Werner Braun

Tinker, tailor, soldier, archaeologist. Yigael Yadin (1917–1984), Israel’s most celebrated excavator and that country’s chief of military operations during its 1948 War of Independence, surveys the site of Hazor. The Dothans served their archaeological apprenticeships at Hazor, each working as an area supervisor. Their first-born child, Dani, literally cut his teeth at Hazor; Dani’s care at the dig was shared by his parents and the other excavators. Each afternoon Dani would hear them identifying the pottery as either EB (Early Bronze Age), MB (Middle Bronze), LB (Late Bronze) or Byz (Byzantine Period). His kindergarten teacher back in Jerusalem called the Dothans one day to ask, “What kind of song is Dani singing: EB, MB, LB, Byz?”