From the Indiana Jones Desk: Live Digs at Caesarea Maritima:
The site of Caesarea Maritima, on the northern coast, is one of the largest archaeological sites in Israel. It was founded as a Hellenistic anchorage settlement and developed into a significant and elaborate Roman city with a manmade harbor under Herod the Great in 22-10 BC. From then through the Byzantine period, it was the capital of the province of Palestine, and larger than Jerusalem. Archaeological projects from numerous consortia groups have been conducted for the last 50 years, uncovering significant parts of the central city, the harbor, the Augustan Roman temple, the Byzantine octagonal church, and the Crusader church and city walls. However, little is know of the city during the Early Islamic period. Debates over the nature of the Levantine coast from the seventh-tenth centuries characterize it either as a depopulated no-man’s land frontier with the Byzantine-controlled Mediterranean or interspersed with key settlements actively engaged in trade and exchange. According to Islamic sources, Caesarea (Arabic: Qaysāriya), was a ribāṭ, a type of site that similarly either functioned as a military-religious lookout station or commercial waystation. Our renewed excavations of the city will seek to investigate the answers to these questions, searching for the Early Islamic occupation of the city and what it reveals on the nature of how classical cities transformed in the Early Islamic period and the larger regional Levantine coast in the early Medieval period. It will also examine the nature of Caesarea’s last settlement as a small Bosnian community in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Our excavation will shed new light onto the cultural layering and evolution of the city from the classical epoch to the Islamic era. source: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/dig/caesarea-maritima-2/
Usually, the focus is on after a find is made instead of before. Given the current political climate, it is interesting to see this dig focus on this specific area of history, and even moreso, this spot:
The focus for the 2025 season will be in Area NC (northern city).Area NC will excavate a 19th-century Bosnian house that sits directly on top of the main north-south Crusader road. source: ibid
Boats and water and crusader roads? What stories will the dirt yield?