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An article about my experience on the dig made the front page of my local newspaper, the Daily Journal. You can read the online version of the article here.

Now that I’m back from the dig, I’ve been given a couple opportunities to share about my experience.

1. I’ll be giving a half-hour presentation for the Fergus Falls Noon Kiwanis group tomorrow, August 8, at 12:00 p.m.

2. Having given a pre-dig presentation at my home congregation, I’ll now follow-up with an hour-long post-dig presentation this Sunday, August 14. This presentation is open to the public and will begin at 10:30 a.m. at Trinity Lutheran Church. Trinity is located at 1150 W Cavour Ave in Fergus Falls, MN (map/directions).

At both presentations, I’ll be sharing photos, videos, and stories from my month of digging and touring in Israel.

This post is a record of July 30, 2011, but was written later.

I ended the day 29 post as our plane was boarding. I decided to continue here since the next events technically took place after midnight (using Israel time), making it day 30.

Having said that, it was actually very confusing to try to tell the time while on the plane. It was a 12.5-hour flight, but we left Tel Aviv just before midnight and arrived in Philadelphia at 5:00 a.m. Another sign that we were seeming to outrun time itself was seen when we looked out the plane window. When we left Tel Aviv, it was completely dark outside. At some point during the flight, Anna opened the window shade and there was either a sunrise or a sunset going on. Then I opened the shade a few hours later and it was completely dark again. When we neared Philadelphia, the sun began rising. We were flying faster than the earth’s rotation and outpacing the sun.

dinner and a show

Yes, the flight was long, but Anna and I had reserved seats next to each other so that we could talk. There were also screens in front of every passenger that offered movies, TV shows, music, and more. Anna and I watched a couple TV episodes and then a movie (it was “Unknown,” which is going on my list of favorites). I know there were others on our team, especially those who didn’t get to sit by someone they knew, who plowed through three or four movies during the flight. We were served a meal they called supper sometime after midnight and then breakfast shortly before arriving in Philadelphia. I tried to sleep, but can’t do that very well sitting up.

In Philadelphia, there was more airport rigamarole to go through, from passport control to security to baggage claim. Despite his best efforts, one of our team members, Trevor, missed his connecting flight, so we got to meet up with him once more and say goodbye. Also notable was the moment when Dylan got patted down by security to an absurd degree. He was wearing some extremely bagging clothing he had purchased in Israel, which apparently made the security guy very suspicious.

There was something relieving about being back in the US. Even though it was usually very small, I think there was probably always some fear that something could go wrong in Israel. Now that we were back in our home country, I had the feeling that if anything came up, we’d be okay. Israel felt much safer than I thought it would, but there was still something about the security of being home that was comforting.

group before splitting up in Philadelphia

Then came the sad moment when we all had to go our separate ways. There was a group that was flying to St. Louis, one going to the Twin Cities, and a few individuals going to Washington, Texas, and Wisconsin. Here is the last photo we took as a group (minus the three still in Israel, those who only came for half a season, and Anna, who took the photo).

John, Dylan, Sarah, Meghan and I went to the gate for our Minneapolis flight. (Felecia was there with us too because her gate was nearby.) It was at this time that people decided they wanted some American food again.

You’ll notice that Dylan’s first American breakfast includes no diced tomatoes and cucumbers or hardboiled eggs. That was intentional.

John went for a coffee that was probably better than the instant stuff he had in Israel.

Felecia, the Wisconsin girl, fed the stereotype and went for American cheese.

And Sarah chose the great American staple: bacon.

My first American food would come later, but first we had to miss our flight.

When we arrived at the gate, no one else was there. I asked why that was, and people said it was because we were early. Someone had checked a monitor while walking through the airport and saw that our flight was still on time. As we waited at the gate, most of us took out our laptops and began checking email. After a while, I noticed there were still no other people there, and I think I mentioned something about it again. John asked me what time it was, and I gave him both the time in Philadelphia and the time in Minnesota. We had all been engrossed in either email or food and trying to deal with the jet lag when I noticed we only had about 20 minutes until the plane was supposed to leave and there were still no other people at the gate. I asked once more and John said that we were at the right one. I don’t know who it was, but someone from our group went and asked someone from the airport what was happening. The person replied that our flight had been moved to another gate.

When we heard that, we all jumped up, packed our things as quickly as possible, and began running through the airport to the other gate. We were in B something and the new gate was C26, which was quite a jog away. Dylan and Sarah ran out ahead, while I was in the middle, and John and Meghan took up the rear. As I ran, I was worrying about whether missing this flight and having to get on another would be an extra cost. I also wondered what would happen if I did make it on the flight but John and Meghan didn’t. In the end, we all reached the gate just minutes after boarding had ended. An airport employee at the gate told us that he didn’t think the next flight was leaving for Minneapolis until 6:00 that night. It was about 6:00 a.m. when he told us that.

