Bach's Great if you Catch Him on a Good Day

            There’s a lecture going on now, but I decided to blog instead.  Let’s see, what fun things happened today?  I’ve been reading Last Words by George Carlin, his sortabiography.  I am almost done and it’s a very good read.  It’s given me a lot of insight into George as a person and how that relates to his material.  I think any true Carlin fan ought to give it a look.

            I had a weird dream last night.  Bob Mullens, our field archaeologist, was performing brain surgery on a patient who I knew but now can’t remember.  Dan (my roommate) and I were assisting Bob, who for some reason had removed the patient’s entire head to perfroe the operation.  We had removed the brain, which looked like raw chicken, and Bob was cutting it into pieces.  In the meantime, Dan was perforating the edge of the piece skull we had cut off so the needle could get through it easier when we sewed it back together.  Like I said, it was weird.  The good news is, not major head injuries today.

            Back in real life land, we began lowering the last little bit of balk we had sticking up in our F8 extension (the one I posted a picture of last time).  The goal was to peel it back in layers to reveal the cobble surface that continued into the balk.  It was important that we see where it ended so we could draw the whole thing, then rip it out and start moving down again.

            So that’s what we did.  Phil, Beth and I started hacking through the upper fill layers and quickly came upon the hard packed surface underneath.  We came to the conclusion that the surface was probably not the cobbles themselves but rather a hard packed layer just above them.  The stones acted merely as a foundation for the real floor.  We didn’t sift any of the material above the floor, which I think might have been a mistake, but I understand there’s pressure to keep moving and sifting takes forever.

            While the three of us were taking the balk section down, Sam and Ian were leveling the non-balk section of the F8 extension.  This area is fill material, but it yields approximately a fuckton of potsherds (Word does not have “fuckton” in its dictionary).  I think Sam and Ian pulled something like five buckets worth of pottery out in just one and a half passes, only about 15 cm. of dirt.  There were a number of large pieces that may be reconstructable.  We are toying with the idea that some whole or nearly whole vessels were tossed in to serve as fill because of the apparent completeness of the vessels in the fill, even though none was smashed in situ.

            Yesterday, in the same general area that Sam and Ian were working in, I cleared a relatively small section and pulled out at least two buckets of pottery, maybe three, and much of it looked like it was potentially from the same couple of vessels.  I just finished washing that bucket this afternoon.  I went up to pottery washing early to make sure I got that bucket, because people are enticed by big pieces and those buckets go fast.  I think they should enforce the rule that you have to wash your own pottery first, that way the people who pick up the little shit sherds have to wash them themselves.  Our square tries to wash all out own pottery, so when I toss a dinky sherd in, I know either I’m gonna wash it or my teammate is.  If you aren’t responsible for washing the sherd, there is less of an inclination to be selective about what you pick up.  Also, I don’t trust these other clowns to clean my pottery well (except Eric, he’s a hero among mortals).

            Something else I forgot to mention about yesterday is the terrible thing that has happened to my pinkies, and now on ring finger too.

            I was picking up an overfilled sandbag full of rocks (they’re not supposed to be overfilled or have lots of rocks in them) that the squares next door made us.  Thanks but no thanks.  I wasn’t prepared for the bag to be to full and it slipped in my hands, causing the many sharp rocks in the bag to skive off the top layer of my pinkies.  The damage to my ring finger is just wear and tear caused by the fact that I don’t like working in gloves.  I almost got it from a scorpion today, too, but then I picked it up to toss it away and I think it was already dead.  If it wasn’t, it was doing a very good impression.

            We ended fifteen minutes early today because we needed to eat lunch fast.  There was a large group coming in after us and so the hotel wanted us out of there ASAP so our smelly bodies wouldn’t offend them.  Of course, someone forgot to tell the bus driver to come early, and indeed he in fact came late, so we were still eating when this other crowd walked in.  Not a big deal, but they were older people dressed all nice and we were a bunch of filthy archaeologists covered in eight kinds of filth wearing the same clothes we have been for several days. I was amused.

            Today also marks a very exciting time in a young archaeologists career: laundry day!

            So we’re a little low on drying space.  I am going to look into getting a clothesline or something.  I am still soaking my dig clothes in really hot water and detergent to try and blast some of the dust out of them.  I have no idea where I am going to end up hanging those, but the water is too hot still for me to touch them so I don’t have to worry for now.

            That will be all for now.  I am going to post this after dinner, but if you are reading this, I already have, so I feel like Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy might have a thing or two to say about how I construct my tenses.

How do get rid of counterfeit money: put it in the collection plate at church. -GC

Archaeology: It's Not Falsifying Records, It's A Social Science!

            Today I am incredibly sore.  I haven’t felt the burn this entire period, even though I have been working far harder than I did today.  Even this weekend was as rough as last weekend, when I walked the Old City like a bazillion times.  The good news is that we have a four day week.  We’re celebrating the 4^th of July on Thursday, June 30^th, then heading north to the Galilee for a three-day weekend Friday morning.  We’re supposedly staying right on the Sea of Galilee with access to the beach all night, so it should be a party.  I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and blog about that.

