Young archaeologists: Julia and Emilia

An American team from Concordia University has been excavating at the ancient city of Hippos in the Holy Land. This is part of a series about Hippos and nearby digs.

Julia Burdajewicz (boor DIE ah vitch) is in a vat — kind of a giant bathtub more than two meters* deep. She calls it her “plaster disaster.”

The vat is empty. But 1,500 years ago it was filled with — grape juice.

If you let grape juice sit long enough, it turns into wine through a process called fermentation (fur meant AY shun).

Julia, age 21, is studying to be a conservationist, someone who tries to preserve what archaeologists find. She is working at an impossible job — trying to preserve the plaster that covers the inside of the vat.

The student from the city of Warsaw in Poland is sitting on steps leading to the bottom of the vat, part of a church in the ancient city of Hippos. People at the church made wine, probably to sell. “This was a pool for collecting grape juice to make the wine,” says Julia. “It has a special waterproof plaster. Three layers.”

Her tool kit includes dental picks, forceps and glue. On this day close to the end of the season in July 2005, she is applying bottle after bottle of glue to the plaster.

Over the centuries, the vat filled with dirt. Now that archaeologists have dug it up, the plaster will fall apart unless it gets protection from wind, rain and heat.

Julia has been coming to excavations with her family since she was a little girl. Now she wishes for more time. The dig is coming to an end and it’s almost time for her to leave.

“I like to do everything the best I can and I don’t have time for it,” Julia says sadly. “I know I’m leaving some pieces, some places, that should be conserved and protected. This is the worst thing for me.

“Look at it,” she says, worrying about the plaster. “It may fall before next year. That’s why I think there should be a month after the excavation only for conservators. If I could sit here and work for another year in silence I would be very happy. Right now I’m so stressed.”

In fact, she’s not even thinking about an obvious mystery. If we are sitting in a tub of grape juice — why is there no purple stain on the wall?

Julia shrugs. “Maybe they had here white wine,” she says — wine made from green grapes that would leave less of a stain.

BABY SKELETON

When she was 14 years old, Emilia Jastrzebska (em EEL ya yast SHEMB ska) was walking along an old Roman road that passed some ruins in Libya, a country in north Africa where she lived with her family.

“It’s an amazing thing,” thought Emilia, “that I’m walking on the same road that some ancient Romans were walking.”

That was the moment she decided to become an archaeologist. Now Emilia is a student at the University of Warsaw in Poland, her home country. She has been on five digs in two seasons — three in Israel and two in Poland. She has also lived in England and traveled in the United States.

At Hippos in 2004, after the Polish team found what they thought were tombs, Emilia excitedly went to work helping clear the soil from the rock-lined chambers. But after days of work, the truth was clear — the tombs were empty. No bodies.

Emilia was disappointed. On another team in 2004, however, she found human burials at a site in far northern Israel called Tel Roim (tell roh EEM) West. The site dates to a time called pre-pottery Neolithic — that is, before people were using pottery, more than 5,000 years ago. One of the burials was that of a baby.

Last year after Hippos she dug at another site called Misliya (mis lee AH) Cave, which dates to the middle and lower Paleolithic — older than the Neolithic. Excavators found flint tools and animal bones.

This June, Emilia will dig with a team from the University of Montana at a new site called Tel Zahara in central Israel, near an ancient city called Beth Shean (bait shahn). Excavators hope to find out more about village life from long ago.

Emilia, age 21, likes digging in spite of the hard work and the sweat and dirt. “Something happened here more than a thousand years ago,” she says at Hippos. “I can be part of uncovering it.”

When the digging season is over she returns to her studies at the University of Warsaw in Poland. Which does Emilia like better — studying or digging? “Digging!” she says. “That was an easy question.” — Marc Hequet

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* To change from meters to feet 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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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