We were told to go to customer service, so while still breathing heavily, we did. Thankfully, the women at USAir’s customer service were lifesavers. They found five empty seats on a Delta flight that was leaving in just a few hours. There was no extra cost to this, so we were relieved on all sides.

We moved to that new, correct gate, got new boarding passes, and waited. John told me that part of the reason he didn’t notice we were at the wrong gate was that he had set his watch to Minnesota time and so he wasn’t aware that the other plane should have been boarding when it wasn’t. At this new gate, some ate again, some checked email, and some slept. I fell asleep in a chair for a little while, then got some coffee from the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts to keep me awake. I don’t generally drink very much coffee, and I had already had two cups on the flight, so I also got some light food to help my stomach deal with all the caffeine.

The plane to Minneapolis seemed tiny in comparison to our previous one. The international plane had had nine seats across with two aisles. This little plane had just four seats and one aisle. I had also forgotten how much lower this plane flew than the international one. We could see the ground the whole time.

After just a few hours on that flight, I was finally back in Minnesota.

me back home

For a final time, what remained of our group divided. My dad picked me up from the airport, we stopped briefly at my aunt’s place in the Cities so my cousin could help clean the new camera, which was covered in Israeli dust, and then we started the final leg home.

Here were the first three things I did back in the US.

first

second

third

Before we had even left for Israel, Dr. Schuler started telling us that the first thing we’d want to do when we got home would be to eat a bacon cheeseburger, since bacon isn’t kosher, and therefore not very available in Israel, and neither is combining meat and cheese. I generally try to avoid fast food, but people talked so much about bacon cheeseburgers on the trip that I eventually started craving one, too. When the “Baconator” from Wendy’s was gone and I realized that I hadn’t eaten for most of the day and was still hungry, we pulled into Burger King for another. I had to laugh when I saw this sign at the drive thru.

sign reads "Get your meat and cheese"

Some would say that sign could just as well have said, “Welcome back to America.”

Since this post is long enough already, I think I’ll write some kind of overall reflection as a separate post.

SEE ALL 17 PHOTOS FROM DAY 30 WITH TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS HERE.

This post is a record of July 29, 2011, but was written later.

On day 29, move-out day, we had one more square to finish. Here’s the before photo.

before

Yes, it was our room at the kibbutz. Now, I don’t want to give him too much grief, but you’ll notice that the mess, or “filth”, as he would say, flows from one side of the room…

After an untold number of hours of cleaning, washing, bagging pottery shards, packing, trying to eat as much leftover food as possible, packing some more, recruiting a girlfriend to help with packing, and weighing our luggage to make sure we weren’t over any weight limits, we were done.

after

Speaking of pottery shards, I forgot to mention this, but I believe it was on either day 27 or 28 that Arie, the pottery specialist, allowed David, Dylan, and I to take whatever pottery shards we wanted as souvenirs. All throughout the dig, we had “taken” interesting shards that we wanted to keep. On the first day of digging, we were told that we could keep anything we found because it was on the surface and therefore “stratigraphically insignificant.” After that first day, we had to get lucky and find pieces on the surface of other areas of the site if we wanted to pocket anything. We were never sure exactly how “right” it was for us to take pieces, but on this day, we realized that all of our sneakiness was unnecessary as Arie offered us everything that had been found (that wasn’t too significant to have been kept by one of the teams).

You see, we found pottery shards all seasons long, usually multiple buckets’ worth every day. Almost every day after lab work we would sit on lawn chairs in a grassy area near the lab and near the shore and we would scrub the pottery that had been found the previous day and had been soaking in water overnight. This pottery washing time was one of many people’s least favorite parts of the day. That was partly because it wasn’t all that much fun and partly because you often got dirty water sprayed by someone’s brush onto your recently showered body and relatively clean clothes. Some of the return diggers disliked the washing for another reason. After the pieces were washed, the diagnostic ones – those that were pieces of rims or handles or other things that might help identify a piece of pottery – were processed, they were all at least glanced over by the pottery specialist, and then they were dumped along with the other teams’ pottery into boxes that would later be dumped into a cistern at Hippos. In other words, some of those pieces we scrubbed would potentially be glanced at before being thrown into a cistern. Despite some griping, it was the only way to do it.

