Am I Tan Or Is This Just Dirt?

            Day three of digging is over.  We’re still clearing the rain-wash off of our squares, so the actual digging hasn’t turned up much, but it’s been a hard day nonetheless.  The two squares next to us were dismantling large sections of balk, which meant many pounds of dirt were being loaded into goofas.  We dump the dirt a ways up the Tel, so the most efficient way to dump all of the goofas is to form a line, kind of like a bucket brigade.  These travel uphill and are out in the sun, and we did many of them, moving hundreds of pounds of material, maybe more.

            There was a bit of confusion in the beginning of the day in regard to the stringing of our squares.  When I say stringing, I mean using string to measure and mark the areas of the balks and the space that we will excavate.  Apparently something was off so our grid wasn’t matching with that of previous excavations, which is problematic because when we take final measurements and try to do drawings and stuff, it won’t all match up.  There was also talk of combining the square and the half square into one area to be dug together.  I was busy doing stuff, so I am not entirely sure of how the problem was solved, but we ended up moving some strings 16 cm. over or something; not my department.

            Out primary task today was to finish clearing out the rain-wash, the accumulated run off from the last 3-5 years that our square lay fallow.  We had to clear about 5 inches off of a 12 m² section of our square.  We performed this task by swinging a pickaxe to loosen the material then brushing and scooping it into goofas.  While we did this we had to extract pottery sherds of notable size or shape and put them into buckets with tags.  This task took most of the day, combined with the goofa lines that happened every twenty minutes or so.  The only good thing about goofa lines is the water break that comes afterwards.

            After we finished up digging we went to a supermarket on the way home.  I didn’t end up getting anything because nothing really struck my fancy.  We all know I can always eat, but I was uninspired and the project is doing a really good job of providing us with frequent meals (5 a day!).  I was thinking about getting some beer to have in our fridge for some post dig relaxation, but it was something like 45-60 shekels a six-pack, roughly 15-20 dollars, and it is not worth that much for beer, much less the questionable product they sell here.

            Tonight the hotel is having a kind of welcome dinner for us.  They are barbequing out on the lawn, but I don’t have any idea what kind of food Israeli barbeque constitutes.  I managed to import a few pictures that Sam and I took with her camera, and I going to see if I can post them here.  I am switching out of Word to Blogger, so we’ll see how this turns out.

Here's a link to the album on facebook, it's only three pictures.  I ended up only using ones Sam took, so all credit to her.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150650683650722.700221.736660721

The one of the Gezer "high place" does warrant some more explanation than I felt like doing on facebook.  It's basically the Stone Hedge of the Near East.  It consists of ten standing stones, of various sizes, some no longer standing, and a stone basin.  The purpose of this site is unknown, though archaeologists speculate that it may symbolize some sort of agreement between several tribes, represented by the stones.  I believe it dates to the Middle Bronze Age, or 1950-1550 BCE to you layfolk.

PS. I'm tan...ish