Big picture

I found Sarah McCullough on the roof of a building at Hippos. Soldiers built this building about 40 years ago.

Sarah is a student at New York University. She was helping Brian Cannon, our dig architect, to shoot levels.

What does that mean?

Sarah looks at a bubble in a tube on the stick so she knows when she is holding it exactly straight up and down.

Brian, far away down the old Roman road, looks at a target on the stick through a telescope.

Brian’s telescope shows exactly how high up Sarah’s target is. He knows exactly the height of the stick she is holding. And so he can tell exactly the level at the bottom of the stick.

That lets Brian figure out the elevation of different places on the site.

Elevations tell us how parts of the city work together. For example, if two floors in different squares look the same and have about the same elevation, they may be part of the same building or even the same room.

It’s important to know the elevation of various places along the road. We want a complete map of the city.

Brian and Sarah worked together to look at the big picture. That reminds us: It’s a good time for us to look at the big picture too.

The dig is over. On Friday, we fly home.


DIRT FRENZY

Our dig ended at precisely 11 a.m. Israel time on July 26. We spent one more day cleaning up, but not digging.

But our digging ended with a dirt frenzy. Mark Schuler, our dig leader, wanted to get to the floor of our mysterious building in Screwball Square.

We made it. Now we have a better idea of what the building was. Of course we’re not positive yet. Mark’s current hypothesis is that it is living quarters for nuns. But stay tuned. A hypothesis can change depending on what we find next season.

This season, we found a coin and a gold belt buckle. And we made progress toward understanding the people who lived here.


NIKA THE DOG COMES HOME

Michael Eisenberg’s dog Nika ran away, frightened by the missile strikes in Haifa. But the story has a happy ending.

Nika, a black, 20-kilogram* German-Labrador mix, had a microchip implant. The electronic chip placed under her skin tells a veterinarian who owns her.

When missiles exploded in Haifa, poor Nika was frightened and ran away.

Some people found her and brought her to a vet. The vet was able to read the name of Michael and his family on the chip implanted under Nika’s skin.

So Nika now is back — “frightened,” says Michael, “but home.”


STRANGE FEELING

It is a strange feeling to prepare to leave. We can still hear the missiles exploding in the distance almost every day. We have gotten used to it.

In fact, Joanna Stankiewicz of the Polish team doesn’t like it that she has gotten used to the explosions. She can’t understand why people want to hurt one another.

Joanna, who is from Poland, is staying in Israel until the end of September. We hope she will be safe.

We Americans and most of the other Poles are going home to safety.

Our friends from Israel are going home too — but not to safety. Someone asked Michael if his family was safe and well.

“They are not safe,” Michael said. “But they are well.”

We hope they will be safe soon. We hope that the missiles will stop falling and people will work things out. We hope when we come back to dig in 2007, the Holy Land will be a safe place for everyone. — Marc Hequet


Marc Hequet writes about Concordia University’s excavation at Hippos and other digs as well. Students, teachers and families are welcome to make use of the material as part of a curriculum. Contact Marc with questions via mhequet@sprintmail.com

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*To change from kilograms to pounds and to make other metric conversions, you can use this site from the state of Washington: www.wsdot.wa.gov/Metrics/factors.htm

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WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Elevation (el eh VAY shun). How high something is.

Screwball Square comes into focus

Have we figured out Screwball Square?

Mark Schuler thinks so. The “aha” moment came toward the end of the day July 25. We had removed the “shepherd’s wall” and dig leader Mark was looking at our square.

He noticed that our straight east-west wall lined up exactly with a kind of “weak place” in the straight north-south wall on the west side of the South Vaulted Chamber.

About a meter* of the east-west wall was missing, but Mark saw the connection anyway.

We started the square, you will recall, puzzling about our “secret passage.”

That passage, it turns out, cut through an inner room of the building next to the South Vaulted Chamber. It went through the missing part of the straight east-west-wall.

Why was the meter of wall missing? Who knows? Maybe someone took it out to build something else.

We spent today taking out a junky wall that curved through the square. Mark thinks this “shepherd’s wall” may have been added late, perhaps even in the Ottoman period.


Monks or nuns?

So the building we have been excavating is connected to the church after all. It has an outer room and a kind of inner room. Was the outer room a place for monks or nuns to eat? Possibly.

And the inner room? It may have been an office for the leader of the monastery, or it may have been a tiny chapel.

The most interesting find of the day was a place in the wall opposite the door of the “office.” Mark spotted a space about 30 centimeters by 50 centimeters surrounded by stone. But we think the spot itself is packed dirt and stones.

It could be an alcove — a kind of inset shelf. We’ll gently scrape away the dirt and stones tomorrow and see what’s in it, if anything.


Next season

This means our secret passageway wasn’t a passageway at all — until late. Maybe a shepherd or farmer used it as a chute to guide sheep or other animals into a pen as Columbus was sailing to the New World.

