Archeology inspired poetry...
the floor...The Floor...THE Floor...THE FLOOR
We dug today, and found the floor!
We dug four days to find the floor!
We dug through dirt and rocks galore.
And then today we found the floor.
We heaved out stones and heaved some more.
And finally, FINALLY, found the floor!
We cleaned and scraped and swept the floor.
Yes, finding it was quite a chore
But at least we found the floor.
Now, if only we could find a door...
The departure of the Irvine group means our team is much smaller, and it felt that way today. Not a bad feeling when pottery washing came around - we seemed to have hardly any. However, on site, things seemed much different. Lot's of work...less people. We've gone from five squares open down to three, and, since we were essentially done in F8 on Thursday I was moved to square ZZ-0.
ZZ-0 is completely on the opposite side of the complex in comparison to where I was working prior, so getting my bearings took a few minutes. We didn't have many big finds today, but we moved about a half-meter worth of dirt out.
The two things we did find were a column with a "fluted" end and a hole drilled through it and a piece of marble squared off on three sides and rounded on the last. Concerning the column, we're not talking a small hole, it's wide enough to put your hand through. We will have it dug further tomorrow and maybe then we will have more answers about what it could be. The marble piece is somewhat perplexing - it looks like a piece of a banister from a staircase. There was some speculation from Darryl (a retired officer) that it could be a night-stick.
Thanks to all for continuing to read this - we're glad you're enjoying this adventure with us!
Every morning we wake up at 4:00 AM, get ready...tighten the crusty laces (and I mean crusty...hard and caked with dirt) on our boots and head to the Kibbutz parking lot to meet the bus by 4:40. The bus takes us three-quarters of the way up the hill, and then we're on our own.
The trail is steep, and full of rocks which jut up and out, reminders of the road that once led the way up to the ancient city of Hippos. It is vital to lift your feet while walking. Along the way their are even more reminders of this mountain's history. These come in the form of "Warning: Mine Field" signs and small bunkers that denote it as a former outpost of the Israeli Military. Most, if not all, of the mines are now gone...but I have no desire to be the person who finds the remnants of that not-so-distant past.
I have never been intimidated by the mountain, or the trail, and Andrea and I are generally some of the first ones up the hill. Living at higher elevation and having a love for the outdoors have prepared us well for making this daily trek. Although, at 5:00 AM there's not much to enjoy about it...
F8 Update!
The past two days we have had some amazing fortune! Darryl, Sam and Drew came over from their square (which is mostly finished) and helped us get closer to finishing our square. Just a little bit of work tomorrow, and (crossing fingers) no more big rocks. We've found the floor of what Dr. Schuler believes is a plaza area. This afternoon someone called it "Plaza De Arny." We also have the possible beginning of a staircase heading to the west. We will have that uncovered by tomorrow, I am confident.
As advertised, some highlights from tonight's sunset over the Sea of Galilee. Unlike other nights where we generally sit right outside our temporary home; tonight we walked down to the edge of the water, let the waves hit our feet and enjoyed the beauty of God's Creation...
Listen up class! Today we are going to learn a little bit more about Hippos-Sussita!
Last night Andrea and I attended a lecture given by one of the head archaeologists here and it reminded me that I haven't actually told you much about the city we are excavating. So, for all you know we could be excavating any old place...literally.
Hippos is a city of the Decapolis, a group of Ten cities located in Roman Palestine that were more culturally connected to Greece and Rome than to other Middle Eastern cultures. The city was inhabited from around the 3rd Century BC and was abandoned after a major earthquake in 749 AD.
The city is located just to the east of the Sea of Galilee near the Golan Heights. In fact, as we learned last night, the city's water source was a spring in the Golan. An aqueduct 24 kilometers long carried water to the city. It is located high atop a hill (as you have seen in our pictures) and was easily defended; on the north their is a steep cliff face meaning that the only way to reach the city was the main road to the south and east.
Christianity came to Hippos around the 4th Century AD, and eventually the city became the seat of a Bishop, according to historical records. As of the excavation there have been three churches and a cathedral unearthed (we are excavating the north east church - you can see an aerial shot of the church complex here)
I hope this brief history lesson has been informative and not too boring.
In other news - we had A LOT of help on our square today...but many, many more rocks to be moved. We hope to find the floor by the end of the week. I am confident that we can make it after this morning.
Another sunset post may be forthcoming as today was just as, if not more, clear than yesterday.
