I was tired again this morning; in fact, each morning so far it’s been a little harder to wake up and get going. And I forgot my official notebook for the dig-square too, which meant I had to write in my own notebook and then transcribe it later in the day into the official one. Still, those were small problems, and overall the dig once again gave me tremendous energy and focus. I just love this work!
Sure, it still is work. We began today by chopping brush along the suspected pathway of the street that we know exists at the south end of our church and, we hope, continues through to the decumanus about 30 m south. I was a bit anxious about using a turreah again for that purpose, and in fact some of the people working around me joked that they ought to step back from me: “Careful, he’s got a turreah!” Funny. It went fine though, and within a half hour we were done.
Within our own square, E-0, we had a change of personnel today in light of my planned trip tomorrow to Tel Aviv to get the passport matter straightened out. Amanda went to work in F-4 while Kristina came from there to E-0. She will be the supervisor tomorrow in my absence. So I made sure that she had a chance to ask plenty of questions, and gave her direction along the way. I think it’ll go just fine.
Lots of progress! We “proved” today that the poorly-built and diagonal double wall in the SW corner is in fact a “floating” wall. In the triangular apex where that wall meets the better-built and more regularly oriented wall to its north, we found some large tumbled-over stones that probably came from that more regular wall. One of the largest stones in the diagonal wall is sitting right on top of one of the largest stones from the other wall—which seemed both to me and to Mark Schuler to demonstrate the point. The diagonal wall also doesn’t extend much farther down than that one course. So it’ll probably be taken out fairly soon, so we can focus on the more interesting and important “original” structures underneath.
We also made good progress in the northern part of the square just outside the gate, where we exposed another course of stones and got pretty close to the pavement. That is, we’re expecting to find pavement, but haven’t quite made it that far down yet. There were a couple of horizontal stones that seem to have perhaps tumbled from the north-south wall just to the east of our square, and we probed around them a bit, but the further digging will have to wait until tomorrow.
The final thing we accomplished today was working down to the stylobate level, again within that triangular area on the west. Mark was quite anxious for us to do this because he keeps hoping to find some pavement on the west side of that stylobate. Doing so would establish that the columns standing on the stylobate are in fact part of an atrium. This triangular section seemed a likely spot to find pavement, especially now that we have run into this group of large jumbled stones that seem not to have been disturbed since antiquity. But no such luck. We moved a couple of them out by using a cargo net, which is an innovation the team introduced this year. Dan and I borrowed Clint for this task. He was glad to get away from his “regular job,” which is working with Joyce and another woman on the mosaics in the floor of the church. They’re in pretty rough shape (the mosaics, not the Magnuses’), and need a lot of very painstaking scrubbing and cleaning, using everything from scrapers like dentists use, to cotton batting. I think Clint would probably be happier doing more of the dirt-and-rock work we’re doing, but that was what he signed up for, and he’s actually being really decent about it, not complaining at all. But I know him well enough to get the sense that he’s pretty happy to get away and do some “real work” for a change, every now and again.
Anyway, to move this big rock, we laid the net alongside the rock, turned the rock onto the net, piled the excess net on top of the rock, then lifted on the net from three sides at once. It works great!
Breakfast up on the hill was really good today too: corn flakes (from Hungary!) with milk, bread with jam and nutella, hardboiled eggs, olives, fish, coffee and tea. I made sure I complimented Itamar, the logistics manager, for the meal, but he told me he actually didn’t have anything to do with it other than delivering it; the kitchen at the kibbutz prepared everything. Oh well! I told him he should take the compliment anyway….
We got lots of pottery from our square again today, a bucket brimming full. Once again that was by far the largest amount of any of the groups. We also found more glass shards, including a piece of what might have been a small vial. The glass is so pretty, blue-green and having an iridescent sheen to the outer surface. Amazing to think that it’s as old as it is. We found a few bones too, not as many as yesterday, but including a couple of long pointy teeth. Quite a variety of things!
I washed some more clothes today, in part getting ready for the Jerusalem trip. Yesterday I didn’t have the energy to go into the lake so the small amount of laundry I did took place in the sink, but today I felt a bit more energetic so took my mesh-bag of clothes with me into the lake, sat down on the sandy bottom, and scrubbed away. What an unusual experience. The lake was of course completely calm at that time, around 1:00 pm, but the stiff breeze that I may have mentioned before comes up as regular as clockwork every day, usually about 3:00 pm. It blows hard then until sundown, about 8:00. By morning, it’s dead calm again. In fact, I mentioned to Darryl at dinner tonight that I think I’d miss having “weather” if I lived here: the pattern is exactly the same every day! Of course, that’s only based on 5 days of observations, but from what others have said, it’s pretty much true. There are significant differences between summer and winter, sure, but not so much from day to day. By contrast, I suppose we maybe have more weather than we really need in Alberta. Too bad we can’t share some of it with them here.
I’ll be out of touch with everyone by email and blog until Sunday, most likely, because of the trip I have to make now to Tel Aviv, and then to Jerusalem. We’ll be doing a very quick tour of some of the holy sites on Friday and Saturday—as Mark Schuler put it, “we’ll be running where Jesus walked.” Hah! I’ll try to report what I can when we get back, perhaps on Sunday.


