STARS OF EGYPTOLOGY
How did you start your career?
When I was seven years old, I read a biography of Heinrich Schliemann written for children, entitled The Walls of Windy Troy. I told my parents then and there that I was going to be an archaeologist…and so it has come to pass.
How long have you been an archaeologist?
I guess it depends upon how you define such things. I went on my first overseas excavation after my sophomore year in college, at Tel Anafa in Israel, so I would have been 20 years old at the time. However, I had already taken part in a CRM project in Gilroy, California, and helped excavate a 17th-century Vermont farmhouse, both during the previous year, when I was 19. Either way, that means it’s been about 40 years since I first began excavating – I cannot believe it’s been that long…someone might mistake me for an artifact soon!
Digging Up Armageddon is an intriguing title. Could you explain it?
There are multiple layers to this title, as is probably fitting for a book about archaeology. First and foremost, it is an homage to Kathleen Kenyon and her two books, Digging Up Jericho and Digging Up Jerusalem. Second, in this book, I am excavating an excavation – that is, the records of the Chicago excavators who dug at the site of Megiddo from 1925-1939, so I am literally digging up the people who were digging up Megiddo (which is biblical Armageddon – the word comes from har Megiddo, the “mound” or “mountain” of Megiddo in Hebrew). Their story is absolutely fascinating; it reads more like a soap opera at times, as I say in the book, and it really sheds light on what it was like to do archaeology back in those times, when they were affected by the events in British Mandate Palestine between the two world wars and in the aftermath of the Great Depression in the United States. I was also able to tell the back stories behind some of their major discoveries, like the water tunnel, the stables, and the famous “Megiddo ivories,” and, hopefully, to bring the staff members to life (rather than have them just be names on the spine of a book or in a list of participants, which is what they had been to me previously).
How long did the book take to write? – Does it, in fact, follow The Battles of Armageddon?
The researching and writing took about four years. I began in Spring 2015 and the manuscript was accepted in Spring 2019.It doesn’t follow The Battles of Armageddon, per se, since that was specifically about all of the battles that have been fought at Megiddo and in the Jezreel Valley, and had very little to do with the archaeologyof the ancient site. However, there is, of course, some material in this book where it made sense to reference material in that earlier book. So, those who have read the earlier book will feel at home with this one, while at the same time reading completely new material.
Do you have plans for your next book? And can you tell us anything about it?
Yes, I have already begun working on the next book, which will be a sequel to my 1177 BC book, entitled After 1177: The Rebirth of Civilization (and which will also be published by Princeton University Press). It will cover the four centuries after the Collapse of the Bronze Age, beginning in 1176 BC and ending with the first Olympics in Greece, held in 776 BC. It will be written with an eye towards resilience and recovery, and explore how each of the areas dealt with the collapse and moved forward, because each did it in a different way, from Neo-Assyria to Greece to the lands of the former Canaanites, Hittites, and so on. It’ll be in the same sort of format as 1177 BC, insofar as the beginning and ending chapters will be about the rebirth and resiliency, while the middle chapters will present the actual history of what happened during those four centuries, written (hopefully) in an accessible manner for a general audience.
Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon (ISMs) is available in a variety of formats. You can see his latest interview on: https://conta.cc/3eCE0pO.
