“‘Go now to the place in Shiloh where I first made a dwelling for my Name, and see what I did to it because of the wickedness of my people Israel.” — Jeremiah 7:12
Numerous questions remain unanswered. Was the site [Shiloh] practically unoccupied during the Bronze Age, or did the Israelites occupy a site already sacred? When did they take it, during the Bronze Age, or at the beginning of Early Iron? This is another of the sites, which, like Ai and Jericho, can assist in determining the date and character of the Hebrew conquest. Was the place unoccupied during the Middle and Late Iron Ages, that is after the loss of the Ark? And was it destroyed by the Philistines, or did it gradually fall into ruins after the loss of the Ark? — McCown, Chester C. “Archaeological News.” American Journal of Archaeology 34, no. 1 (1930): 96.
Another excavation day begins as diggers disembark from the bus. The sun peaks over the Transjordan Mountains in the east, illuminating the distant twin towers in Amman, Jordan. Silently, or so it seems, the workers climb the short distance from the parking lot to the site, a walk that pilgrims have made for millennia. Some appear half asleep while others appear as if focussing intently on the day ahead. Once arrived, volunteers disperse in smaller groups to their respective squares. A family with younger children stops at the first square while a group of college students pours into another. An older couple slowly and steadily makes their way up to the site to become the final volunteers. Blue shirts, interspersed among the crowd, are supervisors who have invested years of their lives climbing similar hills to solve similar conundrums. But Shiloh, as this site is popularly known, stands unique among the ubiquitous mounds in the southern Levant. Here, in the tribal territory of biblical Ephraim, Joshua, according to the biblical account, ordered a tabernacle to be erected as a home for the Ark of the Covenant. Here, for the believers, a sacrificial system closed the gap between human sinfulness and celestial perfection. In just seven hours, the shofar will blow, signaling the end of fieldwork for another day. But until that happens, archaeologists, students and volunteers will have excavated 1,750 pieces of pottery, 35 other objects, the remains of several new walls and several new installations or structures, and perhaps even some glyptic remains………
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