsored by Bible Interact. Once again, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it. Everybody, have a great day. Blessings, my friend. Thank you.