Badè Museum of Biblical Archaeology

Tell en-Nasbeh

This exhibit is the "heart and soul" of the Badè Museum. It displays a wealth of finds from the excavations at Tell en-Nasbeh, Palestine whose objects span from the Early Bronze Age (3100–2200 BC) through the Iron Age (1200–586 BC) and into the Roman and Hellenistic periods.

Highlights of the exhibit include "Tools of the Trade" featuring real archaeological tools used by Badè and his team, an oil lamp typology, a Second Temple period (586 BC–70 AD) limestone ossuary, and a selection of painted Greek pottery.

Fallen through the Cracks:
Microarchaeology and Ancient Households in Turkey

As the basic unit of society, households contain a wealth of information about cultural practices, social structures and everyday tasks. Microarchaeology is one way of discovering and interpreting the artifacts that have fallen through the cracks. These microartifacts (see photo above) are less than one centimeter in size and can be the sole remaining clue of the activities that took place. Microartifacts become unintentionally embedded in the surfaces within and surrounding ancient houses and give us a glimpse of domestic life that is not usually accessible through normal excavation. Due to their size they are also less likely to be disturbed by regular cleaning or abandonment of a house. The focus of this exhibit is households at Kenan Tepe, a Late Chalcolithic (3600-3000 B.C.) site in southeastern Turkey.

Microarchaeology requires a keen eye and lots of patience to sort a sample bag into data that is useful and relevant. The samples we receive at the Badè Museum have been excavated from domestic areas that include floors, ovens, alleyways and trash middens. Each bag is sorted by hand in a meticulous process that separates the microartifacts from the sediment. With the aid of a microscope these artifacts are classified according to material and type, such as ceramic, bone, shell, etc. With these data we are able to correlate microartifact patterns within households to better understand uses of space. The end result allows for a statistical analysis of artifact use that would otherwise go undetected by regular excavation techniques.

The unique origin of each sample we sort allows our study to contribute to our knowledge of what "home" meant to the community at Kenan Tepe and how these households relate to each other. By adding our microarchaeological results to the larger picture of domestic life we gain insight into the way past people's activities and behavior affected their larger environment. We can determine their use of space over time, compare patterns between households in the same community, and document their relations with the larger world through trade and interaction. The valuable information gathered from these minute artifacts allows us a fuller and more nuanced picture of domestic life in ancient Turkey.

Lights! Camera! Dig!
Photographs from the Tell en-Nasbeh Expedition

Between 1926 and 1935, Dr. William Frederic Badè of the Pacific School of Religion and his team carried out the most complete excavation of a site to date in Israel/Palestine at Tell en-Nasbeh. Originally suggested to Dr. Badè by the renowned archaeologist William F. Albright, the ancient mound seemed promising as the possible site of the biblical city of Mizpah. Perhaps more importantly, Dr. Badè also viewed the project at Nasbeh as an opportunity to develop more rigorous field techniques and record keeping in the young discipline of Biblical archaeology.

Photography played a key role in this effort because archaeology is a destructive process. In order to see what is below, what is above must be documented and removed, in essence destroyed. Photography allows for a permanent visual record of what archaeologists uncover during an excavation. In five seasons at Nasbeh over 2,800 photographs were taken. These pictures cover a wide range of subjects; from digging scenes, to images of objects and architecture, to pictures of the staff working on the non-digging tasks of the excavation. The photographs in this exhibit come from that collection and chronicle the expedition from digging in the field to display in the Museum.

Begin the exhibit slide show »

Finding Women of Valor:
The Daily Lives of Women in Ancient Israel

Women do not seem to have played a central role in most stories, histories, and poetry of the Hebrew Bible. Thus it has long been posited that society in Biblical Israel was male dominated. Given their relative absence in the text, how do we determine what women's lives were like in ancient Israel? In light of new, progressive methodologies, scholars have begun to reexamine archaeological remains and the texts of the Hebrew Bible to answer this question. Although their written words are scarce, women’s voices are not as silent as we may think.

Israelite culture was traditionally divided into public and private spheres, much like modern Middle Eastern societies. Most non-elite Israelite women's lives were centered in the private sphere of the extended household. The household was the most important unit in ancient Israelite society because each was largely independent and economically self-sufficient. Thus women's oversight of the household was of utmost importance to the foundations of Israelite culture, economy, and religion. Archaeologists are now paying closer attention to household remains and have found several areas where women played large roles: food preparation, cloth production, childcare, and religious observance. Through analysis of the remains associated with these activities, we can finally shed light on a vital aspect of the daily lives of women in ancient Israel.