Archaeology is the science of studying people and their lives after they're long gone. We do this by finding and studying what these people have left behind.

Here are some of the terms archaeologists use:

Artifact means something made by a human. At Hippos, we have found pots, a plate and an oil lamp. But mostly we find ...

Potsherds, which are pieces of broken pots. These are important because a pottery expert can look at potsherds and tell when they were made.

Features are buildings, tombs, city walls and other big structures at an archaeological site.

Ecofacts or Biofacts are seeds, animal bones or other things from plants or animals. Ecofacts found with artifacts and/or features may show what people ate.

Site is an archaeological area where archaeologists find artifacts, features and/or biofacts. Archaeologists sometimes must look carefully for sites where they might find such things. They do this by conducting a ...

Survey to locate a good site at which to dig. They may do a survey by taking photos from the air or by walking over an area looking for surface artifacts or features. At Hippos, we knew from ancient writings that a city was there. And we could see the outline of the Northeast Church.

Excavation is what archaeologists call it when they dig up a site. They also call the excavation a dig. Over the centuries, the wind often covers ancient sites with dirt. That's what happened at Hippos. Before we began digging, all that showed of the little church was a faint outline almost hidden by weeds.

Tools help us as we dig carefully. We use a hoe called, in Arabic, a turreah. It's is a little like a garden hoe, except it's handle is shorter, about four feet long, and its blade is approximately square, not pointed. We use the hoe to scoop dirt into buckets that we empty nearby. We use picks to loosen hard soil. Sometimes, when we're getting close to something important, we use a trowel or a little hand pick called a patische to move smaller amounts of dirt.

Notes, Maps, Photos are important to keep careful track of the things we find and to keep records of where we find them. So we take photos, make maps and carefully write down where we find things. When we look at the information all together, it may help us understand more about the people who lived here.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims

At night, across the Sea of Galilee from Hippos, we can see the lights of Tiberias. When our little church at Hippos was in use, Tiberias across the lake was a center of Jewish culture and faith.

Jews believe in one God who demands justice and mercy from people, and asks people to pay attention to his sacred writings. Scholars in Tiberias at the time of our church were working on a version of ancient Jewish sacred writings that Jews and scholars still use today.

Christianity developed from Judaism. Christians follow the teachings of Jesus, who grew up in Nazareth, about 40 kilometers west of Hippos. Jesus taught on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Christians accept some Jewish teachings, but most also believe that Jesus is the son of God who died and rose from the dead so that God will forgives the sins of believers.

The Byzantine Empire had many kinds of Christians. They disagreed about whether Jesus was man or God. They wanted to be left alone to worship in their own way, but the emperor tried to impose one belief.

Muslims belive in Islam, which teaches that there is one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet. Allah is just and merciful. He wants people to repent and follow his laws. If they do, they will go to paradise when they die.

Angels and Demons

One practice of Byzantine Christians was to pray before icons — paintings representing Jesus, his mother Mary and other saints. The images are painted in such a way that, when we look at them now, sometimes the eyes seem to move.

Byzantine Christians believed in angels and demons. Angels warded off demons, particularly as people lay dying.

Relics — bones believed to be from saints — were also important to Byzantine Christians, who sometimes traveled long distances to visit churches and pray over relics. Our little church has a reliquary, or place for keeping relics — but the reliquary was empty when we found it.

In Byzantine times, many men and women joined monasteries, where they lived simple lives devoted to prayer and good works. In such communities, women could learn to read and write. They sometimes taught men to read and write as well. Our Northeast Church may have been a monastery for women, though we're not sure.

Two Prophets

Our church would have been a place of alarm and refuge in 614 CE when Persians under rulers called Sassanids invaded Palestine and captured Jerusalem. At Kursi, just six kilometers north of Hippos, archaeologists found a mass grave at a monastery — and a telltale Persian sickle-type sword.

