Highlights of the Dig Season

As promised, this blog entry is (mostly) about the dig itself, and not (too much) about the diggers. With the loss of half of our team (all the young, strong students and a couple of adults) for the second half of the season, naturally we did not get as much accomplished as Mark had planned for us. There was no opportunity to excavate newly-discovered rooms to the north or do much more work on the rooms to the west. Work on the street had to be abandoned as well; the plan had been to excavate as much as possible to toward the decumanus, the main street of the city.

Still, our little group of eleven with a couple of youthful forty-somethings made progress in some areas, and the full season yielded some interesting information. Mark divides the results of the 2006 season into three major categories.


Tomb
First, the team finished excavating the tomb in the chancel. Glenn Borchers and Jay Anders were the primary volunteers on this job. This was Glenn’s fourth season at Hippos; as a retired soil scientist, he’s a careful observer of changes in soil and has been invaluable for the last three years on the tomb excavation. (He’s also known by all volunteers as the guy who loves nature photos; one of the first days of the 2006 dig he spent nearly 10 minutes photographing a scorpion who seemed to be posing especially for Glenn. My first reaction when the scorpion made an appearance was to think, “Get someone else to kill this ugly thing quickly!” Glenn is of a different spirit and taught me some things this summer.) Jay is a medical doctor who used his expertise to analyze the bone fragments found underneath the sarcophagus that was removed during the first week and then carefully replaced (the sarcophagus, not the bone fragments) during the final week.

While the rest of us washed pottery on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, Jay and his wife Susan Pratt sat in the lab at the computer, comparing bone fragments from the day’s finds to the on-line version of Gray’s Anatomy. Last year the remains of what appears to be three separate persons were removed from the stone sarcophagus. Apparently there was an earlier burial underneath the sarcophagus, and excavating that earlier internment was the goal for 2006. Based on Jay’s analysis of the bone fragments from 2006, apparently there were two persons first buried in the main chancel area—an adult, probably male, and a juvenile, sex unknown. So many people! Were they all saints venerated by the early Christians of Hippos? Were they the patron and his/her family members who built the church and thus were given a place of honor at death? Were they somehow related to the woman whose resting place is off to the side of the chancel, and whose remains were venerated, probably even after the church ceased to have any regular liturgical function? The excavation of the tomb is complete, but endless questions remain.


Mosaic Floor
Work on the mosaic floor in 2006 yielded some interesting information about the church. The mosaic team lifted off a couple of sections of the top mosaic floor and exposed an earlier mosaic floor underneath. They discovered the original floor was of a superior quality to the second mosaic floor laid on top of the first. To me, it’s very similar to the kind of thing one experiences in an older home; underneath that cheap carpeting someone laid 30 years ago to spruce up the place is a well-worn but much superior hardwood floor. Some of the figures exposed in the original floor include several common border patterns, crosses, a duck, a lion, and perhaps a gazelle.

Once one has seen some of the mosaic floors in the Galilee, it’s easy to imagine a Byzantine-era family business of father and sons/daughters making the rounds of the major populations centers with their pattern books and letters of reference from Tabgha, Kursi, etc., meeting with the equivalent of the Byzantine church/synagogue/monastic councils, and saying, “Sure, we can do birds and fish. You like the tricolor braid border? No problem! You want something really special? How about the Nile flood measure or the famous lighthouse at Alexandria—you’ll be the talk of Palestina Secunda!” (The Nile flood measure and lighthouse at Alexandria are figures in the mosaic floor at Tabgha, the Byzantine church that commemorated the feeding of the 5000.)

The uncovering of the earlier floor together with Yolanta’s analysis of the pottery point to the second of the important discoveries of 2006: the NE church is earlier than the “Polish church,” perhaps fifth century, rather than the later date of sixth/seventh century for the NW church, that is, the one being excavated by the Polish team. Mark will be researching mosaic floors as part of his preparations for writing the final report of the season.

Rooms with a View
Finally, the discovery early in the season of a wall extending further west of the rooms immediately off the small atrium and of a room to the north of the nave during the final week point to a larger complex than we knew of at the beginning of the 2006 season. During the final week, Mark moved a group of volunteers to the north of the nave, thinking that if they found a stylobate (the foundation for a row of columns), it would be evidence that the church had been built on top of a earlier Greco-Roman temple platform. He was disappointed when the diggers didn’t find what he was looking for, but I keep reminding him that at least we know something definitive: the NE church was not built on a Greco-Roman temple platform. Instead, the diggers discovered another room with bench. We may end up with more benches than cisterns in this complex! The seemingly endless array of rooms on the north, south, and west sides of the church proper may take Mark back to an earlier theory: that the NE church is an urban monastic complex. If it is fifth century and not later, that could be a significant find. Most of the monastic communities from the Byzantine period that have been excavated in the Holy Land were isolated, desert communities. We know from my fourth-century liturgical soul mate, Egeria, that there were urban monastics as early as the fourth century, but the materials remains of a fifth-century urban monastery could shed new light on their daily communal life and on their role as the guardians of a pilgrimage site for the tomb of a woman saint.