            I have to hit up pottery washing now, so I’m going to finish this entry afterwards during the lecture (it’ll look like I’m taking notes).  I’ll snap some pictures so everyone can see the beautiful craft of pottery washing.

            ANNNND we’re back.  Pottery washing was relatively uneventful.  Akiva found a LMLK seal, a stamp on a handle of a winged sun-disc bearing the word LMLK or lamelek meaning “of/belonging to the king.”  These stamps are very good for dating because they were used exclusively by King Hezekiah as part of his plan to reinforce the kingdom of Israel.

            A lot of folks complain about the really tiny potsherds that end up filling buckets.  It is very tedious and, as you can see, there is a lot of pottery to get through.  I like to argue that the body sherds could end up being important, but the reality of the situation is that those small pieces are a waste of time and space.  The exception is if they are diagnostic (handles, rims, etc.) or from a sealed locus, such as just beneath a floor.  Even in these cases, though, there is nothing a plain brown sherd will gain anybody, but it isn’t always easy to tell in the field whether or not  a potsherd is burnished or painted, so sometimes it’s better to suck it up and wash them.  Rocks, on the other hand, are unacceptable, as is bone.  Come on people; we’ve been at this for two weeks, get with the program.

            Speaking of being at this for two weeks, today we received a nice influx in labor.  A total of 13 new volunteers, or as we called them, “fresh meat,” from Lancaster Bible College joined our fields.  Our squares got two new folks, Ian and Beth.  They seem nice enough, and were very willing to be coached, so while they were a little shaky today I am confident they’ll be all set in a day or two.  The biggest difficulty comes when they are unclear on the size of potsherds to collect.  We tried to give them the honest answer, which is, “it depends,” but sometimes you just have to suffer your first pottery washing to understand what is and isn’t worth it.  It’s hard to give a rule that applies to all areas because, as I mentioned before, it all really depends on where they potsherds come from, whether they are diagnostic, and whether there is a chance of reconstruction.  I did my best and encouraged them to be liberal rather than overly selective, because I figure if we get too much we can wade through it later, where as if we lose stuff in the field it’s gone forever.

            Today’s activities centered on examining that mysterious circle of stones in the center of F7.  I think I’ve mentioned that.   Anyway, there was a semicircle of stones, and it was mysterious, and we checked them out today.

            The stones turned out to not be any kind of pit or kiln or installation of that nature.  They did turn out to be part of a possible cobble surface that may go along with the one next door.  We’ll see.  Our surface was all wobble and bent up and probably not good to walk on.  If it is still a surface, it is not a well preserved one.

            Also on the docket was busting some rocks that we declared tumble.  The first one was made of limestone and was hard to get to crack.  A few solid whacks, though, and it crumbled and we carried it out.  The second was big, and it sucked.  We could crack it, and it took three of us plus a metal spike to chip it small enough that we could carry the thing out.  I think that’s why I hurt right now.

            This is the last remaining large piece of the stone and the crater it used to be resting in.  We’re pretty sure it tumbled off of the casemate wall.

            I am sitting in lecture and noting how often archaeologists make use of the word “probably.”

            As a final treat, I am including a picture of a balk section:

            I just think this is neat.  Here you can see sand bags reinforcing the edge on top followed by a thick section of some kind of rubbley fill.  About halfway down you can make out a few centimeters of plaster and directly below that, towards the bottom of the balk, stones making up a cobble surface that continues into the section.

            Everyone go eat a piece of a pig for me.  Peace and bacon to all mankind.

You're Swimming in Poison; Your Body Won't Let You Swallow It

            This weekend, like most others, was approximately two days long.  Over the course of those two days we visited ten different places.  I will hopefully be able to recount all of them and provide pictures for most of them.  All the pictures will be on facebook anyway, but I took over 150 of them, so it’s gonna be slow uploading.

            Like last weekend, we got to sleep in until 7:30 for breakfast on Saturday.  Breakfast, as always, was a good time, and we were on the bus heading south by 8:00.  As we entered the desert, I was struck at how deserted it was.  I’ve spent some time in the southwest United States, so I’ve seen some desert, but this was a whole different animal, or lack thereof.  The place was barren of even meager plant-life for the most part.  I was blown away by the vastness and the browness and the hotness of the area.

            The first place we stopped was the Wadi Kilt.  I think that’s how it’s spelled.

          

            This location is noted for being the place Jesus spent 40 days in the desert being tempted by the Devil, or at least that’s what those crazy peo… Christians said.  Anyway, picture above is a monastery that was established a long time ago.  Monasteries can take a number of forms, either involving a communal system where everyone lives and eats together and withdraws to a private chamber in the evenings for prayer or an individual system where aside from working to sustain themselves the monks would spend all there time in solitude praying and writing and stuff.  I honestly forget which kind this one is, but I know they use the rock face it’s against for cave-based living quarters.

