Between 1926 and 1935, American scholar William F Badè and his team unearthed the remains of a small town at the site of Tell en-Nasbeh in Mandate-era Palestine. Thought to be the biblical town of Mizpah, the site, which flourished c.1000-586 BC, yielded a great number of Iron Age, Babylonian period, and Persian period artefacts, among them lamps, ceramic vessels, and jewellery.
Who did this digging? Besides the American staff, there were local labourers. Their work was seasonal, low-paid, and insecure. Men had a range of roles, while women mainly carried baskets, sifted dirt, and scoured the spoil heap for potsherds. Children also helped with various tasks, including excavating small spaces like tombs and cisterns.
Melissa Cradic and Samuel Pfister have picked through the excavation archives held by the Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, to create an online exhibition that highlights the work of these local workers and the Egyptian foremen on Badè’s expedition. Many of the workers are nameless in the records unless credited for a specific task, but we do know the names of the foremen at the site, who were given the title reis (Arabic for foreman).
War Classics – Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War