Are the Finds from Macalister’s Gezer I–III Still Relevant for Current Research a Century Later?

Ido not intend to refer here to issues such as the methodology and the accuracy of Robert Alexander Stewart Macalister’s excavations at Tel Gezer, subjects discussed elsewhere in this volume. Personally, however, I think that Macalister was an outstanding scholar who was ahead of his time in many respects, and whose achievements should be judged in retrospect and not in comparison with current norms (e.g., Thomas 1984; Fisher 1992; Silberman 1993, 549–550). Moreover, Macalister signed on his three volumes opus magnum, The Excavation of Gezer, on December 1910 (Macalister 1912, i, xii), just one year after the excavations were concluded.