Test Test2 | Page 21

I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig

Courtesy BIPAC
Sweet success. This British volunteer, one of the thousands who
worked at Masada in the early 1960s, carries precious glass that she
discovered in one of the storerooms of Herod the Great (37–4 B.C.).
She and her peers at Masada made up one of archaeology’s more
diverse crews: They were violin makers, pharmacists, elephant tamers
and others—all eager to work at the site of the last stand of the
Jewish zealots who revolted against Rome.

Zev Radovan
Volunteers came from all over the world when dig director
Yigael Yadin, searching for an enthusiastic team, published
notices in the London Observer and Israeli newspapers in
the early 1960s. Yadin thanked the volunteers by dedicating his book on Masada to them. He wrote, “I doubt
whether we could have had the success we achieved, or
undertaken so much in the time at our disposal, without
the volunteers.”

students in Bible studies, such as myself, to participate in excavations helps to equip them better for this task
of interpretation. When these students become scholars and teachers, they will be prepared to increase the
public’s knowledge of the world of the Bible, thereby fulfilling the primary role of archaeology: uncovering and
communicating the knowledge of past civilizations to today’s generation as well as to future generations.
.

© 2006 Biblical Archaeology Society

16