            After we dodged the Bedouin merchants peddling some kind of bullshit and got back onto the possibly over air conditioned bus, we headed south again towards the Dead Sea.  Our second stop was the settlement of Qumran.  Qumran’s claim to fame is being the home for the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Unfortunately, the scrolls were found in caves dotting the Dead Sea, and Qumran itself isn’t especially interesting.  The most interesting things were the ritual baths that dotted the whole area, which looked something like this:

            The residents of Qumran were super devout Jews who believed they were going to be on the winning side of an imminent and great war between good and evil.  They were also obsessed with ritual baths and living in the desert.  The way they ensured that their baths would be full, and their cisterns as well, was a series of aqueducts that funneled the biannual flooding from the Jordanian Mountains into several successive baths and cisterns.  There will photos on Facebook illustrating this point a little better.  We got lunch at Qumran, which was a little pricey, but whatever, it got us into the Dead Sea for cheap, plus I got Coke in a glass bottle.  While I was waiting in line to buy my Shawarma I saw the funniest thing:

            Vodka in a little cup.  Perfect.

            Despite the cautionary wisdom of the wait thirty minutes after eating to swim thing, the post-lunch activity was swimming in the Dead Sea.  Now, I don’t know about you folks who’ve never been, but the message I always received about the Dead Sea was that it’s a fun salty ocean you can float in.  Bullshit.  It’s poison.  In the words of Jon Strong, one of the area supervisors at Tel Gezer, your body won’t let you swallow it.  We were warned many times not to get it in our eyes or mouth for fear of blindness or unscheduled regurgitation.

            Despite these caveats, the Dead Sea was so goddamn fucking fun I can’t even fucking describe it without profanity.  The floor is slippery because of the mineral enriched mud and there are pits of soft mud you sink into that almost topple you over.  The stories of floating are absolutely true!  All you have to do is lie back and you just bob around.  It’s soooooo cool.

            Did I mention that the mud is supposed to be good for your skin?  I don’t know if this is true or if they just like seeing tourists cover themselves in mud.  Either way, they sell this stuff for exorbitant amounts of money in gift shops, so we got the treatment for free!  It was a good time, but the water did, in fact, taste terrible.  I got some in my mouth by mistake and was immediately filled with the desire to not have it in my mouth.  I spat a lot.  Another phenomenon that I am pretty sure is not exclusive to the Dead Sea is how incredibly hot sand and pavement gets in Israel.  I had neglected to pack sandals, not foreseeing this problem, so my foot situation was less than favorable.  I ended up getting my socks really dirty.

            After we showered off and were privy to shriveled old man bits, we hopped back on the bus to En Gedi.  For those of you heathens who I know are reading this, En Gedi is where David hit his sorry ass from Saul, who was on a murderous rampage, but only against David.  There was supposedly a cave around this spring that has since collapsed, but these pretty waterfalls remain.

            A few people decided to take a dip.  I didn’t because I had already changed out of my swimsuit, but that didn’t stop some people.  I wanted dry undies for Masada, though it was probably hot enough that it wouldn’t have mattered.  I took pictures instead.  It was a beautiful place.

            Aside from its biblical associations, En Gedi is also a wildlife preserve.  It plays a home to the Ibex

and the Rock Hyrex.

            It was getting late, but one of the coolest, most impressive stops on our southern tour was ahead, and we didn’t have much time.

            I didn’t catch a photo of the Masada  from below, so this model will have to do (though in English we spell it Masada, a it’s phonetic spelling would be Matsada):

            It’s a city/fortress/palace built by King Herod the Great and reused during one of the Jewish results against the Romans, in 64 AD I think (I mean 64 CE, of course).  If you remember what I wrote about Herodion, think of that on crack.  This place was crazy.  In fact, it’s so crazy that the ancient path that is still used to mount this, well, mountain, wasn’t a viable option for our group, since it’s about an hour of steep incline.  Instead, we took the tram.

            My mother would have hated it, but the view was amazing.  Masada was, you know, a pile of rocks, but aside from being an impressive bit of architecture and ancient civilization, the story of Masada’s role in the Jewish rebellion is legendary.  It comes to us from the historian Josephus and tells the tale of the Roman siege of Masada.

            There are still remnants of the Roman siege wall and camps that completely encompass the mesa the fortress is built on.  The Romans knew it would be impossible to assault the mountain directly, so they constructed a massive, and I mean HUGE, siege ramp with which they could mount an attack with rams and towers and all that fun LOTR stuff.

            There’s your ramp, a pile of dirt that lasted 2000 years.  The Romans busted down the gate or wall or whatever they were busting down, then retreated for the night, knowing that they could easily breach the walls the next morning and take the fortress.  Meanwhile, the Jews inside decided that the Romans were a bunch of shits and they’d rather be dead at their own hands than be killed or enslaved by Rome.

 

            Excavations actually revealed these potsherds that were drawn as lots.  After the heads of house had killed their wives and children, they drew these sherds to decide who had to kill everyone else and then off himself.  Heavy shit.

            We walked down the mountain by way of the Roman siege ramp and boarded the bus for the modern city of Arad where we were going to spend the night.  The place was an old hospital that was converted into a hotel, and though that seems kinda sketchy the place was really nice.  It had this weird system, though, where you had to insert this card thing attached to your key into a slot in the room in order to activate the electricity.  You either had to turn off the lights on your way out or get locked out of your room.  Good system.