One other quick note before I continue. I had said way back in the first dig blog post that I’d post a photo of our “power issues.” Here’s the photo.

our "power issues"

In our first room, before the men joined the women in their building, Dylan, David, and I had propped a guitar case under an adapter-converter-power strip combination. When we moved, we took away the converter and replaced the guitar case with a box of cereal, a box of granola bars, and a small jelly packet to hold the adapter up tightly. It was only on the last day that Anna had the idea of replacing the tower of boxes with books, which worked much better. Even still, it was annoying to have to fight with electrical stuff like this the whole time. Whoever designs power adapters and converters needs to realize that when all of the weight is so far out from the wall, the adapter/converter ends up falling out of the wall outlet. Once, when I was handling an adapter, trying to keep it from falling out of the outlet, I touched a metal piece I shouldn’t have and got a 220-volt shock through my right arm. My arm stung for a while after that, but there was nothing I could do… except think about the importance of grounding electrical currents… According to Dr. Schuler, it was also because of this lack of grounding poles on our adapters and converters that our charging iPods and laptops would shock us. (When we first discovered that, David and Dylan had fun shocking each other with my iPod. Anna wouldn’t use my laptop without putting a blanket on her lap first.)

Once our room was cleaned and our luggage was packed, Dr. Schuler gave a rundown of airport security and all that we would need to do to get home. He then closed the season as he had begun it by reading Scripture. He read a passage in which the disciples spread the word about Jesus to others. He said that as we returned home, we would also have the opportunity to tell people about how we encountered Jesus in Israel. I hope I’ve been able to do some of that here on my blog, and I hope to do the same during a couple presentations I’ll be giving and as I share my stories with people. It certainly isn’t hard to see how this experience has affected my understanding of the faith, but it is sometimes hard to find the words to express it.

driving away from Hippos

We said our goodbyes to Dr. Schuler, Darryl, and Rachel, who all stayed behind for a couple days to wrap things up. Then we boarded the bus and left for the Ben Gurion International Airport. As we drove away, we also said our goodbyes to the kibbutz and to Hippos.

At the airport, Meghan and John got stuck in international security for a long time. We had arrived at the airport plenty early just to be on the safe side, and it was a good thing we had, because by the time they finally got through, we walked to our gate with only a short wait before the plane started boarding.

Since the next events take place after midnight (using Israel time), and since this post is long enough already, I’ll continue in a day 30 post.

SEE ALL 12 PHOTOS FROM DAY 29 WITH TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS HERE.

This post is a record of July 28, 2011, but was written later.

Day 28 was our last day on Hippos. This meant it was the last morning of waking up before the sun and boarding the bus at 4:45 a.m. It was the last time we trusted the bus driver to make it up the snake trail without getting too close to the edge of the road. It was the last time we made the hike from the bus to the site.

cleaning the cardo

The last day at the site is always set aside for cleaning and taking photographs. Cleaning means removing dirt from areas that have already been excavated, pulling weeds, and eventually returning tools, frames, and tarps. There were a few big rocks that we had rolled from G9 into F9/F10, which Tahlal, our favorite tractor driver, removed on this day. He got delayed, which then pushed our team back and caused us to have to rush a little more, but the rocks got removed.

Sarah in the tractor

There was an ongoing joke between Tahlal and people on our team about him buying Sarah from us for a certain number of camels and goats… I’m not really sure how the whole thing went, but I know he let her sit in his tractor on this last day, which made her more than happy.

We were supposed to have time to get a tour of the site from Dr. Schuler and take photos, but we were far too rushed for that. After trying to remove those last rocks and do the other cleaning, we were down to the wire as we began to cover the fountain and the mosaic floors. Because Hippos is a national park, tourists sometimes come up to the site. They have been known to steal or damage things, so we have to take extra precautions. Any finds that are small enough to be carried away, like grinding mills, were taken with us. The fountain was covered with cloth, and buckets full of cement-like stuff were placed on the cloth to keep it in place. The mosaic floors (and the inscriptions in them) were covered in a layer of sand, followed by cloth, and then a layer of fine dirt. After all this is done, you can’t tell the mosaics exist. Our hope is that tourists don’t notice the cloth, and if they do, that they don’t pull it up and mess with the floors. This is also done to protect against the weather and keep things in good condition throughout the rest of the year.

Because we ran out of time, I don’t have “final photos” of the whole site, but I did have time to snap a few throughout the day.

XX99 final

This is what XX99, the first square I worked in, looked like at the end of the dig. Steps were exposed that went down to the floor level. The last step was carved directly into bedrock. The doorway was fully exposed, and the intact lintel stone stayed in place above it. A catch basin was found and can be seen in the bottom-left side of this photo.

garden entrance inscription

Just inside XX99′s doorway, an inscription in the mosaic floor welcomed people into the garden with the words “Good luck to the builder.” (Inscription photo from the official dig blog.)

Those who worked on Jim’s team in XXYY0 had some unusual finds. They found multiple floors, water pipes, a hole in the floor that contained a treasure-less, but intact, pot, and a mosaic floor with an inscription that reads “Enter for good.”

XXYY0 final

XXYY0 inscription

(Inscription photo from the official dig blog.)