We won’t know until we open up another square to the south and see where our building goes. But that will be another season. — Marc Hequet

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Marc Hequet writes about Concordia University’s excavation at Hippos and other digs as well. Students, teachers and families are welcome to make use of the material as part of a curriculum. Contact Marc with questions via mhequet@sprintmail.com

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ER, ABOUT DARRYL

Awk! I’ve been using the wrong last name for Darryl Schmidt, our retired St. Paul, Minn., police officer. I’ve been calling him Darryl Savage.

Somehow I got it in my head that was his name. Maybe it was the day he posed for a photo wielding a hand pick with a wild look in his ice- blue eyes — and holding a bucket over his head. — Marc Hequet

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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE

The Ottoman Empire dominated the Middle East in the 1500s and 1600s CE**. It controlled what now is Turkey and parts of northern Africa, southwest Asia and southeast Europe. The empire began about 1300 and lasted until 1922. We think a shepherd family may have lived at our tumble-down church during the time of the Ottoman Empire.

The Reformation began in 1517 when Martin Luther, a German monk, protested some practices of the Roman Catholic Church.

Hernan De Soto (deh SO toe), a cruel Spanish explorer, sought to enslave Indians, marched with his army through what now are the states of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. In 1542, De Soto died of fever on the banks of the Mississippi River.

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“Meanwhile, Elsewhere” uses information from World Book Encyclopedia.

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CAN YOU DIG IT?

Who in your family was born when the Ottoman Empire still existed?

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* To change from centimeters to inches and to make other metric conversions, you can use this site from the state of Washington: www.wsdot.wa.gov/Metrics/factors.htm

** CE means “common era.” It’s the same as A.D., which means “in the year of our Lord.”

Screwball square

Our square makes no sense.

In fact it’s two squares. We started in C4 and it made no sense. So we moved over into D4.

And now neither square makes sense.

D4 has an opening onto the street but we’re not sure we see a door. All we have left is a worn-out rock that sort of looks like a door.

Even if it’s a door — the door leads into a room about two meters* square.

That’s not very big. It would make a small walk-in closet. Off a street? Why would there be such a small room with next door to the church?

Our squares have a good wall with a door. And we have a junky wall. Someone built the junky wall right through the door in the good wall.

What about a floor? For a while we wondered if our squares even had a floor. Today we think we finally found a floor — and we think we blew right through the floor while we were looking for it.

Pastor Jim Rogers was probably at just about floor level when he found the piece of marble in this photo. It’s a nice piece. But it tells us little about the building.

We don’t know where the marble came from. All we know is that it fell down. And this is probably about floor level.


MARK JUST SHAKES HIS HEAD

D4 and C4 are immediately south of our little church. They are just to the west of the South Vaulted Chamber.

For a while we thought we had a narrow passageway that led past the South Vaulted Chamber to the street. Now we know the passageway runs smack into a wall.

Every time dig leader Mark Schuler comes over, he just shakes his head. He doesn’t know what’s going on in our square.

It’ s not our fault. We just dig and try to make sense of what we find.

To the people who built these walls over the centuries — it must have made sense.


TEARING DOWN A WALL

Today we pulled out the junky wall. We have been calling it a “shepherd’s wall.” We thought a shepherd family built it as a sheep pen, perhaps after the great earthquake of 748 CE**.

But now we think the junky wall must have been there before the South Vaulted Chamber — the big room with the cistern. Do you remember? It’s the place where people may have gone for healing (“Our Puzzling Passageway,” July 18).

Here’s why we think the junky wall was there before people built the South Vaulted Chamber:

If you want to build a house, or sheep pen, or whatever, and you already have a wall right there — why put up another wall just 80 centimeters away? Why didn’t they just use the wall of the South Vaulted Chamber?

We’re stumped.


BUT WE FOUND THE FLOOR! WE THINK ...

Today I helped pull stones out of a door in our square. It’s the door through which someone built a wall.

I don’t like to take apart a wall. I think about all the work that people did to build it. And I wonder why they built it.

I also think about how strong they must have been as I lift out the heavy rocks. I think about children helping with the smaller rocks.

We only take walls apart after we have shot photos and made notes so we can remember what was there.

And when we take apart walls, we do it because it’s the only way to find out what’s going on in a square.

This time taking apart the wall worked — a little.

At the bottom of the door, I found a hard surface — not stone, but packed dirt, with some plaster in it.

Mark thinks that’s our missing floor.

It’s about 20 centimeters higher than the rest of the square. So we must have dug right through the floor. The floor must have been the crumbly layer — a mixture of packed dirt and plaster.


CUT US SOME SLACK!

Give us a break! Did we blow through the floor because the students left after the bombing? Or when Mark fell and hurt his ankle? Or when he got sick for a couple of days?

Mark is well and back on the dig. On July 23, he suggested we sink a meter-square pit to look for floor.

We didn’t find floor — but we found broken pottery and animal bones.

So somebody was there dropping things even before somebody else put in the floor that we blew through. Argh!

That’s the way archaeology goes — especially Byzantine archaeology. People build and rebuild. Byzantines were great rebuilders.

