Day 7

Hallelujah . . . it's Friday! We have completed our first week of work!!!!!!!!! It's Friday, it's Friday, it's Friday!!!! I'm a bit exuberant (excited, Jonathan) if you can't tell.

Work on our square is progressing. We have dug down about 70 centimeters on one corner of our square, only about 20 centimeters on the southern corner (we're on a slope). We have finally come to evidence of mud-brick destruction. This is what they are looking for, 8th century destruction. This would be during the Assyrian period, during the reign of Tiglath Pileser (or Tiggy as I affectionately and informally refer to him in my lectures). This got Dr. Ortiz (project director) and Dr. Braun (one of our field archaeologists and my specific field director (fields A & B, I'm in field B) pretty excited. We ended the day by cleaning and drawing our baulks (that's the name of the walls that you create as you dig down). We'll hoping to begin to hit some interesting stuff next week. The reason why destruction layers get these guys so excited is b/c they are more likely to find a great deal of MC (material culture . . . items used or created by humans) when a city is destroyed. People take stuff with them when they move. If, however, someone kicks your walls down and kills you and burns your house down, things get left right where you left them and everything comes crashing down on top of it preserving it for me the novice/volunteer achaeologist to find!

I will tell you that this has also been a humbling experience. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "You're not doing that right. . . . Let me show you. . . . Don't do that . . . too deep . . . too shallow . . . too hard . . . too soft . . . too slow . . . too fast . . . don't use the patiche (little pick) use a trowel . . . don't use your trowel . . . use your patiche, etc. etc. etc. I guess what is most frustrating is that I'll do something that I just watched my supervisor or one of the field archaeologists do and then be told that I shouldn't do it. One person will tell us to do it one way and then another will tell us to do it a different way. Just seems like the learning process often includes contradictory information/instruction. Oh, well. I know my wife is probably thinking . . . "It's good for him to be humbled."

A group from tel Megiddo came and toured our site today (1 Kings 18 and 19, Ahab and Elijah; also King Josiah died there confronting Pharaoh Neco in 609 BC . . . trying to intercept him before he could get to Assyria to help the Assyrians [their allies] in their fight against the Babylonian juggernaut . . . check the later part of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles). They are working on that site and we will be going to their site in a week or so.

Killed my first scorpion today. Most squares had already had them, but we hadn't. It was only a matter of time!

Lunch was great. Had some schnitzel with rice along with some more of that great cucumber and tomato salad. Pretty good. Skipped 2nd breakfast and fruit break today. Not in the mood.

Today, after lunch . . . no pottery washing and no lecture! Yeah! We can rest (and in my case washing 7 days of laundry) and get ready for our tour this weekend. We will be leaving early tomorrow morning for our southern tour. We will be touring (and swimming in) the Dead Sea! Masada (the site of the siege of Zealots at the end of the Jewish War in AD 73 . . . they all committed suicide the day before the Romans breached the walls after a 3 year siege and building a massive ramp to get to the top)! We'll also tour Arad, En Gedi, Beersheba, the Negev and a few other places. We'll also make our way to the coast and swim in the Mediterranean Sea.

So, this weekend ought to be a fun trip. We'll be gone both Saturday and Sunday. We'll be staying at a hotel somewhere (not sure where) Saturday night.

Okay, battery almost dead, so I guess that means time to go. I'll try to blog over the weekend.

Shalom

Trey