For the past week I have been staying in the Ein Gedi Oasis near the Dead Sea in Israel where I have been volunteering been volunteering on an archaeological dig. This year we are continuing to excavate the patron's house next to an ancient synagogue from the Byzantine era. They started to dig at this site last year and uncovered many of the original walls, staircases and very large pieces of intact pottery. This year we are expanding to an area that was partially excavated in the 1970s to determine the original layout of the home.
The site is a 10-minute walk from the hostel so on Monday morning we walked over just before 6:30am to get everything set up and start digging at 7:00am. I was placed next to Esther, my roommate from Switzerland, where we started uncovering a layer of dirt next to one of the stone structural walls. I was definitely slower than everyone else because before I dumped the dirt into the refuse bucket I would go through everything to make sure there wasn't anything that I had missed. At first I had a very difficult time telling the difference between smooth cut stones and pottery so after a while we started to joke that I was more cut out to be a geologist than an archaeologist. I guess that makes sense as I was always into rocks as a kid, collecting geodes and polishing them in my rock tumbler.
After a while, I started to get the hang of it and actually be able to distinguish the pottery from the rocks based on their color and texture. At 9:00am we broke for a delicious Mediterrean-style breakfast of toast, veggies, cheese, olives and fruit. After breakfast it was back to work until the "orange break" (where everyone stops to eat oranges and smoke if you do that sort of thing) at noon. We then worked until 2:30pm when we cleaned everything up and went to go eat lunch at the kibbutz cafeteria up the hill. The first day, I mainly found pottery shards, small pieces of glass, a few animal bones and some shells that were probably just going to be thrown out. The most exciting find of the day was dug up by an American girl named Michelle who just graduated from college with an anthropology degree. She found a piece of plaster with a very interesting design carved into it, which was actually most likely Hellenistic or Roman rather than Byzantine.
We don't work in the afternoon so I walked down to the shore right across from the hostel with Esther to check out the water. It was really cool to see all of the salt covering the rocks along the beach with a thin coating that looked more like frosting or a layer of ice than dried salt. I had made the mistake of wearing flip flops for the walk so I had a bit of trouble navigating the rocks on the way down and back, but it was worth the effort. The sun was just starting to set as we made it back to the road so it was perfect timing. In the evening, we had dinner at the hostel dining hall and then went to bed early since we had to get up so early the next morning.
On the second day, I was digging with Esther, Michelle and some Israeli volunteers from the nearby field school in the room next to one we had been in the day before. Once again, we found a lot of pottery shards, glass and bones. A few people found Byzantine coins that are mainly distinguished by the coat of green corrosion that covers the metallic part. At one point, I thought I had found a coin, but when I showed it to the dig director, Gideon, and he brushed away the corrosion it turned out it was just a piece of wire that completely dissolved in his hands. Then in the afternoon, I was talking to Gideon with a shovel full of dirt and one of the other volunteers, Debbie, pointed to a spot and said what is that. It turns out it actually was a green coin (which I would have found on my own when I went through the dirt before dumping it) but it did kind of steal my thunder away from the discovery of my first coin.
That afternoon after we had finished up, one of the other American volunteers, Nathaniel, brought Michelle, Esther, another Swiss Esther and I down to some nearby sulfur hot springs. It was a bit of a hike to get down there and once we arrived the water was so hot that it burned to get in. I could even keep my arms all the way under water because they were so chapped and chafed from digging that it hurt really badly. After heating up in the springs, we walked down to the spot where the spring let out in the Dead Sea. It was really nice to walk out into the water and float there where some spots were warm and other were much colder from the sea water. I was also able to cross another item off my "List of 25 Things To Do Before I Die": Float in the Dead Sea. We relaxed and covered ourselves in mud from the bottom until it was time to head back to the hostel once the sun got lower in the sky. By the time we started walking it was getting quite dark so it was a bit hard to find the way, but we eventually made it back safely.
Unfortunately, I've got to log out for now so I will post about the second half of the dig a bit later.
The site is a 10-minute walk from the hostel so on Monday morning we walked over just before 6:30am to get everything set up and start digging at 7:00am. I was placed next to Esther, my roommate from Switzerland, where we started uncovering a layer of dirt next to one of the stone structural walls. I was definitely slower than everyone else because before I dumped the dirt into the refuse bucket I would go through everything to make sure there wasn't anything that I had missed. At first I had a very difficult time telling the difference between smooth cut stones and pottery so after a while we started to joke that I was more cut out to be a geologist than an archaeologist. I guess that makes sense as I was always into rocks as a kid, collecting geodes and polishing them in my rock tumbler.
After a while, I started to get the hang of it and actually be able to distinguish the pottery from the rocks based on their color and texture. At 9:00am we broke for a delicious Mediterrean-style breakfast of toast, veggies, cheese, olives and fruit. After breakfast it was back to work until the "orange break" (where everyone stops to eat oranges and smoke if you do that sort of thing) at noon. We then worked until 2:30pm when we cleaned everything up and went to go eat lunch at the kibbutz cafeteria up the hill. The first day, I mainly found pottery shards, small pieces of glass, a few animal bones and some shells that were probably just going to be thrown out. The most exciting find of the day was dug up by an American girl named Michelle who just graduated from college with an anthropology degree. She found a piece of plaster with a very interesting design carved into it, which was actually most likely Hellenistic or Roman rather than Byzantine.
Unfortunately, I've got to log out for now so I will post about the second half of the dig a bit later.
I hope you find something interesting like the long lost Eleventh Commandment - or the Holy Grail or the Lost Ark of the Covenant. On second thought, some 2,000 year-old Byzantine coins are pretty good.
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