Life in a War Zone

This map shows the ancient Decapolis cities, including Hippos (Sussita on this map), Damascus (the current capital of Syria), and Gerasa (Jerash, now in Jordan) and Philadelphia (modern-day Amman, current capital of Jordan). One can see how close we were to Syria and Jordan; Lebanon is further to the north.

The hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel began on Wednesday, July 12. It was ex-Marine Irene who, on a trip to the women’s latrine area with me that day, noted the increased air activity of the Israeli military. Until then I had been oblivious to it. With our speedy wireless internet connection, we had quick and immediate access to news sources and by Wednesday afternoon were well aware of the growing conflict, most of which was further north of us. Since our work week was Sunday through Thursday, by Thursday afternoon we were all settling into what we had thought would be our first relaxing weekend at En Gev, with no day or overnight trip scheduled. And it did start that way for us. There were some students who needed or wanted to go to Tiberias for some shopping. Since Mark and I were low on shekels, I went with the group to show them around to the places they needed to go and take care of our personal business as well. It was a pleasant, successful shopping trip. Steph and I got money at the bank machines; Jessica got a new camera just like the one she had lost, and Steph got lip balm; Irene browsed a bookstore and got a children’s game to help her with her elementary Hebrew; Cameron and Andrea looked for souvenirs for family and friends; and we ended with ice cream on the Sea of Galilee. But just a little over 24 hours after we had returned by public bus to En Gev, the first Katyusha rocket hit Tiberias. And so began the Saga of the Evacuation of Students.

It was Tuesday when Darryl and I returned from that adventure and Wednesday before we were back on the hill of Hippos. I think that was the first of many days when, in my state of half-sleep hiking up the last half mile of hill to the dig site, I heard what sounded like distance thunder and thought, “Oh, we might get rain.” NOT! It never rains in Israel in July; that sound was the distant booming of Israeli artillery. Those distant, thunder-like booms were our constant companions on Hippos for the remainder of our time in Israel, reminding us of the superior military strength of Israel.

I don’t know exactly how many times Tiberias was hit by Katyusha rockets in the remaining days we were in Israel, but it was occasional enough that I never felt we were in imminent danger. From the news reports it was clear the areas of Israel north of us and major population centers like the city of Haifa were much more dangerous—and nowhere in Israel was as dangerous as Lebanon, which suffered far more civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure. I tried to reassure family and friends via e-mail that we were relatively safe: Being at En Gev, a kibbutz with a population of 250, was not a major target area; it was no riskier than driving a car across the United States, I said in many e-mails (which was no comfort to a friend planning a trip from Fargo, ND to Santa Rosa, CA!). I did NOT mention in any e-mails that the kibbutz had opened its bomb shelters. The one for the Concordia Team was close to our “lab” building, where Mark and I had our living quarters; no one else from the group could have made it into the shelter in the one minute warning we told we would have between the time of the air raid siren and the impact of a Katyusha. I counted on our isolated location and took comfort that Mark and I had had the good sense to update our twenty-year-old will before leaving for Israel.

I don’t think either Mark or I lost sleep because we were in a war zone, but after a few days, the tension of the situation did begin to wear on everyone, especially through the situations of our Israeli friends there. Efrat, the kibbutznik who took care of our needs, was very worried about her elderly parents living on a kibbutz in the North Galilee. She wanted them to come to the relative safety of En Gev, but they refused to leave their home. Itamar, the King of Logistics for the dig, worried about his wife and young daughter in Haifa until they moved temporarily to Elat in southern Israel. During the last week, they joined him at Kibbutz En Gev. Arthur Segal and Michael Eisenberg, the dig director and his assistant from the University of Haifa, also worried about their families in the city of Haifa and reported in low tones to us when injuries and deaths occurred there. As Andrea stated so eloquently in her interview with Minnesota Public Radio, we could leave; our Israeli friends could not.

