THE SITE of biblical Sodom was overlooked by archaeologists for decades because the hill on which it was built was too obvious. Seriously.

Dr. Steven Collins, chief archaeologist at Tall el-Hammam, explains why he chose to dig at the site near Mount Nebo more than fifteen years ago, why the traditional sites southeast of the Dead Sea don’t fit the biblical description of Sodom, and how political unrest in the West Bank led to one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in history.