Tel Dor 
The Expedition
The new expedition to Tel Dor was launched in 2003, directed by Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University and Ayelet Gilboa of Haifa University, is planned as a broad international consortium of scholars, jointly pursuing a wide number of different but complementary research objectives. As many of the senior excavators and their students are veterans of the first campaigns at Dor, the excavation is able to focus on specific problems, to which we know the site is relevant.
Rather than pursue any one person’s agenda we aim to integrate multi-focal research perspectives, and engage in multi-vocal professional dialogs pertaining to issues of inter-regional and inter-cultural reciprocity within the southern Phoenician littoral, and between it and inland Israel, Philistia, Cyprus and the Mediterranean seaboard.
Participants are world-class investigators in their respective fields, committed to create at Dor a community of students and professionals of diverse backgrounds in different sub-disciplines of archaeology and allied fields (biblical archaeology, classical archaeology, art history, archaeological science, Bible study, classics, anthropology). The combination of this exceptionally qualified group of experts and the singularly extensive, stratified, competently excavated and recorded data base already existing at Dor is what makes this project unique.
We are seeking cooperation with additional researchers and institutions, both in field operations and in research projects. Researchers from all relevant spheres of interest are welcome to contact the project directors with their suggestions and proposals.
Previous investigations at Dor
Dor was first investigated in the 1920s, by John Garstang, on behalf of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem. J. Leibowitz excavated in the lower town around the tell in the 1950s. From 1979 to 1983 Claudine Dauphin excavated a church east of the tell. Avner Raban excavated harbor installations and other constructions mainly south and west of the mound in 1979 - 1984. Underwater surveys around the site were carried out by Kurt Raveh, Shelley Wachsman and Saen Kingsley. Ephraim Stern, of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University, directed twenty seasons of excavations at the site between 1980 and 2000, in cooperation with the Israel Exploration Society and several Israeli, American, South African and Canadian academic institutions, as well as a large group of German volunteers. With 100–200 staff, students and volunteers per season Dor was one of the largest and longest-sustained excavation projects in Israel. The eleven excavation areas opened have revealed a wealth of information about the Iron Age, Persian, Hellenistic and Early Roman periods.