Perhaps most evident to us was the economic impact of the conflict on northern Israel. Kibbutz En Gev has a variety of economic ventures to remain solvent; those related to tourism were hit early and hard. The Fish Restaurant, catering to tourists by the busload, saw its business dry up instantly. At first the kibbutz closed it for a couple of days but then re-opened it for the trickle of guests who lived nearby or took the risk to travel in the area. Efrat confided that it was very expensive to keep it operating but they had resolved to keep it open. Just days before we left Efrat told me she had a meeting with kibbutz officials about the operation of the mini-market she managed. It was losing money, and they had to decide whether or not they would keep it open. These economic hardships were quick and severe; I can only imagine the extent of the economic hardships the people of Lebanon suffered during the month-long conflict and will continue to suffer for years because of the devastation to lives and property in their country.

It was Thursday, July 27, in the late afternoon when the breeze across the Sea of Galilee picks up strength. We were in our living quarters with the air conditioner running noisily to keep us cool as we got organized to pack and leave the next morning. We were startled out of our routine by the sound of not one but a series of several blasts, the sound of Katyusha rockets hitting. The force of the blasts was so strong it rattled our windows (as had earlier Katyusha blasts on Tiberias) and also blew open the door to our bathroom. We thought they had hit on the east side of the Sea of Galilee; nothing we had experienced before then was that loud, that forceful. We were mistaken; it must have been the stiff breeze across the lake that made them sound so close. Once again, Tiberias had been hit; no casualties reported. We gratefully resumed our organizing and packing, counting the hours left before our bus would take us to the Tel Aviv airport.

We’ve been home for over three weeks, and I’m still hearing from friends who say, “We prayed for you.” I’m thankful for those prayers and say so. What I often forget to say is, “Pray for the people of Israel and Lebanon; pray for lasting peace in the Middle East.” What we experienced for two weeks was nothing compared with the lifetimes lived in war zones by millions of people around the world.

For more on life in the war zone of northern Israel, read Marc Hequet’s account:

http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/bswbOO_diggingunderfire.html

The Great Secret of Pottery Shards

I asked Mark to send me a photo of the diagnostic pottery (so one could see handles, rims, and bases), but instead he sent me this photo of a partial oil lamp! Oh well, you get the idea.

Only rarely does a volunteer make a big “find” of gold amulets (like Linda Miller in 2005) or an inscription (we’re still waiting for this one at the NE Church) or the tomb of a woman in the chancel. For most of us lowly volunteers, our daily finds consist of pottery shards, fragments of glass, and animal bones. As one of the eager, first-time volunteers who opened square F4 during the first week on the job, I was disappointed that we did not keep our pottery shards from the first day. The top section of soil was too disturbed, I was told by Head Honcho Mark; we would begin recording our finds the next day. We all learned “the rule of thumb” for discerning whether or not to keep a pottery shard: if it was bigger than one’s thumb, it’s a keeper! And so we religiously followed the rule that first week. But the lower we got in our square, the more numerous were the shards. Soon Jessica was reminding us when the rule of thumb (which grew to the size of a gorilla’s thumb then King Kong’s) was in question, “Think about whether or not you want to wash that shard this afternoon.” Not only did we start thinking of the tedious job of daily pottery washing, we also all became conscious of the fact that someone working in our square would be asked to carry our bucket of pottery down the rocky, uneven, half-mile trail to the bus. The heavier the bucket of shards, the uglier a job it became.

But even an amateur archaeologist like me knows the importance of pottery for dating the time period of a given site, and so we continued to be diligent in our pottery collection and daily washing. I learned it was more important to clean the edges rather than the front or back of pottery shards—odd, that (so one can see the types of clay and amount of glaze I’m told). After the evacuation of the students (which included Pottery Queen Stephanie Randolph and Crown Princess of Pottery Tabitha Cook), I discovered even more about the processing of the pottery after washing. I helped Linda Miller, crowned Pottery Queen after Stephanie and Tabitha’s unwitting abdications via evacuation to the USA. I quickly learned that pieces with handles, rims, and bases were separated from the other shards and cataloged by type (basically, they were separated into everyday dishes or pots and “fine china”—technically, “fine ware”); the rest of the shards (no sections of handles, rims, or bases) were merely weighed, counted, and placed in a separate bag that included the date, square number, and locus (the depth of the square).

During the last week, Yolanta, one of the Polish archaeologists came to “read” our pottery; that is, she examined the so-called diagnostic pottery—the pieces of handles, rims, and bases. One of her conclusions: the NE church (our site) is older than the “Polish church” (the one the Polish team has been excavating). Our church may date back to the fifth century, that is, the age of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon (431 and 451, respectively) when the church was hammering out language for the incarnation. The earlier dating put me in awe of our work.