For more on the other finished areas, see my posts for day 14, when we finished F10 West, day 21, when we finished F9/F10, day 24, when we finished the fountain, or day 27, when we finished G9.

Dylan, Kyle, & David in E10 and F10

At some point during the day, Felecia took a few photos of David, Dylan, and I in some of our finished rooms. To see the other photos she took, follow the link at the bottom of this post.

Kyle at the dig site

As we were heading back down, I also asked Anna to quickly take a few photos of me on the site. Again, to see the rest, follow the link below.

walking to the Sea of Galilee

After riding back down to the kibbutz for the last time, we also took some last photos of ourselves in our dirty digging clothes. We then proceeded to walk directly into the Sea of Galilee. I took a video of that and will post it here when it’s online. It was a lot of fun to swim (and wash off Hippos dirt) one more time.

The trip came full circle that night when Dr. Schuler took us all out to eat at the kibbutz’s fish restaurant for supper, the same place we ate our first night there.

supper at fish restaurant

After the meal, David, Dylan, and I had a final “guys’ night” on the shore as we had done before. I don’t think I’ll forget sitting next to the water, watching the sunset over the Sea of Galilee, feeling the cool breeze across the water, and watching city lights come on across the way and stars light up the sky as we talked with each other as only very close friends can.

Yes, it had been an amazing experience, but the work wasn’t done quite yet. We still had to pack and finish one more square…

SEE ALL 50 PHOTOS FROM DAY 28 WITH TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS HERE.

————

8/4 UPDATE: Dr. Schuler wrote a nice, concise summary of the season’s work here on the official dig blog.

This post is a record of July 27, 2011, but was written later.

Because the last day is set aside for cleaning the dig site and taking photos, day 27 was the last day of actual digging. This meant that if we were going to finish G9, it would have to happen this day. Again, Dr. Schuler put most of our people on this square to increase our chances of finishing it.

I wish I had an aerial photo to help explain what I’m about to, but I don’t, so you’ll have to use your mind’s eye. E9 and E10 were the first squares that were completely excavated. These two squares made up one room. A window wall stood between this room and the room that existed in squares F9 and F10. The F9/F10 room was completed right before G9 was started. (The F9/F10 room was the room with the “shrinking balk perch” that I wrote about on day 21.) Glen and I had finished excavating F10 West earlier in the season and had theorized that this room was used for animals. F10 West is connected to F10 by a doorway. This meant that we had three rooms, E9/E10, F9/F10, and F10 West, that were all connected. Together they form what is called Building Alpha. The problem was that there was no door into this set of rooms. F10 had a doorway that led into square G9, so as we worked on G9, we expected to find a doorway that served as the entrance to Building Alpha.

Top of a doorway?

As we were digging on day 27, we noticed what looked like the top of a doorway. Darryl didn’t think it was because of how narrow the opening was, but when Dr. Schuler came to look at it, he said that it was the doorway. He asked David and me to clear it out. After we had been doing so for a while, Darryl looked over again and started laughing. He said, “That’s not a doorway. That’s a niche.” We had run into wall where the bottom of the doorway should be. We wanted to have Dr. Schuler come over again, but the call for breakfast came over the radio. While we were sitting in the abandoned military building, starting to eat, Dr. Schuler came in and said, “You were supposed to find a doorway, not a niche.”

Nope. It's a niche.

The bad news was that this left the mystery of the Building Alpha entrance unsolved. Dr. Schuler says that this means there has to have been a second level with stairs going down to this door-less level. Unfortunately, we haven’t found any traces of a staircase. Dr. Schuler plans to excavate the adjacent squares next year in hopes of finding this missing staircase.

pot in the niche

The good news was that a largely intact pot was found in the niche. After breakfast, David and I were asked to help move some rocks on the other side of the dig site. Just as we were returning to G9 to continue work on our niche, Sarah made the discovery. We gave her a hard time about waiting for us to do most of the work exposing the niche so she could claim the find, but we were (fairly) good sports about it. That kind of thing happens on the site. You’ll dig in one area for a very long time and find nothing, then someone else will step in and find something that you just barely missed. We’ll just say it was a team effort… All that really matters is that it was a largely intact pot. (I think there might have actually been pieces to a couple pots, but I don’t remember for sure.)

It was another hot, busy day of working, but by the end of the day, we had done it.

G9 after

There you have it. G9 was finished.

