After Petrie the PEF funded the work of Bliss, Dickie, and Macalister. The
American Frederick J. Bliss (1859–1937) followed Petrie’s excavations in Tell
el-Hesi. Bliss was the son of a Presbyterian missionary and had been raised in
Lebanon. Although Bliss adopted the stratigraphic method he failed to
integrate Petrie’s ceramic method into his chronology, and the inadequacies
of his results—as well as those of Petrie—led to the dismissal of the method by
biblical scholars (Moorey 1991: 30). In 1894–7 Bliss worked with the British
architect Archibald Campbell Dickie (1868–1941) (later Professor of Archi-
tecture at Liverpool) in Jerusalem contributing to the archaeological under-
standing of the city. Between 1898 and 1909 he collaborated with the Irish
archaeologist Robert Armstrong Stewart Macalister (1870–1950). Both excav-
ated at several sites: at Tell-es-SaW, Tell Zakariyeh (the biblical ‘Azekah’), Tell
el-Judeideh and Tell Sandahanna (the classical Marisa/Mareshah). Their ex-
cavations made it possible to build a stratigraphic sequence of Pre-Israelite,
Jewish (Iron II) and Hellenistic-Roman periods (Moorey 1991: 30–2). None-
theless, in 1900 Bliss was dismissed as the fund’s Explorer, supposedly because
of his poor health. In fact, the fund was becoming anxious at the meticulous
methods followed by Bliss which prevented the quick discovery of exciting
newWnds needed by the fund-raisers (www nd-g).
In the early twentieth century, between 1902 and 1908, the interest of the
PEF in the study of the Philistines (mentioned in the Bible for example in 1
Samuel 13:15–14:15) led Macalister to excavate Tell el-Jazar (Gezer). Macal-
ister had in 1900 become the director of the PEF, and remained in the post
until 1909. He worked on his own with two hundred untrained labourers
and only one foreman, and as a result found it diYcult to have a proper
control of the stratigraphy and the location of objects. He did not seem to be
very worried about this, as he commented that ‘The exact spot in the mound
where any ordinary object chanced to lie is not generally of great importance’
(Macalister 1912: ix). Despite all this, he was able to separate the Middle
(second Semitic) and the Late Bronze Age pottery (Moorey 1991: 32–3). In
1911–13 the PEF’s interest in the Philistines led Duncan Mackenzie (1861–
1934) to excavate at Ain Shems (Beth-Shemesh, mentioned in Joshua 15:10–
11, 21:16; 1 Samuel 6:9–18; 1 Kings 4:9; 2 Kings 14:11–13; and Chronicles
28:18). His knowledge of Aegean archaeology (he had worked with Arthur
Evans at Knossos in Crete) allowed him to recognize the painted ‘Philistine’
pottery (Moorey 1991: 36). Finally, the PEF also funded a survey of the
Wilderness of Zin by Charles Leonard Woolley (1880–1960) and Thomas
Edward Lawrence (1888–1935), work that provided cover for a British mili-
tary mapping operation in southern Palestine in preparation for the First
World War. The survey recorded multiple sites in the Negeb Desert and the
Wadi Arabah, providing the most comprehensive account of the region at the
Biblical Archaeology 153