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Friends of Â鶹ֱ²¥ present the next webinar of the 2025-2026 season on April 29, 2026, at 12:30 pm EDT, presented by Yana Tchekhanovets. This webinar will be free and open to the public. Registration through Zoom (with a valid email address) is required. This webinar will be recorded and all registrants will be sent a recording link in the days following the webinar.

The ancient settlement of Nessana, located in the southwestern Negev, on the modern Israeli–Egyptian border, is a key site for the study of early Christian pilgrimage. Serving as the main caravan hub on the Christian pilgrimage road from the Holy Land to Sinai, Nessana enjoys all the economic benefits of the sacred route and develops into a flourishing urbanized village with caravanserais and numerous churches. This lecture will present the preliminary results of the first four seasons of renewed excavations at the site.

Yana Tchekhanovets is an archaeologist and professor at the Department of Archaeology at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She specializes in late antique archaeology, Caucasian Christian communities of Byzantine Palestine, and the archaeology of pilgrimage. After many years of fieldwork in Jerusalem, Yana is now a director of the new archaeological project at ancient Nessana, Negev.

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Friends of Â鶹ֱ²¥ is pleased to announce that the first webinars of the 2025-2026 season will once again be free and open to the public with a goal to raise $10,000 so that the entire webinar season will be free. Will you support this outreach effort with a tax-deductible contribution? All donors/sponsors with gifts of $100 or more will be recognized in subsequent webinars. Make your gift today and select “webinars” from the dropdown menu.

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