Sorry for not posting yesterday. The day was busy, then we went out at night and I was too tired to post when we got back. I don't think that I will be posting every day from now on. The days are getting busier and there is less new stuff that we are doing now that we are actually starting conservation stuff. If there is an especially exciting day I will write a post, but otherwise I will give general summaries of a few days at a time in my weekly posts.
Yesterday we went to the local pottery lab. The pottery lab had shelves and tables covered in boxes on boxes of pottery, both whole vessels and sherds. There were four work tables covered in little pieces of pottery recently brought from excavations that the pottery expert was working on. She explained to us what happens in the lab, what she does with pottery brought to her, and her general experience in the Israel Antiquities Authority. She showed us some of the pottery she is reconstructing and how that process is done. I have a little experience with pottery documentation and reconstruction from my Italy excavation, so some of the material she talked about was familiar to me. In a few weeks we will be working in a pottery lab, and I am looking forward to it!
After the pottery lab we had a lecture about antiquities looting and trade. Israel has the only legal antiquities trade in the Mediterranean and Middle East, but there are lots of problems with looting of sites and illegal selling of artifacts. The guys talking to us told us of some of their first-hand experience catching looters, which I thought was pretty cool.
We finished the day with a tour of some cultural sites within the Old City. We went to the Ramhal's synagogue and learned a little bit about him and the synagogue. Then we visited the theater center, met the director of the center, and got a personal invitation to the show that night. The show was interesting. It was all in Hebrew, which made it difficult to understand. It relied heavily on movement and hand motions, though, so the general ideas of the story could be understood pretty well. The show was about a woman's experience in the Holocaust, told by her and her son directly to the audience years later as they baked in their kitchen. They were actually baking, and gave us (the audience) the food when the show was done. It was both a comedic and serious show, with different parts of the story conveying different emotions. After the show we stayed and listened to a band from Tel Aviv. The music (again all in Hebrew) was pretty good. I understood parts of the songs, which is about as much as I understand of today's American music too. Their singing needed a little work, though. Some of the harmonies were off, and during other parts it seemed like they were straining their voices. It was still entertaining, and it was good to be out at night. We usually go to bed between nine and ten o'clock, so we were all tired but happy to have gone out and done something.
Today I relaxed, I really didn't do anything. I went for a short walk in the early afternoon, but that was it. For dinner we were invited to a local artist's home. Yesterday during our cultural tour we met Shelley (the STS director) giving a tour of Akko to art students from Jerusalem, and Eitan, a local artist, was with them. He makes fabric art, stitching scenes into stretched fabrics. His house is nice, full of different artistic pieces he collects, like Israeli pottery and sculptures. Dinner was very good. There was lots of variety, and it was all delicious. A perfect example of Israeli hospitality!
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