My work on the pottery continued on my final day of recovery from that nasty intestinal bug. I stayed behind at the kibbutz but worked most of the morning photographing the diagnostic pottery—first one side of the shards of handles, rims, and bases from each square and each day, then the other side. Then Mark and I boxed them up and prepared them to be sent to him in the US by Michael, the assistant archaeologist of the Haifa team. The real surprise came with Mark’s instructions to me regarding the rest of the shards: all those pieces (the vast majority) which came from part of the pots other than handles, rims, and bases. Once carefully kept separate by square, locus, and date, I was shocked, shocked, to learn the great secret of pottery shards: They were now all mixed together in the pottery buckets, hauled back up to the dig site, and dumped over the side of the hill with other rubble excavated from the site! But wait! We so carefully saved them, carried them down the hill, soaked and scrubbed them, weighed and counted them . . . only to have them mixed up and returned to the site as junk! On the one hand, I was glad I hadn’t known the fate of all those shards as I collected and washed them throughout the four weeks. On the other hand, I wish I had slipped a couple of the nice pieces into a sock and brought them home. Had I known the great secret of the pottery shards, I might have taken the risk and become a smuggler of antiquities.

Introducing: The Fearsome Foursome . . . the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse . . . Four Men and a Babe . . .

From left: Brian Andrew, Jim Rogers, First Century Babe at Caesarea Maritima (they had characters who dressed and acted the parts of first century residents of the city), Jim Appelbaum, and Bill Meyer. Photo courtesy of Irene Abrams.

For those still reading my blog, especially those who were evacuated mid-season, this entry will introduce you to the four guys who arrived on evacuation day and opted to stay until the end of the season.

Within five minutes of welcoming them to Kibbutz En Gev I recall saying, “I hope you bonded with each other while traveling here, because you’re all housed together.” They had and continued to deepen that bond for the next two weeks! Apparently, all four were reading Garrison Keillor while in Israel. Well, that’s not too odd for a group of four Lutherans of their generation.

At our last supper together at the En Gev famous Fish Restaurant, they revealed these self-designations approved by the Gang of Four themselves: James the Elder (Jim Appelbaum) and James the Less (Pastor Jim Rogers), two appellations derived from our marking the feast day of James the Elder on July 25, who Festivals and Commemorations states, “is not to be confused with St. James the Less (the younger), the son of Alphaeus,” another of Jesus’ twelve disciples. As one can guess, Jim Appelbaum is the older of our two Jims. Next is Peculiar Bill (Pastor Bill Meyer)—to know him is to understand this naming. Bill informed us at dinner that Jim Rogers had translated the Greek inscription discovered on the main drag of Hippos by the Haifa team on the final day; according to Bill, it reads “Right Turn Only.” Truly a peculiar sense of humor! Rounding out the foursome is Brian the Bold. At this final designation Irene corrected my napkin note taking during dinner, calling him Brian the Wienie, with which the other three all heartily agreed.


Clearly, these four had not only formed a bond among themselves; their constant banter with Irene, Goddess of Peace (as they warmly referred to her) on the dig site, during daily pottery cleaning, and at the last supper signaled this additional bond that had formed quickly. It was evident as soon as Darryl and I returned from our evacuation mission in Tel Aviv, and we were only gone three days!

At dinner we all learned what the four had done to avoid getting the dust of Hippos in their living quarters, the entrance of which was well shielded from the sidewalk by a thick hedge of six-foot flowering bushes: they undressed down to their skivvies outside their front door. While no one on the sidewalk could see them, apparently an elderly neighbor of the female persuasion had a grand view of them from her adjoining patio and made a daily ritual of watching them. The four were of mixed opinion whether she was getting voyeuristic pleasure or watching them with a frown of disapproval. Since they also called their semipublic disrobing an “anti-katyusha device,” it seems more likely her reaction was the latter of the two options. I can only say I’m jealous I didn’t have a privacy hedge; I had to sweep the dust of Hippos out of our room daily!

I have many regrets from our time in Israel: not taking enough time to sit on the beach and contemplate events of 2000 years ago, the evacuation of the students, only getting to the spa in Tiberias once for a massage, and last but not least, not making time to pop in on the Fearsome Foursome’s daily happy hour. I’m assured the conversation was scintillating and instructive. Perhaps another year!


We were grateful for the presence of each of them and their unique contributions to the group.