And they used stones they took from earlier buildings. A fallen door frame may not mean a door was nearby. A column drum may have come from halfway across the city.

Think about where your family lives. Have you remodeled? Have builders torn out a wall? Or put up a new wall?

Take an giant imaginary hedge trimmer and cut off your house about a meter above the foundation.

Take away most of the furniture, clothes, toys — everything you have in the house.

Would you be able to tell how people used that building?

Could you tell which room was the kitchen? The bathroom?

If you want to be an archaeologist, get ready to be mixed up most of the time.

But every now and then, you solve a mystery. And that makes it all worthwhile. — Marc Hequet

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*To change from meters to feet and from grams to pounds can use this site from the state of Washington: www.wsdot.wa.gov/Metrics/factors.htm

** CE means “common era.” It’s the same as A.D., which means “in the year of our Lord.”

Marc Hequet writes about Concordia University’s excavation at Hippos and other digs as well. Students, teachers and families are welcome to make use of the material as part of a curriculum. Contact Marc with questions via mhequet@sprintmail.com

Good vs. evil?

We visited Megiddo (meh GID oh) on Saturday. It’s one of the most important digs in all the Holy Land.

Some Christians think a final battle of good against evil will be fought at Megiddo.

Megiddo has seen plenty of battles, as recently as World War I. And it may see more.

In this photo, Darryl Schmidt looks into a square under a big tarp that gives shade from the sun. The square is two or three meters deep — deep enough that diggers need a ladder.

Saturday is the sabbath (SAB uhth). People in Israel take the day off. No diggers were working.


ANCIENT CROSSROADS

Megiddo was a crossroads of ancient trade routes. Armies marching from Egypt and from Assyria (ah SEE ree yah) to fight over control of the ancient world met at Megiddo.

Megiddo has a long history. Israelites (IZ ray el ites) conquered the king of Megiddo, says the book of Joshua in the Bible. That would have been around 1100 BCE.

Israel’s King Solomon (SAH lah mahn) ordered his people to rebuild Megiddo’s walls about 950 BCE. The people were angry at being forced to work for the king. People in the northern kingdom set up their own king after Solomon’s death.

In 609 BCE, the head of the southern kingdom, Josiah (jo SYE ah), died in a battle near Megiddo.

Egypt’s Pharaoh Neco (NECK oh) asked Josiah to let the Egyptian army march through Josiah’s kingdom. But Josiah decided to fight.

Egyptian archers shot Josiah. “Take me away, for I am badly wounded,” he told his servants. They took him in a chariot to Jerusalem. When he got to his home in Jerusalem — he was dead.


CITY OF HORSES?

Can you imagine horses feeding and resting here? Archaeologists think this building at Megiddo was a stable.

Megiddo may have been a city of horses. The kingdom of Israel was famous for its chariots (CHAIR ee ots), two- or four-wheeled battle carts drawn by horses.

King Ahab (ah HAB) and his army helped to fight the Assyrians in 853 BCE at Qarqar (kar KAR), 300 kilometers northeast of Hippos.

Later the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (SHAWL mah knees er) bragged about the battle, listing the kings he fought at Qarqar.

Shalmaneser says that Ahab had 2,000 chariots — more than any of the other kings who fought at Qarqar.

Shalmaneser brags about winning — but he didn’t come back to fight again for years. Historians think that means that Ahab and his chariots helped fight the Assyrian king to a bloody standstill.


ROUND ALTAR

Megiddo was an important city even before the Bible and the Assyrians. Archaeologists have found a round altar (ALL ter) from about 3000 BCE.

An altar is where priests (preests) did sacrifices (SACK rih fye sis). That could mean killing a sheep or other animal and burning it. The priests did this to please a god.

The first photo shows Darryl looking at squares about 50 meters from the altar.

Were these houses where people lived near the altar? Maybe. In cities now, people live near churches and other places of worship.

But usually ancient cities had sacred areas around the altar. If these were houses, maybe they are from a different time.

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CHICKEN RODEO?

Remember Jessica’s chicken egg (July 9 archive, “Boom! Half the team leaves”)?

We said that people and chickens go way back to at least 1400 BCE.

And we asked this: If you were stranded on a desert island, would you rather have cows and bulls or chickens and roosters.

Cows and bulls, responds one family. “You can’t get milk from a chicken,” reason the Kinzers of St. Paul, Minn. “Or have a rodeo with one either — at least not a very exciting rodeo.”

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CAN YOU DIG IT?

Why would people kill and burn an animal to please a god?

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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE

Democracy was beginning to develop in Greece at about the time King Josiah was killed in battle with the Egyptians at Megiddo in 609 BCE. Democracy means people choosing their own leaders rather than having kings rule.

Sappho (SAF oh), a Greek poet, lived about 600 BCE. All we have from her work is one complete poem and pieces of others.

The first coins were made in Lydia, now part of the nation of Turkey.

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The information in "Meanwhile, elsewhere" is from World Book Encyclopedia and other sources.