            Not to be a bunch of lame-butts, after dinner we went out on the town, or as out on the town you can get in a Jewish city on the Sabbath.  We went to the mall so that Eric could get shorts (he split his at the crotch digging this week, hehehe).  When we came out things had started to open up so we went to a bar and got a couple drinks.  I tried Goldstar, a local brew (that is, Israeli), and while I don’t like to sound ethnocentric, I’ll stick to beer from anywhere else from now on.

            After breakfast today we went to Tel Arad, which is about fifteen minutes from the modern city.  This is a site I was really looking forward to because it’s one of those places Dr. K is always showing us pictures of and talking about.  It’s notable features are an Iron Age fortress containing a Jewish altar and a Canaanite city below.

            This altar is lovely, and it is interesting because of the two stones present.  One is obviously for YHWH, Lord of the Jews.  The smaller one is probably for Asherah, YHWH’s wife, whom the writers of the Bible so desperately would like everyone to just forget about.  I think it’s pretty neato.

            The Canaanite city was pretty cool.  I like the Bronze Age a lot.  It was too large for us to explore the whole thing, but it did have a cool water system.  Little did we know, 300 was shot here.

            Next it was to Tel Beer Sheba, another biblical hot spot.  In the Bible it is the site of Abraham and Abimelek’s agreement not to fuck which each other’s shit, so to speak.  There is also mention in Genesis of Isaac building an altar there, and one of the notable features of the site is the four horned altar that the bottom of the tel (it was moved there).

            Another impressive feature is the water system.  It was deep underground, and we had to don some pretty spiffy hardhats in order to venture into it’s depths.

            Good thing, too.  I bonked my head on the low ceiling a few times.  I’m glad we put safety first.  Beer Sheba is also cool for halving a circular city plan with those four-room houses I’ve mentioned before on the outside.  During wartime, the back room of the houses could be filled with rubble, and so the ring of houses created a casemate wall to defend the city.  Those ancients were a clever bunch.

            We drove west to Ashkelon to take a dip in the Mediterranean.  The water was super warm and the waves were huge.  We spent almost an hour in the water just horsing around.  The Dead Sea, while a fucking blast, was a little light on the splashing around.  I managed to get salt water blasted into my nose a fair number of times, which was unpleasant, but overall it was excellent.  A lot of us got stung by jellyfish.  I think I got it behind the knee.  Poor Sinéad got in right on the ass.  That sucks.

            We didn’t get to visit the actual Philistine city of Ashkelon, which was sad, but we rounded off the day with a trip to the valley that David kicked Goliath’s ass.

           

            It was a nice view.  Not much else to it.  It was a very long weekend.  I’m almost ready to pack it in for another 4:30 wake-up.  OH!  We did get our ranks boosted by some fifteen students at Lancaster Bible College.  Hurray, more crazi… Christians!  Hopefully a few are competent and they end up in my square.

            This is Lucas Reckling, signing off from Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam.  Stay shiny, browncoats.

General Tom Foolery: A Synonym for Cinnamon!

            So last we spoke (I wrote, you read) I was describing this cobble surface we discovered.  I understand there is some confusion as to where exactly I am digging, so I will do my best to illustrate it without pictures.  I am digging in a couple of squares adjacent to the “Solomonic Gate” and the “Barracks” in what has been dubbed “Administrative Building A.”  Further to the east resides “Administrative Building B” and, you guessed it, “Administrative Building C.”  These buildings are, as of now, assumed to be public in nature because a) they lack the “four-room house” configuration typical of domestic buildings and b) a similar city plan at Megiddo suggests administrative centers just inside the main gate.  Megiddo is a comparable site because in the Bible it says that Solomon fortified Gezer, Hazor, and Megiddo at the same time, so if we take this to be true, than Gezer may have a similar layout.

            We found this cobble floor just next to the barracks but at a much higher level than the foundation of those walls.  This suggests that the 10^th century walls were reused by this later surface, probably 8^th century, which matches up with an extension to the barracks further north.  Surfaces are good because not only do they provide potential material atop them, but the material beneath them is sealed, untouched, and can be used to firmly date the stratum above.  For example, if we find mostly Iron I pottery directly under the cobbles, it was most likely constructed during the late Iron I or early Iron II periods because it couldn’t possibly be constructed before the pottery was made.

            We had to prepare the area for a photograph, however the guys on top wanted us to not only clean the surface but also weed the adjacent barracks wall and define the stones so that all of it could be captured in the picture.  That project was left for this morning, since there is no sense in cleaning and leaving it overnight before the photo.

            In this picture, you can see the cobble surface towards the top, the eastern side of the square.

            In this one, the cobble surface is at the bottom, the camera facing west.

            Here is our square at the end of Tuesday.

            And here it is again at the end of Thursday.