Three posts in one day (if you count the one I wrote last night and posted this morning before leaving for the site)! I hope I don't overwhelm you! I just wanted to quickly share tonight's sunset. At least the latter part of it. We did not get to enjoy the full sunset tonight as we were attending a lecture about the last ten years of work here. I am positive, had we been here, it would have been spectacular. It was so clear all day today.
...but somebodies got to do it.
Today was one of the clearest we've had on the dig. The sun came up, early, and the moon stayed visible late into the morning.
As we continued to excavate our square (translated: we found more...and more...and more...and more rocks) the day became warm, and then hot. But their is beauty in that heat. From the top of the mountain where Hippos is located you get a fantastic view of the Galilee. Perhaps this is the "city on a hill" which "cannot be hidden." To imagine the forum square in all of it's glory, the churches we are uncovering...people walking down the Decumanus Maximus (main East/West Road), it's absolutely amazing. People lived here...and we are uncovering their lives. We can only imagine what the city would have looked like when they walked the streets, and if it's anything like I imagine it would have been amazing.
Main Cistern in the Forum with Tiberias in the background.
The South side of the Sea of Galilee.
Galilee with Mount Tabor (I believe) in the background. Mount Tabor is the traditional site of the Transfiguration.
Cameron's Log: Day Six...
Found more big rocks today. At one point counted 21 awaiting removal.
Uncovered some large stones, looked like the makings of a wall. Unfortunately there was little evidence to support this and Dr. Schuler suspected it was a "floating" wall, meaning it was built later by squatters or had fallen rather suspiciously...
Upon removing some stones discovered there were, indeed, more underneath! A wall...put back the stones...
Found an interesting piece of marble tile toward the end of the day. Seems to have some kind of paint on it. During pottery washing we discovered another piece that fits like a puzzle and has the same red on it...
It has been fun to work in the same square as Andrea. Too bad she gets called away to draw, and will do this even more in the coming two weeks I am sure.
For those who claim she "doesn't get dirty," here she is working hard.
It should be mentioned, this post was written on Sunday July 12th after the dig day ended. However, since we had just posted commentary on our trip to Jerusalem I did not want to overwhelm you, the reader, with so many posts in such a short time...
I know Andrea just posted to say we'd be back tomorrow with pictures and posts, but I felt the urge to post at least one photo to pique your interest...
This is the FIRST picture I took on the camera when we got to the Old City in Jerusalem. It is Saint Mark's Road - the guest house where we stayed was just down the street.
Tomorrow we start again...dark and early...until then. Enjoy.
There's an episode of Seinfeld that revolves around the Costanza Family's holiday tradition called "Festivus." Essentially it is Frank Costanza's invented holiday which the family celebrates around Christmas time. Some traditions include the "festivus pole," the "airing of grievances" (I GOT A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE) and the "feats of strength," which means someone has to wrestle Frank... Today we weren't wrestling any geriatric veterans, but what we were wrestling were gigantic basalt and limestone rocks.
Inside the square...many of these await our arrival tomorrow morning and have to be removed before we can do more digging...
Using the "Arny Net" to remove a large basalt stone...
Andrea, who is pulling double duty as a blogger on this (our personal blog) and the "official" dig blog (Dig It) posted a great You Tube video today of what it truly takes to get these monsters out of the square - they aren't light, although the limestone is much more manageable than the basalt.
Thus far I have been incredibly happy with our square, and with our team in F8. We've gotten a lot of work done, especially when you consider the fact that when we started to dig in our square we had to work through at least a half meter of debris that was dumped on the site last year. Now we are nearly a meter down from the original ground level, we've found (fingers crossed) a wall and a door frame and we are only about a half meter above the street level. All-in-all it has been a quite eventful week.
Tomorrow is our last day for the workweek. When we get done on the mountain we will come down, eat a quick lunch, finish packing for Jerusalem and then leave the Kibbutz by 2:30. We will be touring on Friday and Saturday, and will head back on Saturday night just in time to eat a picnic dinner (Saturday is Shabbat and the dining hall is closed) and then to bed to get ready for more digging on Sunday! We will not have our computers with us in Jerusalem, and even if we did we would not have time (or internet access) to do any posting of anything. So, we will have to get you up to speed when we get back...Fear not - we will return to our regularly scheduled programming shortly (and there may be a short post tomorrow before we leave, but I make no promises).
I'll leave you with this...this morning we saw the moon set and the sun rise while we were on the dig and both were quite spectacular.
Andrea's camera ended up underneath her ice-cold water bottle and when we took it out of the pack it was a little foggy...it created a neat effect on this photo however.
