Playing in the Dirt

Sorry for not posting yesterday. It was a busy day and when I had free time I was just too tired. There really wasn't that much to write about anyway. In the morning we had a lecture about archaeology in Israel and the Israel Antiquities Authority. After the lecture we went to Tel Akko, also called Napoleon's Hill. The locals in Akko believe the hill was built by Napoleon during his siege of Akko in 1799, but it is actually a man-made hill dating from the Early Bronze Age to the early Hellenistic Period. The tel is huge, but only one part of it is being excavated. The tel is very underwhelming. There is nothing to see. It needs a lot of work and a lot of money. After we "toured" the tel we had another lecture about archaeology in Israel.

Today we went on a dig. We got up at 5am to travel to Ramat Yishai, where we participated in a rush dig before a house was built. The site was in the middle of the neighborhood. It was weird working in the middle of a town with people walking by, houses on either side, and the sounds of the city. The site was from the Byzantine Period, and the head archaeologist isn't sure exactly what it was. It looked like a wine press combined with a quarry. There were signs of of a quarry as well as plastered pits with mosaic floors and drainage holes leading to a shallow pool with a mosaic floor. Excavating the pool and the pits was cool because once we had parts of it down to the mosaic floor we knew what to expect, and it was cool to be digging and then come on the mosaic. There was one pit that was perfectly round, filled with pulverized rock and seemed to go on forever. Some of the hypotheses were that it was a toilet, or a dump pit. Finally it was determined that it was a test pit drilled by the company that was going to build the house, and that it probably went down for more than 8 meters. That would have been a long excavation! I really enjoyed working at the site. I love excavating, so it was nice to get back into the dirt. When the excavation day was done we went to Beit She'arim. We walked through some of the more famous tombs and learned a little bit about them.

Overall the day was very good. I'm going to miss digging, but hopefully STS can keep me busy!