Staff member Juhana Saukkonen (UCL London) will present a lecture on the 2007 Season of the Kinneret Regional Project at the 6ICAANE in Rome on May 8th, 2008, 11:00-11:30 am.

6ICAANE is the sixth International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, which is this year hosted from May 5th to May 10th, 2008 by the La Sapienza – Università di Roma. The aim of 6ICAANE is to promote cooperation and information exchange between archaeologists working in all fields and areas of the Ancient Near East, from the Eastern Mediterranean to Iran and from Anatolia to Arabia, from prehistoric times to Alexander the Great.

The congress venue is the Museo dell’Arte Classica in the basement of the Facoltà di Scienze Umanistiche, Piazzale A. Moro 5. – If you happen to be in the region you should not miss...

Registration for the coming field season of the Kinneret Regional Project was opened today. We welcome students (and non-students) from all over the world to participate as team-members. From July 6 to July 25 you will explore the fascinating world of ancient cultures on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee and bring back to life the stories of the past. Applications must be submitted until May 1st, 2008. To apply click here.

This year, we will conduct a surface survey and soundings at Horvat Kur with remains from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods (3th c. BCE to 6 c. CE). Furthermore, we intend to excavate (and conserve) the last remaining portion of a large domestic complex dating to the end of the Iron Age I (ca. 950 BCE) at Tel Kinrot. Work in the field will be accompanied by evening lectures and field trips on weekends. No tuition fees are charged.

Fieldwork started already early this year. At the end of January and beginning February 2008, a small team of students headed by Prof. Dr. Michael Heinzelmann (Institute of Archaeology, University of Bern) conducted together with Jürgen Zangenberg, co-director of the Kinneret Regional Project, a geophysical prospection at Horvat Kur and Tel Kinrot at. Currently, we are eagerly awaiting the results.

A few weeks later, Wolfgang Zwickel (project coordinator) visited Tel Kinrot and shot the image to the right. The Tel is in good shape and the vegetation is flourishing.

Juha Pakkala, co-director of the Kinneret Regional Project, presents on behalf of the project at the Annual Meeting of the American Schools in San Diego. The title of the lecture is “Kinneret Regional Project – The 2007 Field Season.”
This is the published abstract: The paper reports on the recent results of archaeological investigations at Tel Kinrot/Tell el-Oreimeh (ancient Kinneret) and its environs undertaken by the Dutch-German-Finnish-Swiss «Kinneret Regional Project» under the auspices of the Universities of Bern, Helsinki, Leiden and Mainz.
Kinneret – located on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee (Israel) – is emerging as one of the major sites for the study of urban life in the Iron Age IB in the Southern Levant in the dawn of the first Millennium BCE. Its material culture witnesses a lively and multilayered urban culture and shows a variety of cultural influences on the ancient population of the city.
Work concentrated in the past years on a large excavation field in the lower city with well-preserved Iron IB structures and installations. The architecture of those areas, belonging to the main Iron Age IB phase at Tel Kinrot, was fully exposed and subsequently prepared for conservation. The paper also presents the most recent finds, the results of current research programs and future developments within the «Kinneret Regional Project».

Prof. Dr. Volkmar Fritz died on August 21, 2007 at the age of 69 in Bad Schwartau, Germany, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. He is survived by his devoted wife, Anke, and four children.
Volkmar came to Israel in 1964 after having completed his theological studies in Tübingen, Berlin, Heidelberg, Bonn and Marburg, where he earned his PhD in 1968. Interested in researching the Land of the Bible and the material culture of ancient Israel, he studied Biblical Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His archaeological supervisor was Prof. Yohanan Aharoni, and under his direction, Volkmar served as an Area Supervisor in the excavations at Arad in the Negev from 1965-1967. The results of that excavation became the central part of his Habilitation, which he earned from the University of Mainz in 1973, where he joined the faculty and was responsible for teaching Old Testament Studies. He was also instrumental in building and expanding the university’s library, making it one of the best in Europe in the field of Biblical Archaeology. Later, he was appointed as full professor in Old Testament at the University of Giessen.
Volkmar was committed in his research to applying archaeological data to the German tradition of biblical analysis, and as a result he made a significant contribution not only to combining the two disciplines, but also to creating a greater understanding between German and Israeli archaeologists. He was the first German scholar after the Second World War to obtain a license to conduct an excavation in Israel. Together with his Israeli colleague, the late Prof. Aharon Kempinski, he directed the excavations at Tel Masos in the Negev from 1972- 1975, which made a major contribution to our understanding of the early history of ancient Israel. Subsequently, he directed the excavations of Tell el-Oreme/Tel Kinrot on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee from 1982-1985 and conducted two small digs at Feinan in Jordan in 1990. During his tenure as Director of the German Protestant Institute of Archaeology on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem from 1994-1999, he returned to his dig at Tel Kinrot. These excavations demonstrated that the site was one of the largest towns in ancient Israel in the Iron Age I, and provided important evidence for the Neo-Assyrian conquest of northern Israel in 733 BCE.
In 2003, he returned to Tel Kinrot for a visit (see picture; photographed by Editha Lafevre; © Kinneret Regional Project), but he was already greatly weakened by the Parkinson’s disease that had begun a few years previously. Although he was unable to excavate again himself, he was happy in the knowledge that the work he had begun would go on in the hands of his former students from Switzerland, Germany and Finland, who are now responsible for the Kinneret Regional Project.
While Volkmar published a myriad of articles on various aspects of the archaeology of ancient Israel, a major focus of his research was on the architecture of public buildings, temples, palaces and domestic housing. Two of his most important publications dealt with these subjects: The City in Ancient Israel and An Introduction to Biblical Archaeology, both of which appeared in German and in English. To his credit, nearly all of his excavations have been fully published – like his reports on Kinneret: Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen auf dem Tell el-Oreme am See Gennesaret, 1982-1985 and Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen auf der Hirbet el-Mšaš (Tel Masos) 1972-1975 (co-authored with Prof. Kempinski). In addition, his last excavations, which were only begun 10 years ago, will be published in the near future. He was not only a productive archaeologist, but also wrote important commentaries on the Old Testament, like Das erste Buch der Könige.
Volkmar’s warmth, kindness and fine sense of humor greatly endeared him to all his friends. He gave generously of his knowledge and experience and took great pleasure in the successes of his students. He left an indelible mark on the field of Biblical Archaeology, and will be sorely missed by his colleagues and students. [Dr. S. Gitin, AIAR Jerusalem, and Prof. W. Zwickel, University of Mainz and Kinneret Regional Project].

At this time we would have proudly announced the 2006 field- and study-season of the German-Finnish-Swiss excavations at Tel Kinrot on the North-western shore of the Sea of Galilee, which was supposed to take place from August 6 to August 25, 2006. 24 volunteers and 22 staff-members originating from 10 different countries were curiously awaiting another exciting and enlightening dig.
All our plans, investments and hopes, however, did not materialize for obvious reasons and we had to cancel this year's expedition without substitution (the current situation does not even allow a small group of specialists working at the site). Instead of that, we changed our publication plans and are now intensively working on the publication of Kinneret II, which is supposed to go to the printer before the next excavation season scheduled to take place in August/September 2007. We hope that those of you working and/or living in the region are in safety.

The University of Mainz produces a movie about our work at Tel Kinrot (concept: Wolfgang Zwickel; camera: Markus Sauerwein; camera assistant: Ruth Scheerer; length: 20:01). The movie documents the work of team-members and specialists during field work. It is a real must for those in participating in the excavations. The movie is downloadable at the University of Mainz homepage.

You may also – though in a lesser quality – view it here (Quicktime required).