Courtesy Ephraim Stern

All work and no play. While Israeli sunseekers frolic in the surf and sand, members of Stern’s team—shielded by a black gauze screen that partially blocks the intense Middle Eastern sun—excavate Dor’s southern harbor. The harbor was built by the Sikils, one of the Sea Peoples who left the Aegean and migrated to the eastern coast of ancient Palestine around 1200 B.C.E. In the middle of the 11th century B.C.E., Phoenician settlers arrived at Dor and destroyed the Sikil town. The Phoenician city was in turn destroyed by the Israelites in the early tenth century B.C.E.