We had discovered a second stylobate - the first having been discovered in F9/F10 - which you can see on the left side of this photo. (If you don’t remember, a stylobate is a platform that columns would be placed upon.) I forgot to write about this in the day 26 post, but it was on day 26 that we first discovered it. As was the case with the F9/F10 stylobate, we worried that it could be a tomb. (Read the day 19 post to understand why we’d worry about this.) Our fears were increased when, at the very end of day 26, Jackie found a large bone that we thought could possibly be human. We were told to keep quiet about all of this until we could come back up to the site, analyze the bone, and continue to expose the stylobate. When we did those things on day 27, we found that it wasn’t a human bone and that it really was a stylobate, not a tomb. This stylobate would have met up with the F9/F10 stylobate to form a corner, Dr. Schuler thinks. Dr. Schuler says that these discoveries are important for understanding the greater history of Hippos. If I remember correctly, he said that these stylobates were Roman and predated much of the Byzantine-era Building Alpha we were excavating. If these stylobates held columns, a large Roman structure must have stood in the area prior to Building Alpha.

You’ll also see in the photo that we discovered a wall that is only one block wide that divides G9. We’re not sure why this wall would have been built to block off such a small section of G9.

Finally, you can also see a pilar in the walled-off side of G9. I don’t think we know much about that either.

Although G9 leaves us with some unsolved mysteries, it was a great feeling of accomplishment to finish it in time. We were later told by Dr. Schuler that when he first told Arthur Segal, head of the Hippos excavations, that we were going to try to finish G9 before the end of the week/season, Arthur had said that it wasn’t possible. When he saw it finished, Arthur told Dr. Schuler again that no Israeli team could have done that. It was another proud moment for our team. Personally, between finishing F10 West with Glenn, totally excavating F9/F10 with John’s team, and now totally excavating G9, I had seen three different rooms “come out of the ground.” I was a part of removing meters of dirt, by hand, no less, to expose these ancient rooms that had been buried for over a thousand years. Again, it was a very satisfying feeling.

pot from hole in floor

The pot that had been found in the hole in the floor on day 26 was washed and processed in the lab on day 27. As part of its processing, Trevor and I photographed it. It was great to finally see an intact pot after having found and processed SO many pottery shards. I see that I forgot to finish writing about this pot on my day 26 post. I had ended by quoting Dr. Schuler, who said that rumors of a treasure hoard were circulating. Those rumors ended up being like many rumors: false. The “treasure” inside consisted of dirt, a nail, and some pieces of glass and bone. We’re not sure why someone would dig a hole in the floor to place a mostly empty pot there. Maybe they wanted to trick some archaeologists.

I haven’t said much about lab work yet, so since I’m running out of posts, I’ll do that briefly. Almost every day, after coming down from the dig site, eating, showering, and enjoying a couple hours of free time, people would begin lab work. The area we call the lab is actually part of the kibbutz’s theater building. All of the pottery processing is done in the old makeup room, and Dr. Schuler lives in an adjacent room. There are showers in this building where pottery shards are left to soak in buckets overnight. I’m not familiar enough with all of the stages of the processing to tell you everything that happens, but I do know a little. I know that the pottery shards are organized by type, like cooking, storage, fineware, etc. Information about the shards as well as other finds like glass, bone, and items, are entered into a database. Pottery shards are labeled with a number that includes their basket/bucket numbers as well as a unique identifying number. Pottery and items are then photographed. Again, I’m sure there’s more to this process, but that’s what I know. The whole thing is very detailed oriented, as everything is meticulously recorded. This way, although the pottery shards, for example, get more or less thrown away, the documentation of them will be around “forever” for future reference. All of these lab work positions are filled by volunteers. As I said, I worked with a guy named Trevor on photography, which was an incredibly tedious job. Each shard and item had to be photographed front and back, and I, as the camera operator, had to navigate through camera menus to change the text imprint on every other photo to the new identifying number. Thankfully, I think Trevor and I are still on friendly terms, even after hours of doing this together.

pottery reading

We finished our lab work on day 27, and Arie (pronounced AR-EE-AY), the pottery expert, came in to do a pottery reading. He provides valuable information to Dr. Schuler about the approximate time periods and uses of the pottery.

Every year, the Haiffa team puts on an end-of-the-season party, complete with loud music and a barbecue. It was certainly an interesting combination. The DJ played mostly dance/club music. The people were from all around the world and ranged in age from teenage to retired. Some seemed to like the music, while others felt out of place. Some of the food could be considered Mediterranean, but there were also hotdogs and hamburgers on the grill. And all of this was taking place on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Oh yes, there was also a fair amount of drinking involved, some were smoking hookah, and there was a piñata at the end of the night. David was practicing acrobatics with an Israeli boy. Others in our group were getting to know some new people, while others simply stood back and observed this strange scene.

party

A highlight for a handful of us was when Dr. Schuler sat and visited with us. A couple of the girls had been trying to guilt him into swimming with us throughout the month, or play cards, or other things that he really wasn’t too interested in doing. So, when he stood up to leave and the girls asked him to stay longer, he said that he would finally give in to them since he hadn’t done any of the other things and the trip was almost over. He ended up staying up with us quite a while later as we talked about everything from archaeology, to theology, to our futures and some of his life advice. I believe we were referred to as his “disciples” at one point, sitting there listening to him talk on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. We maybe can’t go that far, but it truly was a memorable way to conclude our time with him, getting to speak with him in ways we don’t generally get a chance to as his students.

