Making Progress

We are three days into digging and progress is easy to see, not only in the fact that our excavation area looks different than it did when we showed up but we are also progressing in our efficiency. Our bucket brigade, the part where we all line up and pass buckets down the line to be emptied at the end, is getting faster and our ability to distinguish ancient brick from plain old dirt is improving. One correction I must make from the last post is that I forgot that, although most of us are digging in the Late-Bronze age, some of us are actually not digging in the Late-Bronze age but in the Iron age, in the days of King David. Yesterday was the first day we actually got to clean the pottery that we had excavated. Once soaked and scrubbed off, the pottery can be seen more clearly, sometimes revealing paint or, if we get lucky, some kind of inscription. As of yet there have been no inscriptions or really special pottery discovered by our group but we are learning more and more about what our particular area might have looked like or been used for. Between our whole group we have found everything from sickle blades, to grinding stones, to arrow-heads, to necklace beads. Today will be the first day that we actually get to sort and examine our clean pottery in order to see what we have excavated.  Weather or not we find a really special piece, it should be rewarding just to see and identify more of our findings.

The food here at the kibbutz has been better than it was at JUC, I must say, and it has been really nice to return from the dig for lunch each day. After lunch we get some free time until 4:30pm to swim in the river or the pools and rest. Then at 4:30pm we wash pottery and sort it until dinner. We’re all a bit tired after dinner so we generally go to bed pretty quickly after we eat because it’s time to leave again to the dig at 5:00am.