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Levi-Sala Book Awards Announced

September 6, 2006

Amnon Ben-Tor, Zeev Weiss and Jodi Magness have each been awarded a 2006 Irene Levi-Sala Prize for Books on the Archaeology of Israel.

Dr. Ben-Tor was awarded $4,000 for two volumes of the final excavation report of Yoqne'am, Yoqne'am II: The Iron Age and the Persian Period and Yoqne'am III: The Middle and Late Bronze Ages. The first volume was published in 1996. According to the committee report on the awards, the excavation reports are "masterfully edited" and make an "important contribution to the settlement history and material culture of northern Israel."

Dr. Zeev Weiss was awarded $3,000 for The Sepphoris Synagogue: Deciphering an Ancient Message Through Its Archaeological and Socio-Historical Contexts. Weiss, the director of the excavation at the Sepphoris synagogue, pays particular attention to the mosaics in the synagogue and offers, according to the awarding committee, "a well-researched and thoughtful commentary."

Dr. Jodi Magness was awarded $2,000 for a popular non-fiction work on the archaeology of Israel with her volume, The Archaeology of Early Islamic Settlement in Palestine. The committee proclaims the book the "sine qua non for Byzantine and Islamic scholars interested in the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods.

The prizes were awarded in May. The members of the committee were professors Martha S. Joukowsky of Brown University, P. de Miroschedji of CNRS France, Lawrence E. Stager of Harvard, and David Ussishkin of Tel Aviv University.