This summer, drop anchor at one of the oldest known ports along the Eastern Mediterranean coast. Situated on a high promontory overlooking the sea, the city of Jaffa has been a port of call for sailors, merchants and soldiers for over 4,000 years. During the Middle Bronze Age, the first city at Jaffa was fortified with a massive sloping wall or glacis, the remnants of which can still be seen today. By the Late Bronze Age, Jaffa had become one of the principal ports and grain centers of the Egyptian empire. Archaeological work over the past 60 years has shown that the city continued to be an important administrative and commercial center through the Iron Age until the end of the Ottoman period in the early 20th century.

Volunteers will be housed in the comfortable Old Jaffa Hostel in the heart of historic Jaffa, just minutes from downtown Tel Aviv. For more information, see www.inisrael.com/oldjaffahostel.

Dr. Aaron Burke is co-director of the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project and oversees fieldwork operations at the site. He is an Assistant Professor of the Archaeology of Ancient Israel at the University of California, Los Angeles and specializes in Ancient Near Eastern fortifications and warfare.

Dr. Martin Peilstöcker is the lead research archaeologist for Jaffa in the Israel Antiquities Authority and is co-director of the Jaffa Cultural Heritage Project. He was worked in Jaffa since the mid-1990s and coordinates year-round work at the site.