            That was most of the excitement from yesterday.  There was a pretty amusing scenario though that I thought I’d share.  So one of the guys from a different square is hauling some big rock and Steve warns us not to try and be macho if there is a big rock, but to get another person and haul it out safely.  I made a smart-ass comment: “What if there are girls watching?”  He calls me over and I’m thinking, “Great,” because I hate it when old people take my shit seriously.  He then gathers us around and advises us, from what appeared to be a place of experience, that all a woman cares about really is what a man can do in the “marriage bed” and that if we go giving ourselves hernias we could potentially compromise our prowess in the bedroom.  This was sufficiently uncomfortable and I hope my mother didn’t read this paragraph.

            Last night Akiva and I cracked open the bottles of Arak and grapefruit juice and had a pre-bed drink, which turned into a pre-bed-and-stay-up-playing-hearts drink, but I found my sleep to be restful and I awoke this morning feeling refreshed.  I have to drink before bed more often.

            This morning Sam was back and out first task was to clear out the cobble surface area for a photo.  We were up on the all of the barracks cutting weeds out of cracks and brushing furiously trying to get the stubborn plants to yield.  Finally, the area was clean enough to take a picture of and we all went about our days.

            The herd was back.

            Philip and Sam had the task of removing the cobble surface and digging directly below it, sifting all the dirt for any kind of material remains that might be missed by the naked eye.  It’s amazing how many important artifacts are either rocks or look a lot like rocks, so it makes it difficult to find them sometimes.  Sam found this odd conical potsherd with a hollow in it that I said was probably the leg of some zoomorphic vessel (that is, one shaped like an animal, if you’re not into the whole Greek derivatives thing).  It turns out that I was right and I felt like a real archaeologist for a little bit until I did a victory dance and surrendered the dignity I had just earned.

            I was in the center of F8 leveling another rocky area we thought might be connected to the cobbles and removing many imbedded boulders.  I am not usually one for good detail work, but I ended up pretty pleased with the result.  The hardest part is defining the balks towards the top because they get dried out and crumbly.  I didn’t think to take any pictures today, so you’ll all have to use your imaginations; it’s mostly grey dirt anyway.

            Every Friday after fruit break is a Tel Tour where we get to go around and check out the stuff that’s going on across the field.  Field West (I’m in East) is excavating some of those four-roomed houses I mentioned earlier.  They are also finding all sorts of architecture that hasn’t quite been identified.  Much of Field East is finding a destruction layer full of full vessels broken in situ, so that’s pretty neat.

            It’s Friday, so we don’t have pottery washing or anything.  It’s a free afternoon, so I think once I post this I will spend it napping or reading or something.  A lot of folks have been in the pool, but I haven’t really felt like getting sunburned yet.

            This weekend we head south to the desert to check out Arad, Masada, and the Dead Sea.  It looks to be a fun time.  I’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and blog in great detail Sunday night when we get back.

Enjoy your weekends everyone.

Armed to the Sphincters

            Well well well, ladies and gentlemen of my vast readership, it would appear that the last two days have been full of fun and excitement.

            Wednesday brought with it a large leap in progress for our squares.  Thanks to Jay, the architect, we were able to string our balk lines.  Up until then, we had been avoiding the edges of our square or imagining balk lines without any clear definition.  With the limits of our square defined, now we can dig more aggressively and monitor the stratigraphy much more easily.  We ended up stringing a balk across the two squares, where the small wall had been originally.  There was a balk here originally, which we lowered, and there was a question of whether or not we’d be keeping it there.

            We also extended the balk like between F7 and F8 to go all the way to the wall of Dever’s barracks (I call them Dever’s because that’s what he called them, though there isn’t any apparent evidence for what exactly the use of that structure was.).  This meant that were officially extending F8 to the barracks and that Philip and I were clear to start taking the section down in 10 cm. chunks.

            We had to weed first then we started hacking away with the pickaxes.  After the top layer is loosened, we used something like a hoe to pull all the dirt and rubble into goofas, picking up significant pieces of pottery as we saw them.  I am not sure how much I stressed the abundance of potsherds in Israel.  When you walk on a dirt path, you will find pottery.  It isn’t going to be 3000 or 4000 years old, probably, but it could be as old as 2000 years.  The fact is, body-sherds, the ones that are smooth and curved and come from the body of a vessel, are practically worthless unless they contain an inscription, painting, glaze, etc.  Much more appealing are the rims, handles, and bases of vessels, as those are the most easily datable features of a piece.  In the first few days, we were picking up body-sherds that were bigger than our thumbnails.  Since the first pottery washing session, the average size of a sherd we collect has risen dramatically.

            There wasn’t much pottery but there were a ton of rocks and rubble to hack through.  This made the going very slow and also encouraged us to dig unevenly because the dirt near the wall was much looser and came up with a brush.  By the end of the day, we had created a three-tiered area because the space next to the wall was lower and we didn’t have time to move all the way across on the next highest level.  We were suffering not only from a lack of manpower (only two of us were trying to dismantle this section) but also a pressure from those in charge to work faster but still keep things clean.  There is only so much the two of us could do in that respect, and we voiced our concerns to Steve.  He told us just to do our thing and he’d protect us from the big bad archaeologists who demanded immediate results, so that was nice.

