TERRORISM AND ARCHAEOLOGY:

Threat of violence slows pace of biblical archaeology (Raleigh Biblical Recorder)
By Michele Chabin
Religion News Service

JERUSALEM - Since the start of the Palestinian uprising four years ago, local archaeologists, many of them working on sites alluded to in the Bible, have had to scale back or even cancel their digs.

That's because the threat of continued violence has kept foreign professors and students from providing assistance at large digs.

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The intifada has definitely had an effect on Israeli archaeology, including our dig," said Shimon Gibson, the archaeologist who excavated the "John the Baptist cave."

Gibson announced in mid-August that he had found a cave that he believes was used by John the Baptist to anoint some of his followers. The news received international media attention.

Then came more bus bombings.

"Prior to the intifada we had many students from the (United) States," said Gibson in an interview. "When the intifada began, the U.S. State Department advised Americans not to travel here, and ever since then we've had to rely on smaller and smaller groups. It's been a bit of a nightmare, actually."

A major problem is that American institutions, especially federally funded ones, find it difficult to obtain insurance for anyone they send to the region, said Gideon Avni, director of the excavations service department at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

From the mid-1990s through the year 2000, Avni said, approximately 45 foreign academic institutions, two-thirds of them American, ran or co-ran digs in Israel. That number dwindled to five in 2003.

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Some of the last foreign students to help Gibson hailed from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

"The intifada forced us to make some adjustments," said James Tabor, a UNC archaeologist who helped excavate the John the Baptist cave. "In 2001, even after the intifada began, we sent students to Israel, but only those over the age of 21. They made their own decision as adults and we required them to procure their own insurance and to sign a waiver of liability."

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