These Persians were longtime enemies first of the Romans and then of the Byzantine Empire. They were Zoroastrians, whose prophet Zoroaster lived before 1000 BCE. Zoroastrians believed in one god, Ahura Mazda, who promises to raise his followers from the dead at the end of the world. Meanwhile, spirits of evil and good battle on earth, and all must join the fight.

At the time of the Sassanid invasion, 1,200 kilometers to the southeast, another prophet was preaching a new religion: Islam. Its followers call themselves Muslims..

Muslim armies began to spread the new faith. Byzantine forces took Jerusalem back from the Sassanids in 629 CE, but lost it to Muslim Arabs in 638 CE.

Hippos survived the Muslim invasion. We know because we found a decanter there — a pitcher — in a Muslim style known as Ummayad. Christians may have lived at Hippos for more than 100 years under Muslim rule before the earthquake of 748 CE destroyed the city.

Snakes, Scorpions, and You, Oh MY!

God says in the Bible that snakes have to eat dust as punishment because one of them tempted Eve to eat the forbidden fruit.

Eat dust they may — but they don't seem to like it. A snake in a bucket of dirt makes an awful racket.

Snake in a bucket? That's where it might wind up as we scrape soil into plastic pails to clear the site of our church at Hippos.

We didn't get a good look at this little snake. It was gone in an instant after we poured out the pail. But in the meantime, we had a bucket that sounded like a giant's baby rattle as the snake whipped around trying to escape.

Poisonous? Probably not. Of the 40 kinds of snakes in Israel, few have venom: the Persian horned viper, black desert cobra and Palestine saw-scaled viper live in the deserts to the south — we think. The Palestinian viper, however, prefers cooler climates — like ours. Yikes!

So be careful picking up rocks. You might find a new slithery friend!

Glowing Rock that Moves? No.

Look out for scorpions, too. Sometimes we find them scuttling for cover when we turn over a rock.

The scorpions we've seen so far are little ones, two to five centimeters. The biggest in Israel, we're told, is black and 20 centimeters long. We haven't seen one of those — yet.

Scorpions are arachnids, related to spiders. They live where it's hot. Scorpions have eight legs, claws like a crab, a long tail and six to 12 eyes. Mothers bear live young. The babies crawl onto their mother's back and ride around for several days. Scorpions are fluorescent — they glow in ultraviolet light. That's one way to spot them when they're most active, at night.

Scorpions are poisonous. They seize beetles and spiders in their claws and curl those long tails over their heads to sting the victim.

That tail stinger can kill a person. The World Health Organization reports only one recent death in Israel from a scorpion sting, in 1998. The deadliest places for scorpion stings are Mexico, with 84 deaths in 2001, and Egypt, with 78 deaths in 2000.

Egypt? That puts an edge on a passage in the Bible's book of Deuteronomy: Moses, who led the people of Israel out of captivity in Egypt, urges them to remember God, "who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions."

Scorpions and-- Taxes?

Much later, when the Israelites' ruler Solomon died, the people asked his son Rehoboam to ease the burden of taxes and labor that Solomon had imposed.

Solomon's wise old advisers agreed. But Rehoboam instead took his own friends' advice and told the people: "My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions."

The new king meant he would make taxes and labor even harder — so his father's subjects broke away under a different king. Afterwards there were two kingdoms, not one.

Scorpions give us some colorful language. Muqaddasi, a tenth-century Muslim geographer and historian, praised his hometown of Jerusalem as “the most illustrious of cities.” But he also said it lacked learning and oppressed the poor. It was, he who wrote, like “a golden basin filled with scorpions."

Don't Look Up!

Did you know a huge scorpion hangs over you in the sky during the summer? Look for the constellation Scorpio's fishhook-shaped tail in the south. At this scorpion's heart is the giant red star Antares. By autumn, however, its tail is vanishing beneath the western horizon — like a giant scorpion scuttling under a really big rock.

In the Bible, Jesus gave some of his followers "authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you."

Tread on them? We'd just as soon let the snakes slither away. The scorpions we whack with a pick — if we can get 'em before they scuttle back under a rock.