            While Phil and I were dismantling this balk section, Sam was articulating and leveling in the southeast corner of F8.  There are numerous rocks that we think are just fallen from the walls, but in order to remove them we have to pick around them and see whether or not they are actually part of something.  Sam was doing a really good job, just sayin’.  She’s much better at the details than I am, big surprise.

           

            During the dig, we also were visited by some friends:

They pooped all over the tel, but they made funny noises and amused me to no end.

            Yesterday was store day.  I got sunscreen and some kind of licorice liquor called Arak.  A local delicacy, they say.  I dunno about that, but you’re supposedly supposed to mix it with grapefruit juice.  Akiva and I split the bottle and were gonna crack into it last night for a pre-bed nip, but then I had to draw top plans for our square instead.  Drawing top plans involves getting the plan from the day, then tracing it onto a new piece of graph paper to be used the next day.  That copy is edited according to what is found or removed, then the copy is copied and filed, and so on.  It’s not difficult, but it took long enough that neither Akiva nor myself was interested in staying up later.

            Today Sam was sick, so we were down a person and had a lot of work to do.  We borrowed someone from the next square, so she was able to keep leveling and articulating the area Sam had been doing.  Phil and I leveled out our area and continued to go down.  Our herd of friends visited and made silly noises, which was fun.  We kept hitting rocks and stuff and ended up clearing the whole area except one little path of really hard packed plaster.  We brushed the area off to assess it and it turns out what we had was a cobble surface.  This is cool for a number of reasons that I will post tomorrow.

I wish you all love and pancakes.

Yes, I Facebook Chat With the People Sitting Next to Me

            Another two days come and gone, another pair of socks that will never again be pure white.  Greetings again from the Holy Land.

            Previously on my blog I had to direct everyone to Facebook in order to see all of my photos.  Since Sunday night I have figured out a way to post images to the blog itself in a timely manner.  I will be doing that here in some cases, though I suggest you investigate Facebook for more complete photo documentation.

            This week we got a new square supervisor.  Actually, he’s always been our supervisor, he’s just a week late and will be leaving a week early.  His name is Steve Andrews and he did his dissertation in Akkadian and somehow already heard of me, so we have some stuff to talk about.  Unfortunately, his arrival did not immediately end the fact that our area can best be summed up in the word fustercluck.  The grid was messed up so we didn’t have any secure balk lines, there are pits and fills everywhere, and no one seems to know what the hell he’s doing (this has all since been sorted out).

            While articulating the casemate wall in E-F8, Sam turned up a full vessel intact.  If you look below, however, you’ll see that this was in fact a plastic Coke bottle. 

            This area was previously an exploratory pit dug by the great Dr. Dever in 1990.  The pit remained a pit until 2006 when some old lady named Ruth fell into it from a balk, causing a scare for volunteer safety during which the pits were filled in.  Somehow we spent a whole week in these squares without the knowledge that this happened or the knowledge that this whole corner of F8 would have to be dug out.  Our goal at this point was to look back into the records to see if the previous excavator (Dr. K) had taken a height reading on the bottom of the.  If this were the case, we could just hack through the stuff until that level willy-nilly.

            In the other corner of square F8 were a bunch of stones that were presumably tumble from the casemate wall.  In order to remove a rock you have to confirm that it is in fact “floating” and not resting on anything.  We spent much of the day lowering the level of the square to get under these stones and confirm their floating status. 

            One of the stones was much too large to simply carry out, so Grandpa was called in, our sledgehammer.  Sam took some whacks because she missed out on the other huge block we had broken, then I got to have at it.  Unfortunately, this was a rock that, when hit with a hammer, hits back.

            The shrapnel from the rock drew blood on my in two places.  Its demise was assured, but it decided to cause as much calamity as possible before it went.  I made sure to throw the pieces extra hard into the pile as payback.

            Yesterday evening involved pottery washing and a lecture on the Philistines.  We’ve been playing a lot of hearts and spades lately, so I think yesterday after dinner was a hearts night.

            This morning was the hardest wake-up yet for me.  I woke up around 2:30 and was pumped to see all the time I had left to sleep, but when the alarm went off I couldn’t have been unhappier.

            At the Tel we finally had a better game plan.  Steve and Matt spent last night studying the old material from our area to figure out what exactly is going on.  I admit to being slightly peeved that this is taking place a week into the dig, but whatever, it’s done now.

            The plan today was to try and outline the pit that was backfilled in 2006 and then re-excavate it.  The way one does this is to scrape the surface of the square with a trowel.  There is a distinct difference in the texture and toughness of a pit that’s been refilled.  Philip and I went about this task and scraped out an area roughly one and a half meters by one meter.  We continued to scrape down to try and find the bottom of the pit.  Unfortunately, no one had, in fact, taken a level on the bottom of the pit, so we were going to have to dig until we could feel a difference in the soil.

            It was pretty tricky because we had to not only find the sides, but also accommodate for the fact that the pit was dug in ’90 and had probably eroded on the edges before being filled in.  This meant that some of the sides were not straight across or down and so we had to really let the dirt guide the trowels.  Even though the work was more of a necessity than quality excavation, the practice was good and I felt like I was getting the hang of using a trowel.  It’s actually really easy to feel the difference in how packed the dirt is if you trust the tool to do the work for you.

