Archaeology in a Minefield: The Hunt for the City of Sodom | Dr. Steven Collins

[Music] And so what was one of the what was the first thing? So the scripture says where it is and then you go over there and how did what's the first sort of thing you see that verifies that for you? >> Well, once we had triangulated around all the geographical indicators in the text and there's I'll tell you exactly 24 there are 24 geographical indicators in the biblical text for the location of Sodom. By the way, what's number two on the list? The number two identified site in the Bible is Jerusalem. It has 16 indicators. So, it ought to be way easier to find Sodom than it is to find Jerusalem. And so, uh, we did that and we found it. So, how did we know it was there? Because it's a gigantic mound. It is the it had already been referred to as the largest archaeological site in the entire Jordan Valley. Now, why didn't anybody know about that? because it was stuffed in a book in a country Jordan that a lot of people don't pay attention to archaeologically. Everybody pays attention to what's going on in Israel archaeologically, but Jordan kind of takes a backseat to that and nobody really paid attention to it. Not to mention the fact that the area where Tal Ham or where Sodom is located is highly strategic in antiquity and in modern times. There was a military site dug into and placed on the site that is Tal al- Hamam, the site of Sodom. And so the whole western part of that was landmine during the latter part of the 60s and early 70s back six- day war, Yam Kapur war, all of that. So it was strategic in antiquity. It's strategic now. And so you know a little matter of landmines kept people from coming and doing excavation in the area. In fact K Prad from the University of Manchester actually excavated a site to the south of Tal Hamam which we now know is one of the satellites of the ancient citystate of Sodom. And um she did a little excavation over on the far west end of Tal Ham. just kind of sent a team over there for a couple of days while one of her workers lost a foot to a landmine. >> They packed up and boogied where you never left and nobody ever put foot nobody ever touched Tal Hamom until and that was in the late 1980s, early 90s. >> Nobody touched it again until we walked onto the site uh in about 2000. >> Were you nervous about landmines? Honestly, no. Because I knew nothing about it. >> You didn't know to be worried. >> No, I had no clue. I mean, I, as I look back on it, I have to go, >> well, we we maybe we dodged a bullet. Um, when we first went up on the site, we took a team, left, four of us, my wife and I, and and two friends of ours. and um cuz we had gone over there just to check out the theory that we had gotten from the Bible in terms of its location. So, we're we're on the ground checking all this out and we're walking all over the site, you know, we're going in and through the bushes and the banana fields and we're everywhere all over the site. And um we didn't know anything about landmines, never heard anything about landmines. And um and then over the year, the next 5 years as I we worked on getting a permit uh to start the excavation, we had teams of 20, 50 people over the site going everywhere picking up shirts, surface shirts, you know, look looking at stuff, which is what you do in sort of the pre-exavation phase. You want to see what the ceramics tell you. And that's so I have everybody gathered up, bring it to us, and we look at it. We we read the pottery. It's my expertise. And um so uh we had people doing that. Well, then years later, even while we're excavating, I think in the first two two or three years of excavation, we're excavating and we get the and we get these government officials that come down handing out t-shirts and pamphlets on landmines. >> No way. just to remind people that they had swept the area back in the mid 90s >> and they pretty sure it was clean, but they still would find a stray one now and again. So, they were doing a little promo with the local people and they would do this periodically. That's the first time I'd seen it. And I'm going, "Wait a minute. You're telling me there are landmines out here and the Department of Antiquities has given us a permit? You know, why didn't they say anything about it?" Nobody said anything about it, but thankfully nothing ever happened. So I figured, you know, the military uh mind sweepers came through in the mid '9s and pretty much cleaned up the Jordan Valley and and Talam and um whatever they didn't get, the sheep and the goats got you know, >> you know, everyone every once in a while there'll be a little uh little mans on the hoof, you know. Uh so any