T. E. Levy

Mechanical camel, better known as a bicycle. To stretch his meager funds, the author used this bicycle for transport during his initial search for ancient settlement sites along the Nahal Beersheva, seen here, and lower Nahal Besor, seasonal rivers in the northern Negev desert. By the end of Levy’s first season (1977), he had systematically examined 20 square areas of one square kilometer each and had found numerous settlement sites from the Pottery Neolithic (5500–4500 B.C.E.) and Chalcolithic (4500–3200 B.C.E.) periods.

After more than a decade of survey and excavation, the project that began on a bicycle has culminated in a better understanding of early social development in the southern part of the Levant.