Tomorrow, day 28, would be our last day up on Hippos.

SEE ALL 18 PHOTOS FROM DAY 27 WITH TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS HERE.

This post is a record of July 26, 2011, but was written later.

Darryl and Anna were back today as we continued work on G9. Dr. Schuler basically put as many people as possible on G9 in an attempt to finish it before the end of the week/season. This meant that the G9 team consisted of Darryl, John, Anna, Jackie, Meghan, Sarah, Felicia, David, and me.

This before photo might be harder to “see” because there are people in the square, but this way you get to see what the square usually looked like. You can see that David and John are using turiyahs to move dirt into buckets, Darryl and Anna are lifting buckets onto the balk, and Sarah is about to grab their buckets and take them to the wheelbarrow. By the time the rest of us joined the fun, it was even more packed and chaotic.

G9 before

For many of us, day 26 was one of the best days of digging. Felicia wrote here on her blog that it was her favorite day because the girls had too much coffee for breakfast and were up to some crazy antics while sharing bucket lifting and wheelbarrow duties. I’ll admit, I also liked day 26 a lot because the greater number of people in the square meant that there was more talking, more joking, and yes, to the annoyance of Darryl and John, more craziness, especially from the girls.

Day 26 was also one of my favorite days of digging because having that many people meant that we were all kept busy the whole time and an incredible amount of progress was made. Often, those on turiyah/pick axe duty are the busiest because they don’t have/get to wait for anyone. They just grab an empty bucket and keep going. Those on bucket lifting duty have to wait for the turiyah people to fill buckets before they have anything to do, and those on wheelbarrow duty have to wait for the lifters to fill their wheelbarrow with buckets of dirt. However, on day 26, everyone was constantly busy. We could hardly keep up with each other. This increased speed meant that no one was really waiting on anyone else, and dirt was almost flying out of the pit. We were glad we could finish off the season with such a good day, and we hoped the next couple days would be as good.

You can see the results of this insanity here in the after photo. Notice that we’ve hit what we think might be floor in the west (right) side of the room and that we’ve exposed much of some kind of wall that divides the room.

G9 after

Old Glory flying over G9

There a guy from the kibbutz that comes up to the dig site every year with a video camera. He interviews the volunteers and posts the video online. (I’ll link to it when it’s up.) He had come up earlier in the season to do those interviews, but he came again today to take a photo of our team and to interview Dr. Schuler. He brought an American flag with him to use in our team photo. After the photo, Dr. Schuler hung the flag on our square’s frame. He said he’s resisted flying the flag for the past 10 years, but he did it this time.

Maybe it was his pride in our American (with the exception of Christine the Canadian) team that caused him to finally give in. When we had finished excavating F9/F10, Arthur Segal, the head of the entire Hippos project, told Dr. Schuler that no Israeli team could have done what our American team did. We don’t mean to badmouth the Haiffa teams, but there was occasionally talk about how much harder our team worked. For example, the Haiffa teams not only stopped for breakfast, but also had tea and coffee breaks throughout the day. They also got both of the tractors most of the time, and we would often look over and see Haiffa team members taking it easy while they watched the tractors work. Now, I should mention that the Haiffa teams had some younger kids and that there were some Haiffa team members we couldn’t see from where we were, but I still think it’s safe to say there was a noticeable difference in work ethic. Even the way we were dressed differently said something about that. Dr. Schuler required everyone in our team to wear pants and work boots for safety reasons and because of the nature of our work, whereas there were Haiffa team members wearing shorts and regular shoes. We also noticed that the Haiffa people were often far less dirty than we were at the end of the day. So, on day 26, we celebrated our American drive as the stars and strips flew proudly above G9.

pot in floor

There was an exciting find in XXYY0 on day 26. The team in that square has had very interesting work as they’ve discovered multiple floors from different periods, water pipes and catch basins, a couple coins, and a mosaic floor with an inscription. On day 26, a conservator who was working on the mosaic floor discovered a hole in the floor. As she worked on clearing out that hole, she discovered the top of a pot. This photos from the official dig site shows it well. As Dr. Schuler says in his blog post, “Why would  a householder cut through a mosaic floor and bury an pot? Fantasies of a treasure hoard circulated wildly.”

party boat

Just as we had participated in lectures and trips put on by the Haiffa teams, we also went on the “party boat” they had arranged for the evening of day 26. Unlike our devotional boat ride on day 12, this boat had loud music and drinks. That said, it was rather mild for a “party boat.” Most of the Concordia team sat on the upper platform, where we enjoyed chatting with each other, another great sunset, and more watermelon.

