In June 2013 I succeeded Bryant Wood as the Director of the Khirbet el-Maqatir excavations, and in June 2015 I set a plan in motion to bring the excavation to closure and transition to our new excavation at Shiloh. In 2016, we worked in May and December at Khirbet el-Maqatir while laying the groundwork for the new Shiloh excavation. The excitement of our team and the entire ABR family was palpable. After all, we were moving from an obscure and unknown location to the most important site outside of Jerusalem. Normally archaeologists take a break of several years between excavations to work on publications, but I could not imagine shutting down our burgeoning team that ran like a finely tuned machine. And so it was that in June 2016, Leen Ritmeyer, Suzanne Lattimer, and I surveyed Shiloh, and I drove the first excavation stake to designate the area in which I chose to launch our expedition. I had no idea that beneath that initial stake lay evidence that would powerfully confirm the biblical narrative.
To read the entire article, open the PDF here.