SETTING THE STAGE. Thousands of years of sediment and vegetation covered the site of Tel Kabri when we arrived. On the first day of the dig, Zach Dunseth (right) used a root cutter to chop roots from the nearby avocado grove, while Chantal Newsome, Melanie Harris and Emily Diaz used turias to scrape loose topsoil into buckets. Behind the team, area supervisor Nurith Goshen cut bright pieces of foam to mark excavation areas. The soil, situated just a few feet above Kabri’s storage magazine, was dumped into sandbags that fortified the excavation’s section walls.