More from Israel

Digging: today my team from square B4 made some considerable progress. Since we are excavating a room adjacent to the church, Dr. Schuler made the decision that we should enlarge the square, essentially dig outward until we find the south and east walls of the room. After much sweat and burnt calories, we removed hundreds of pounds of dirt and rocks until we found both of these walls. Our side room is much larger than the original 5 meter by 5 meter square. Having an area roughly one fourth of the sanctuary, we assume that this room had some important function, but we will not know until we dig down to the floor. That will take a lot more time and more removal of material, and because our square is so large we will be "recruiting" another member from a different square to help out. Who knows what else we will find there. So far B4 has found a cistern, a pilaster, and today we found some sort of alcove in the south wall, which may have once held a reliquary or other small object at one point. Also, we have uncovered four arch bases (two on each side of the room that is), which obviously would have been part of 2 arches which held up the ceiling. Meanwhile, square C0 (now they have moved on to B0 I believe) found a door to the north of their sanctuary-adjacent room. That one door could possibly lead to enough work for a whole season of digging on the north side of the church! How big is this church complex? At any rate, it can't go on forever to the north, because the church is seated 30 meters away from the north edge of the city; defined by a sharp cliff! Square E4, which is located in the rear atrium of the the church, has found some sort of paved surface next to their "tile floor". It is, however, about half a meter above the level of the floor, and it is definitely not a wall. Hmmm.

Digging has been hard and fun and odd and rewarding. The first day I remember pulling weeds off of the site and hacking at them with a giant hoe, the whole time sweating profusely and wondering, what did I get myself into? A 4:00 in the morning wake up time followed by six or so hours of hard labor is not that appealing, yet we have come to look forward to it. Finding walls and cisterns is exciting and makes for a worthwhile experience. There is a great sense of pride for what we do, especially when experienced archaeologists from the Polish and Israeli teams come over to see what we have found; often times they are more excited than we are! The occasional scorpion is another thrill (even though they measure only about 2 inches), and 3 hours work before breakfast makes our everyday morning diet of hard boiled eggs, bread, cumbumbers, tomatoes, and cold sauteed onions enjoyable morning after morning.

Lastly, I would like to respond to any questions you may have. My email is jamesp@csp.edu . How is my account of the trip? What do you still want to know? I hope you enjoy my objective desciptions, and hopefully this offers new insights into this trip, archaeology, and Israel.

Random fact: Basalt is much more dense than limestone. Believe me, after lifting hundreds of rocks you can feel a very significant difference! Our church is made almost exclusively of these two types of rock, and many walls and features are also covered by plaster.