Hippos from the Sea of Galilee

sunset over the Sea of Galilee

With just two more days of work on Hippos and our time in Israel almost over, it was nice to have this opportunity to once again enjoy each other’s company while boating leisurely on the Sea of Galilee.

SEE ALL 42 PHOTOS FROM DAY 26 WITH TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS HERE.

This post is a record of July 25, 2011, but was written later.

I spent all of day 25 working with Darryl and John’s teams (although I’m not sure it makes sense to talk about set “teams” like this anymore because people have been being moved around so much) on G9. As I wrote in the post for day 24, it was our goal to finish this room before the end of the week/season. Here are the before and after photos for day 25.

G9 before

G9 after

We could see that we had made progress, but we weren’t sure if our pace was good enough to finish the room in time.

eyehook

I’ve written here before that it’s exciting to find anything that isn’t dirt, a rock, or a pottery shard. On day 25 I found this eyehook. Usually, things like this are found as we’re using the turiyah to pull dirt into buckets. As the dirt is turning over, sometimes something like this will catch our eye. Because we don’t have a metal detector to use on a regular basis, and because we rarely sift the dirt we’re removing, we can’t help but wonder how many finds like this get thrown over the cliff because we never notice them. Of course, we could slow down and potentially catch more items like this, but doing that also means that it would take us a lot longer to finish excavating rooms. I’ll just hope that between the person using the pick axe to break up the ground, the person pulling the dirt into a bucket, and the person dumping the bucket into the wheelbarrow, we caught most things. Sometimes things would get through to that third stage, though, and it would be the person running the wheelbarrow who would spot things before they went over the cliff.

Anna went back to the kibbutz early yesterday because she was feeling nauseous on the dig site. Dr. Schuler told her that she needed to spend a day resting, so she stayed back on day 25. We don’t know if she has the same thing others have, but there have been some stomach/digestive system bugs going around that have taken down a few of our diggers for a day or two. Dylan and Darryl also stayed back at the kibbutz on day 25 because they weren’t feeling well.

We were hoping that everyone would be back to full health, and that we would make good progress on the last few days of digging.

SEE ALL 3 PHOTOS FROM DAY 25 WITH TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS HERE.

This post is a record of July 24, 2011, but was written later.

At the beginning of the season, most of us were waking up at 4:00 a.m. so we’d have ample time to get ready. As the season went on, I think we started sleeping in as long as we could. I’d get up between 4:15 and 4:30. I’d quickly throw on some dig clothes, lace up my boots, fill my water bottle, and grab a snack to eat on the bus. No matter when we woke up, we had to be outside and either boarding the bus or waiting for it at 4:45. The bus tried to leave at 4:50.

The bus ride up was usually quiet, since people had just woken up. I’d eat either a granola bar or trail mix for a snack since breakfast wouldn’t be until 8:00. The ride was about 10 minutes long, as we drove from the kibbutz to Hippos and then up the snake trail to Hippos. Riding up the snake trail, which zig-zags back and forth, reminded me of Route 66 because of how close the bus would get to the edge to make the turns. I think it was a little discomforting the first time up, but we quickly got used to it.

The bus took us to the hiking path up to the dig site. I forgot to ask Dr. Schuler how long this hike was, so I’m not sure on the distance, but I think it took us between 10 and 15 minutes to get to the top. In one sense, this hike was nice because it got our blood flowing and got our muscles stretched and warmed. Unfortunately, it also meant that we were already sweating just from getting to the dig site.

As the season went on, it was darker and darker outside as we made that hike. On day 24, when it got light enough that we could see the sky, we knew it would be a good day. There were clouds.

We work under tents/tarps as much as possible, but clouds still make a big difference to the temperature. Most days there weren’t clouds, and on days when there were, you never knew how long they’d last. Day 24 was the cloudiest day of them all. I don’t remember exactly how long they lasted, but I’m sure they were around until breakfast, making our morning work a little more comfortable. Some return diggers have told us that this year has had more days with clouds than any other year they can remember, which was nice to hear.

Since F10 had been finished on day 21, people got moved around  as new work began. I was moved, along with Felicia and Rachel, to work on a fountain. The fountain had been discovered the previous year, but wasn’t able to be fully excavated, so it was our job to finish it. Here’s the before photo, taken at an angle so the bottom is visible.

fountain before

Dr. Schuler kept telling us to find a lion’s head spout, but unfortunately we just found a bunch of pottery.

