In 1924 she immigrated with her parents to Israel, at the time Mandatory Palestine, and settled in Jerusalem, where they joined the local community of intellectuals and artists, many of them German speakers.

[1] She attended the Rehavia Gymnasium for her high school education, and then studied archeology at the Hebrew University at Mount Scopus.

The excavations she was involved in were at Tel Hazor (in 1952 and between the years 1955-1960) with Yigal Yedin and at Ein Gedi with Benjamin Mazar in 1961-1962.

In the years 1981 to 1996, with Seymour Gitin, she excavated Tel Makna (Ekron), which was discovered as an industrialized and planned city from the Philistine culture.

In 1951 she married Moshe Dothan (1919–1999), a fellow archaeologist with whom she shared interest in biblical archaeology and particularly the Philistine culture.