            On the other side of the pit there was a strip of packed dirt and then more softness around the tumble area.  A lot of the rocks are too deep to call floating, so Becca and Sam started peeling that area back to try and expose what we though was either another Dever trench or perhaps a place where someone took stones from the wall in antiquity.  By the end of the day, we started taking out the piece in the middle to create one big trench in front of the casemate wall so that we could finally call the rocks in our way tumble.  We didn’t quite finish, but that will be the first thing we do tomorrow.

            It’s looking we’ll still be extended F8 to the wall of the barracks and focusing on that.  We’re having a tough time moving quickly because there are only three people in our squares doing the digging the whole time.  I think they ought to give us some more people, especially if they want the squares extended, but unfortunately I don’t run the universe.

            One thing I did accomplish today was emptying goofas all over my shoes a few times.  Gross.

            I have some pictures of Tel Gezer and some other random stuff posted on FB now.  I wish you all the best.  Stay thirsty, my friends.

It's Not a Big Deal Lady

So this is just a test to see if I can get pictures to work on my blog.  I figure I'll tell a couple stories about some of the kind sales-folk of the Old City.  First, this one guy tries to entice Becca by shouting, "It's not a big deal, lady!" which was very funny.  Another guy greeted us with, "Hey, howdy, how are you?  Give me a chance to rip you off?"  I laughed.  He gets my vote.

Success!

Lo Agvanyot, Lo Spicy (no tomatoes, no spicy)

            Since these photos are gonna take more than an hour to upload, how about some blogging?  This has been one heck of a weekend; let me tell you!

            After I last left you I ate dinner, the contents of which are probably unimportant, though I am sure it included hummus and pita and was delicious, then played a cool new card game with some of the other people here.  It was kind of like multi-team pairs spit, and my partner was named Lucas, and so were team Lucas, and we are losing so far; the game goes to 500 and no one has broken 100 yet.  Then we watched The Princess Bride, then went to bed way late (10:00).

            On Saturday we got to sleep in until 7:30.  That was fun, except I woke up at 5:30.  Anyway, on the docket for Saturday was Herodion and Bethlehem.  We crossed over to the West Bank with absolutely no trouble and heading through the city of Bethlehem to Herodion.  King Herod, the guy who built the Temple Mount, was kind of a megalomaniac.  You can see his fort/palace complex in the distance because it looks like a volcano, a large, steep hill with a flat top.  The truth of the matter is that Herod took what was only a modest hill and made it into a huge one before sticking a fortress on top from which he could survey the whole area.

            The fort was big and round, with three half towers on the three sides and a full tower on the forth.  In the middle was a good ol’ Roman bathhouse, a courtyard, and a Roman dining room.  The dining room was particularly interesting because during on of the Jewish revolts, when they took Herodion over, the dining room was converted into a synagogue.

            From the top of the wall we could see the whole surrounding area.  In ancient times we would have been able to see the Dead Sea, even.  As it was, we could see Bethlehem and the Jordanian desert.  That place looks exceptionally inhospitable.  The desert looks inhospitable, not Bethlehem.  Bethlehem means “house of bread,” so I would consider it very hospitable.  We could also see Herod’s palace down lower on the hill and his gosh dang SWIMMING POOL.  Herod was such a bamf/douche bag that he built a huge swimming pool in the MIDDLE OF THE DESERT.  I was impress.  Fun fact, or not so fun:  the archaeologist leading the excavation of Herodion fell off of it and died.

            I hugged a column in the courtyard, but I think Sam has the picture of that.

            We took some stairs down into a deep tunnel system that served as an interior access point to a water cistern.  Some of the ceilings were really low and we had to duck.  Some corridors branched off but were barred by locked gates, which was a little disappointing.  Dan jumped down into this pit that was barred off to explore some hole, but it didn’t lead anywhere.  We kept following the tunnels and popped out on the side of the fake hill.  We walked around to the front and boarded the bus to head back into Bethlehem for lunch.

            We went to a store that specialized in carved olivewood to eat lunch.  The stuff they were selling was pretty impressive.  They had a ton of olivewood pieces and mother of pearl stuff too.  I saw some ill-sick-nasty bibles with covers made either of the olivewood or mother of pearl, but the English translations were all King James Version, so fuck that.

            I had Turkish coffee and a chicken shawarma for lunch.  It was tasty, but I still prefer falafel.  The tour guide made a really good call doing lunch then and then heading to the Church of the Nativity, because the church is usually packed.  After we ate, it was about noon, so we headed to the church hoping it would be emptier due to lunchtime.

            The Church of the Nativity was pretty impressive.  It was a massive Byzantine cathedral erected first by Constantine and again by Justinian, though you can still see the original floor mosaic through some trap doors in the Justinian era floor.  The church has stood since then, more than 1000 years.  The selling point of this particular church is the claim that it houses a cave system with the manger Jesus was laid in as well as the very rock Mary squeezed him out on.  When we made it through the very long line (though shorter than normal cause our tour guide was super clever) we got to see this rock, though it was covered in marble with a gold star on it.  The manger was equally tepid and so we went back upstairs too admire the Byzantine frescoes and mosaics, because they were way cooler.

