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I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig

Dig In: A Guide to ’99 Digs Dig Scholarship
Tel Dor

By Yiyi Chen

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We do not typically receive applications for Dig Scholarships from former second lieutenants in the Chinese
Army, but Yiyi Chen was not our typical applicant. Chen earned a bachelor’s degree in Hebrew language and
literature from Peking University in 1994 and is currently enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Cornell’s Near Eastern
studies department. In addition to his academic workload, Chen is translating the Hebrew Bible into Chinese,
the first such translation in more than a century.
In his application for a scholarship, Chen told us that he wanted to join a Cornell team digging at Tel
Dor, along northern Israel’s Mediterranean coast. The team would be trying to identify the transition from the
Late Bronze Age to the Iron Age. “The finds from this excavation will illuminate the social, economic and
cultural context of the early Biblical period, and will probably also shed light on the hotly debated issue concerning the origin of the early Israelites,” Chen wrote us. He also hoped that the dig would uncover new epigraphic material—material that would be directly relevant to his dissertation topic, northern Hebrew dialects
in the Bible.
Chen added that even if the dig failed to produce any new inscriptions, it would nonetheless “equip me
with firsthand knowledge of the people who lived in this region, with whom the northern tribes of Israel had
a close relation, and from whom they received significant influence, both cultural and linguistic.”
Here is his report on his experiences at Dor last summer:
Life on a dig is a combination of extremely hard work and the continual excitement of discovery. On the physical
level, our greatest sense of fulfillment came from the bucket chain that we formed four or five times a day. People stood
in line to pass buckets of dirt from the 6- to 7-yard-deep Area G up to ground level. The work required coordination and
strength. According to our raw calculation, one person would lift and pass three or four hundred buckets in a typical day.
This amounted to more than a ton of dirt; in the whole season, an average volunteer moved 20 to 30 tons of dirt!
On the intellectual level, the most educational parts of the experience were the stratigraphy discussions and the
pottery-and bone-reading sessions held after our daily afternoon nap. The artifacts we uncovered included two examples
© 2006 Biblical Archaeology Society

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