\I was tired again this morning; in fact, each morning so far it’s been a little harder to wake up and get going. And I forgot my official notebook for the dig-square too, which meant I had to write in my own notebook and then transcribe it later in the day into the official one. Still, those were small problems, and overall the dig once again gave me tremendous energy and focus. I just love this work!
Sure, it still is work. We began today by chopping brush along the suspected pathway of the street that we know exists at the south end of our church and, we hope, continues through to the decumanus about 30 m south. I was a bit anxious about using a turreah again for that purpose, and in fact some of the people working around me joked that they ought to step back from me: “Careful, he’s got a turreah!” Funny. It went fine though, and within a half hour we were done.
Within our own square, E-0, we had a change of personnel today in light of my planned trip tomorrow to Tel Aviv to get the passport matter straightened out. Amanda went to work in F-4 while Kristina came from there to E-0. She will be the supervisor tomorrow in my absence. So I made sure that she had a chance to ask plenty of questions, and gave her direction along the way. I think it’ll go just fine.
Lots of progress! We “proved” today that the poorly-built and diagonal double wall in the SW corner is in fact a “floating” wall. In the triangular apex where that wall meets the better-built and more regularly oriented wall to its north, we found some large tumbled-over stones that probably came from that more regular wall. One of the largest stones in the diagonal wall is sitting right on top of one of the largest stones from the other wall—which seemed both to me and to Mark Schuler to demonstrate the point. The diagonal wall also doesn’t extend much farther down than that one course. So it’ll probably be taken out fairly soon, so we can focus on the more interesting and important “original” structures underneath.
We also made good progress in the northern part of the square just outside the gate, where we exposed another course of stones and got pretty close to the pavement. That is, we’re expecting to find pavement, but haven’t quite made it that far down yet. There were a couple of horizontal stones that seem to have perhaps tumbled from the north-south wall just to the east of our square, and we probed around them a bit, but the further digging will have to wait until tomorrow.
The final thing we accomplished today was working down to the stylobate level, again within that triangular area on the west. Mark was quite anxious for us to do this because he keeps hoping to find some pavement on the west side of that stylobate. Doing so would establish that the columns standing on the stylobate are in fact part of an atrium. This triangular section seemed a likely spot to find pavement, especially now that we have run into this group of large jumbled stones that seem not to have been disturbed since antiquity. But no such luck. We moved a couple of them out by using a cargo net, which is an innovation the team introduced this year. Dan and I borrowed Clint for this task. He was glad to get away from his “regular job,” which is working with Joyce and another woman on the mosaics in the floor of the church. They’re in pretty rough shape (the mosaics, not the Magnuses’), and need a lot of very painstaking scrubbing and cleaning, using everything from scrapers like dentists use, to cotton batting. I think Clint would probably be happier doing more of the dirt-and-rock work we’re doing, but that was what he signed up for, and he’s actually being really decent about it, not complaining at all. But I know him well enough to get the sense that he’s pretty happy to get away and do some “real work” for a change, every now and again.
Anyway, to move this big rock, we laid the net alongside the rock, turned the rock onto the net, piled the excess net on top of the rock, then lifted on the net from three sides at once. It works great!
Breakfast up on the hill was really good today too: corn flakes (from Hungary!) with milk, bread with jam and nutella, hardboiled eggs, olives, fish, coffee and tea. I made sure I complimented Itamar, the logistics manager, for the meal, but he told me he actually didn’t have anything to do with it other than delivering it; the kitchen at the kibbutz prepared everything. Oh well! I told him he should take the compliment anyway….
We got lots of pottery from our square again today, a bucket brimming full. Once again that was by far the largest amount of any of the groups. We also found more glass shards, including a piece of what might have been a small vial. The glass is so pretty, blue-green and having an iridescent sheen to the outer surface. Amazing to think that it’s as old as it is. We found a few bones too, not as many as yesterday, but including a couple of long pointy teeth. Quite a variety of things!
I washed some more clothes today, in part getting ready for the Jerusalem trip. Yesterday I didn’t have the energy to go into the lake so the small amount of laundry I did took place in the sink, but today I felt a bit more energetic so took my mesh-bag of clothes with me into the lake, sat down on the sandy bottom, and scrubbed away. What an unusual experience. The lake was of course completely calm at that time, around 1:00 pm, but the stiff breeze that I may have mentioned before comes up as regular as clockwork every day, usually about 3:00 pm. It blows hard then until sundown, about 8:00. By morning, it’s dead calm again. In fact, I mentioned to Darryl at dinner tonight that I think I’d miss having “weather” if I lived here: the pattern is exactly the same every day! Of course, that’s only based on 5 days of observations, but from what others have said, it’s pretty much true. There are significant differences between summer and winter, sure, but not so much from day to day. By contrast, I suppose we maybe have more weather than we really need in Alberta. Too bad we can’t share some of it with them here.
I’ll be out of touch with everyone by email and blog until Sunday, most likely, because of the trip I have to make now to Tel Aviv, and then to Jerusalem. We’ll be doing a very quick tour of some of the holy sites on Friday and Saturday—as Mark Schuler put it, “we’ll be running where Jesus walked.” Hah! I’ll try to report what I can when we get back, perhaps on Sunday.