Excavating: Awesome and Exhausting!

This is our second day of excavating Tel Rehov. We arrived at the kibbutz where we're staying on Sunday afternoon. The kibbutz is at the eastern end of the Jezreel Valley, not far from Beth She'an where we studied the ruins of that tel last week. The kibbutz is very shady, lots of space, and has a grocery store, which the students like! The south end of the kibbutz sits at the foot of Mt. Gilboa, where Saul and Jonathan were killed and the Philistines carried off the Ark of the Covenant. Everytime I look up, I imagine Saul fighting the Philistines and I wonder just where on Mt. Gilboa the battle took place. But, it really doesn't matter...just living for the next two weeks at the foot of that landscape where this well-known Biblical event took place is wondrous in itself!

We woke up bright and early (well....early at least!) on Monday morning at 4:30 a.m. to get out on the tel right before the sun came up. We were given our assignments as to the area we would be working in, and promptly went to work. I'm in Area A with Callan, Jessica, Karly, and Jesse. The others of our group are in Area C and Area D. Area C is a treasure trove of artifacts...you walk around that site and just observe all the different kinds of pottery they are taking out of the earth. There are HUGE storage jars just sitting in a couple of the rooms that have been excavated. Then, I watched yesterday as they pulled a cute, little juglet from the ground. It was completely intact except for a small hole in the side (possibly where a pickaxe hit it as they initially broke up the ground for excavation). If you like this sort of thing (and I do), this is amazing! Monday was exhausting as well as exhilerating, simply because we weren't used to the early hour and to the physical labor (hoeing dirt into buckets and carrying those buckets to a dirt pile to the side of the site). By 12:15 p.m. we wearily climbed aboard the bus to take us back to the kibbutz, completely covered from head to toe with a layer of fine dust all over us. I have never been so dirty in all of my life! We were talking about how we all looked like Pigpen from the Snoopy cartoon....as we walk, we stir up clouds of Israeli dirt everywhere we go! I stumbled into my room, took a shower immediately and promptly took a nap! I think I had a bit of heat exhaustion as well, since it was close to 105 degrees yesterday. But, drinking more water and rest revived me and we had a BBQ out on the lawn with everyone (including the archaeologists and the Israeli students) celebrating the 4th of July.

Today (Tuesday) was easier than yesterday, having acclimated ourselves a little to the environment. And we had quite a little excitement in our Area A! I was standing at the sifter (shaking a bucket of dirt through a sieve to find artifacts - pottery sherds, animal bone, seashells, and flint) when Karly showed a small object to our lead archaeologist, Haggai, and asked if it was anything. He took one look at it and said, "This is the greatest find in our area up to this point!" It was an oval seal with pictures and some kind of writing on it. The archaeologists immediately took measurements and obtained samples of the ground around where the seal (or scarab, as they called it) was found. I took a picture of Karly and the seal with my camera as well. Then the lead archaeologist of the whole excavation, Dr. Amihai Mazar, came to the site and exclaimed over the find. He made Karly feel very important as the discoverer of this most interesting artifact. They will be sending the object to a specialist to find out what is actually written on it. Haggai told me to look out for the impression of that seal in my sifter, since there may be some evidence of that around the location of the find. My most important find today was olive pits! There were dozens in the sifter and they were gathered without actually touching them since the carbon from my body would damage these ancient pits. I had to use my trusty trowel to fish them out and deposit them in a specially-made container. So, I was in the pits today! :)

I am able to use the computer in the excavation office, so hopefully I can get online every couple of days or so. I'll keep you posted as to other finds. It looks promising!

Bev