The sun rise...thankful for the cloud cover (it did not last until breakfast today, we were not nearly as spoiled.
Before we left we took our nephews and niece to the park and the zoo. At one point we were "racing" and my youngest nephew kept singing "First is the worst, second is the best, third is the one with the treasure chest." Now, I remember this rhyme from when I was young, however we used to say "third is the one with the hairy chest." In the context of the dig so far I have to say I like his version better, and it seems much more appropriate as we made some neat finds today in our square. It should also be noted that the first day was not necessarily "the worst" and the second was not necessarily "the best," so all that really needs to be taken into account is the fact that, in respect to the first week, today was somewhat of a "treasure chest." Did you get all that?
The day started just like the first two days...cloudy, and somewhat comfortable for working in. The sun stayed away until breakfast, so we waited until then to put up our sunshade. Even before this we made a cool find - a piece of braided glass, probably some sort of ornamental piece, we will have to wait and see if we hear anything more about it.
After breakfast we made two more finds; a (formerly) round stone flattened on both sides. One of the sides had a groove cut into it. At some point it had been broken as one of the sides that should have been round was flat. There are still some questions as to what it is, or was used for, but the thought is that it might have been some kind of mortar stone. The other find, which came right at the end of the day, was a piece of a grinding stone. The stone was smooth and had been worked into a round shape. There was also a "foot" attached to it. At one point it probably would have had four feet to stand on...
The "wonderful" thing about all of these finds is the break from work that generally comes along with them. In some cases, most specifically with the important items, Kristina (the Assistant Director and Small Finds Registrar for the dig) has to come over and take field notes about positioning, etc. At the same time Dr. Schuler comes over to way in on what it may be and to photograph the item where it was.
In other news, we have been working this week with Arny (a dig veteran) and two guys from Concordia University Irvine, Eric and Will. Eric and Will have been a lot of fun to get to know and to work with. The have dubbed our group "Arny's Army" and come in every day humming the theme from The A-Team...
This post has gotten rather long, but I wanted to address a couple of comments from the past days. First, I changed the permissions on Flickr so that you should be able to look at all sizes of any given picture. Second, I will do my best to post photos, but I can't make any promises. It will depend on whether or not I remember to take some while we are up on the site, it's not always the easiest thing to do...
I remember when we were here three years ago...the clouds in the morning were fleeting and the air at the dig site was generally calm. Thus far on the dig we have had rather mild weather in comparison. The clouds hung around and kept things nice and "cool" until nearly breakfast time, meaning we had nearly 3 good hours of work in the morning with almost comfortable conditions!
After breakfast the sun came out and it was torture, apart from the wind. The wind, which I never remember feeling much of on the dig. However, some could argue that I spent much of my time in a cistern and have no business commenting on the windiness of the dig. So, I will leave it up to you, the reader, to decide whether or not I am a trusted source.
In addition to the wind on the site there has been a constant wind moving east across the Sea of Galilee which I can say with some certainty was not "the norm" when we were here before. It makes life easier on the Kibbutz...and makes the Sea of Galilee, which is MUCH lower than three years ago, quite choppy.
In other news, my square, F8, was covered with debris from previous years when we first opened it yesterday. Throughout the day today we worked toward removing this fill in order to get down to the previous ground level. By the end of the day I would estimate we had about a quarter of a meter (everything is metric here, you will just have to get used to it) left to remove. We also found what looks like a doorway on the south side of the square - we should begin true excavation of the square tomorrow, so an update on the doorway (and possible room attached) could be forthcoming before the end of this week.
Food For Thought: How crazy do you have to be to pay (good) money to "volunteer" to work hard for 7 hours a day? (I was going to say "all day" but since we work from 5 - 12 it didn't seem quite right)
Day one has come...and gone.
I awoke...early...at 3:00 AM, and was unable to get back to sleep before we met the bus at 4:45 AM. Similar to the first day of the dig three years ago, we spent much of the time before breakfast clearing the sight of loose rubble and vegetation that has grown over the past year. We also plotted out the squares (typically 5 meter by 5 meter areas) where teams will be working. There are so many people on site in these first two weeks that Dr. Schuler has opened up five squares to begin. As for Andrea and I, we will be in Square F-8. Although, very soon Andrea will be called upon to draw all kinds of rocks. I'm still impressed by the way she is able to focus all of her energy into her hand...
It is nearly 9 PM here, past bedtime for archaeologists...
So, here's my food for thought:
I would recommend going HERE to get a bigger and better view...
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