            After the church we ditched the tour guide and headed into the Old City for a free afternoon.  Some of us cool kids, though, decided we’d hit up a cheap hostel and spend the night in the Old City.  That way we could do whatever we wanted and experience some of the Jerusalem nightlife.  We walked around and did some shopping for a few hours.  Kirsten bought a blue cape with silver embroidery.  I learned to say lo agvanyot (my transliteration may be off, so sue me), which means “no tomatoes,” thus allowing me to order falafel more efficiently.  The only downside to getting rid of the tomatoes is that some places put a tomato and cucumber salad on the sandwich, which means I lose out on the cucumber too.

            I ended up buying a camera and then celebrating with a six-sheckel falafel, less than two dollars.  Or I might have gotten the cheap falafel and celebrated with a camera.  Either way, we walked out to the New City in search of a hostel we could rent for the night.  We found two places to stay, but both were full up.  Steve Ortiz hooked us up with a place back in the Old City that gave us a slight discount from 100 sheckels down to 90, just under $30.  By the time we started heading back to the Old City, the Sabbath was ending and people were starting to come out in droves.

            By the time we made it back through Joffa Gate there was a party going on in the Old City.  Apparently there was some weird light shot going on.  We met up with Benjamin who took us back through some dark creepy streets on the way to hostel.  I was super lost until we hit Christian Quarter St., which has now become familiar to me, so we were going to have no problem finding our way back.  The hostel was really lovely.  There are pictures on Facebook.  It is hard for me to upload pictures to the blog because it takes super long, but we’ll see what I can do.  We had two rooms, one for the four girls: Sam, Becca, Becca, and Kirsten, and one for the guys: Matt, Akiva, and this guy!

            After dropping our stuff off we hit up some restaurant for my second Turkish coffee and second falafel of the day.  After that we roamed the streets.  There were people juggling fire and all sorts of light sticks flying around.  There were also numerous light shows going on around the city that you could get to by following lighted paths of different colors.  I have pictures up and I might try to load a few videos on the Facebook as well.  We must have walked the length of the city something like four times before trying to head into the New City to find a bar.  We ended up making it to the hostel and then not making it back out again.  It was just as well.  My legs were on fire and I was exhausted.

            I woke up this morning, had my shower, and went into the kitchen for breakfast.  Benjamin had been up all night preparing for an exam and he had for us some sesame bread thing and cheese and zatar for breakfast.  We ate quickly because we needed to get to the other side of the city to meet the rest of the group to go onto the temple mount.

            We had kind of an adventure getting there.  Sam, the Beccas, and I were racing through the city, getting all sorts of lost, so I asked a security guard at a checkpoint that I assumed was to the Wailing Wall the way to the Dung Gate, by the temple mount.  He sent us all the way down the street where we met Steve, who then brought us all the way back to that checkpoint and through it.  I think that guard may have been trolling.  Anyway, crisis averted, we met with the rest of the gang and made our way up to the temple mount.  Security was a breeze since no one brought weapons or bibles, and we made it up in no time.

            The first thing you notice once you’re standing on the temple mount is how freakin’ big it is.  It doesn’t look monstrous from afar, but it is HUGE and flat.  The Dome of the Rock is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen ever.  Unfortunately, since 2000, non-Muslims are not allowed into the mosque.  Fortunatley, AJ is a Muslim, so she was going to go in.  I was thinking about posing as her fiancé with the intention of converting to try and sneak in, but we thought it best to leave things alone.  AJ got some sweet pictures of the inside, so I contented myself with the outside, though I was incredibly jealous.

            Outside the Dome of the Rock on the temple mount is a place that is considered to be a secondary possibility for the Holy of Holies from the Temple.  Unfortunately, the most likely candidate is also the Rock of the Dome of the Rock from which Mohammed ascended into heaven, hence the controversy.  We also looked at the eastern gate of the mount, which has been sealed up.  Both Muslims and Jews believe this is the site at which the Messiah will return, so there are vast cemeteries of both faiths just beyond it to ensure a speedy ascent when Messiah comes.

            We left the mount and walked part of the Via Delarosa, the way of the cross, and ended up back at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which was nice because I didn’t have any pictures of it on my new camera.  We had some free time to grab lunch (I got some delicious falafel, but it was 15 sheckels) and then met the bus.

            Our afternoon activity was a trip to the Holocaust Museum.  I’d rather not go into the experience, but they have some truly horrible things on display there and it was not fun to walk through.  The only plus was that I ended up with a swell construction paper kippa to wear, but other than that I was miserable and on the brink of tears the whole time. 

That about sums up the weekend.  I’ll be able to provide picture through Facebook to illustrate some of my stories, and I’ll be providing info in the descriptions, so I suggest that you all check it out.  If we’re not friends, send me a message.

Love and Peace from the Holy Land.

PS.  Falafel count is up to 5.