Endnote 7 – Diggers—From Paid Peasants to Eager Volunteers

The method is named after George A. Reisner, who began his archaeological career in Egypt in 1897, and C. S. Fisher, with whom Reisner further refined his methods at Samaria from 1908–1911. See Robert M. Little, “George Andrew Reisner and His Contemporaries,” in The Archaeology of Jordan and Other Studies, ed. Lawrence T. Geraty and Larry G. Herr (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews Univ. Press, 1986), pp. 183–204; Philip J. King, American Archaeology in the Mideast: A History of the American Schools of Oriental Research (Philadelphia: American Schools of Oriental Research, 1983), pp. 39–41, 75–82. For a description of the method as first practiced, see William F. Badè, A Manual of Excavation in the Near East: Methods of Digging and Recording of the Tell en-Nasbeh Expedition in Palestine (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1934).