The Irene Levi-Sala award for best final excavation reports

On April 24, 2014, the award ceremony of the Irene Levi-Sala Book prize will take place at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva on the occasion of the Irene Levi-Sala Annual Research Seminar.

The Irene Levi-Sala Book prize award is dedicated by the Sala Family Trust, London, to the memory of Dr Irene Levi-Sala who was a gifted archaeologist and maintained a keen interest in the culture and archaeology of Israel. The purpose of this prestigious prize is to encourage and reward high quality publications, both scholarly and popular, on the archaeology of Israel against the wider context of Near Eastern history and archaeology.

I was particularly pleased to see that Oren Gutfeld and Amihai Mazar were nominated for the best final excavation reports. Mazar published: Excavations at Tel Beth Shean, Volume IV, The 4th and 3rd Millennia BCE, Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Exploration Society, 2012, and Gutfeld published the Jewish Quarter Excavations in the Old City of Jerusalem, conducted by Nahman Avigad 1969-1982, Vol. V: The Cardo and the Nea Church. Israel Exploration Society and Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 2013.

I was pleased to have been asked to contribute a chapter in the latter volume on the “Restoration of the Cardo”. It was fascinating to have been involved in the reconstruction of the southern part of this major colonnaded street of Byzantine Jerusalem.