As much as the shade made the morning better, the bees made it worse. It seems like we’ve been putting up with bees a lot this season, with multiple people getting stung. They were especially bad near the fountain because the conservators had been working on the fountain and the floor nearby, and they had left some water in buckets that attracted the bees. It got so bad that I decided to roll down my sleeves, tuck in my shirt, wrap a bandana over my head and around my neck, and wear my hat so that the only part of my body that was exposed was my face. This “bee suit” was hotter, but at least I didn’t get stung.

I got moved to work in another area later in the day, but Felicia and Rachel kept working on the fountain until it was done.

fountain after

I was moved to square G9, which is adjacent to F9 and F10, the squares that we finished on day 21. In this photo of F9/F10, you can see the doorway with the intact lintel stone that we uncovered. That doorway leads into this new square, G9.

doorway into G9

It was a little disheartening as we began work on G9 to know that the rocks we were removing were thrown into the room by us when we were first working on F9/F10 and E9/E10. Still, we fit about as many people as we could into this square and started moving earth. It was our goal to finish that square/room by the end of the week (which was also the end of the season), but we weren’t sure if that was realistic or not.

Here’s what G9 looked like at the end of the first day of working on it. Keep in mind that it had already been partially excavated by the Haiffa team a previous year. They had worked on the west side (right side in this photo) of the square, which was then filled it by the rocks I said we dumped there. So, our progress on this first day involved removing a bunch of rocks from the west side and beginning to remove dirt on the east (left) side.

G9 after

XXYY0 inscription

Day 24 also included the discovery of a third inscription. I blogged about the first one, which Meghan and Rick found on day 5. I had forgotten to mention it in my blog, but on day 19, Dylan discovered the second inscription on day 19. While the first inscription was in a block, this second one was part of a mosaic floor. It could be translated as “Good fortune to the builder.” (See this post or this post on the official dig blog for more information and photos of the second inscription.) This third inscription was found by Glenn in XXYY0 and was also in a mosaic floor. Jackie Wiebold, a fellow CSP student and one of the people digging in XXYY0 when this was found, wrote a really great blog post about the interesting work they’ve had in that square, with water pipes, multiple floors, mosaic, and this inscription. She also has a video of Dr. Schuler’s first reading of the inscription. I encourage you to visit her post. According to this blog post on the official dig blog, the epigrapher for the dig has translated this inscription as “Enter for good.”

While this season will probably become known as the “Year of the Inscriptions,” with just a week left of digging, we hoped to find some more treasures.

SEE ALL 9 PHOTOS FROM DAY 24 WITH TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS HERE.

This post is a record of July 23, 2011, but was written later.

walking to Hippos

In previous years, Dr. Schuler has hiked up Hippos during the free weekend so he can get some measurements that he doesn’t have time to take during the normal work time we have up on the hill. He asks if a couple people would like to go with him to help him with this work. He asked us the same thing this year, and all of the “Concordia seven,” plus Rachel, decided to go along.

Yes, it’s slightly insane for us to spend our free weekend, our chance to take things easy and rest, hiking up a small mountain in the heat, but you have to remember that we’re college students and that we’re probably all fairly unable to say no to Dr. Schuler.

climbing Hippos

We “slept in” until about 6:00, then met Dr. Schuler and started walking from the kibbutz to Hippos. I don’t remember for sure, but I think it might have taken us something like an hour to make the hike. We had to stop every once in a while for a water break, and it didn’t take us long to all get soaked in our own sweat again. (That almost seems to be our normal state this past month.) We didn’t walk the road that the bus takes every morning, but instead took the trail that Arseni (spelling?), the logistics guy, takes with his truck when he brings food, supplies, or people up and down Hippos. This is the bumpy trail that the sick or hurt have get to enjoy when they ride down with him.

grinding mills used as blocks in wall in residential area

When we reached the top, Dr. Schuler gave us brief tours of one of the other churches that had been partially excavated at Hippos as well as a residential area that is being excavated this year.

A few of us helped Dr. Schuler with measurements, while others explored Hippos. I got to do a little of each.

on the cliff

Before heading back down, Dr. Schuler took us to the “cliff” he had talked about earlier. He said that he knew of a place where rocks jut out, and a person can stand on the edge and see for a long way. (He also told us that he’d take us to a high point and show us all the kingdoms of the world…)

After we each took turns overcoming vertigo and standing at the edge of the cliff, we walked back down Hippos (a few of us left earlier than others), and we returned to the kibbutz. Back “home,” I worked on catching up on blog posts and photos and did other things that were apparently so relaxing, I can’t even remember them at the moment.

Although we’re a bunch of fairly energetic people who work hard and even tour hard, and although our philosophy during the previous weekends has been to do and see as much as we possibly can in those couple days, I think we all appreciated this free time. With only a week left, it was good to have a chance to enjoy Israel in this more relaxed way.

Concordia group at theater ruins

SEE ALL 46 PHOTOS FROM DAY 23 WITH TITLES AND DESCRIPTIONS HERE.