Tell el-Hesi

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Tell el-Hesi is an archaeological site in Israel. It was the first major site excavated in Palestine, first by Flinders Petrie in 1890 and later by Frederick Jones Bliss in 1891 and 1892, both sponsored by the Palestine Exploration Fund. Petrie's excavations were one of the first to systematically use stratigraphy and seriation to produce a chronology of the site. While Petrie and Bliss believed that Tell el-Hesi was the Biblical site of Lachish, this hypothesis is no longer accepted. Tell el-Hesi is located southwest of the modern Israeli city of Qiryat Gat, at point 12451063 of the Israel grid, or at 34 degrees 43 minutes 50 seconds east longitude and 31 degrees 43 minutes and 45 seconds north latitude.

The site was originally excavated between 1890 and 1892 by the Palestine Exploration Fund in a series of five campaigns directed first by William Matthew Flinders Petrie and then by Frederick Jones Bliss. They published their final reports in 1891 and 1894.

A second series of excavations began in 1970 at the behest of the American Schools of Oriental Research and its President G. Ernest Wright, the Joint Archaeological Expedition to Tell el-Hesi. The original core staff of directors for the project included John Worrell - Director; Lawrence Toombs - Senior Archeologist, Phillip King - Administrative Director, Tom Frank - Education Director, and W. J. Bennett, Jr. and Lawrence Stager as Field Directors. The project excavated at the site from 1970 to 1983 in a series of eight summer seasons. The project emphasized excavation in two parts of the site: the acropolis and its associated wall system (Fields I and III), and the Early Bronze III (EB III) wall system of the lower city (Fields V, VI, and IX). This proposal is to complete the publication of Fields I and III.