Pre-dig: June 10th,
my 27th birthday, I started my 6 week program at the Leon-Levy expedition to
Ashkelon as part of Harvard Summer Study Abroad’s field school for
archaeology. Although I know a
reasonable amount about Ashkelon from having lived here previously, I am
excited to get to know the history of Ashkelon first hand.
From what I
understand so far, we will be working in three different grids. I am a part of grid 47, which is
supposed to be finished this year.
Our principal feature of the grid is a Roman Odeon, or a small theater
that is believed to seat about 500-1,000 patrons. Grid 47 is interesting because it has archaeological
evidence of many different periods of occupation throughout history dating from
the Iron age until the crusaders destroyed Ashkelon in 1192 CE.
Day 1, June 10:
Today we started cleaning our grid.
Our grid is rather large and we spent most of today clearing junk that
has accumulated in the grid since last summer. Part of the wall on the Northern side collapsed and so we
spent a large portion of the day removing the dirt which had collapsed in. I got acquainted with some of the tools
that we will be using throughout the summer, including the turiya and
guffa. The turiya looks almost
like a flat shovel and is used for moving dirt. It is not used for digging. A guffa is almost like a soft bucket
that is used to move dirt, rocks, or whatever else we need to move. Although we were just moving things
from the collapse, I found a couple of interesting things. I found a piece of Egyptian glass of
some sort. It was small and black
with white paint or markings on it.
I asked Tracy what it was, but forgot already :-/
Oh, so I guess I
should talk about the supervisors for a second. Tracy is grid supervisor. This means that she is the top dog in the grid. Her specialty is Islamic archaeology,
which sounds really interesting.
We have 3 square supervisors in our grid. Ryan, Robin, and Buzzby. I don’t know too much about them yet but so far, everyone
seems really nice and I am excited to get the chance to pick their brains while
we work, and learn as much as I can from them.
Unfortunately,
after breakfast I started to feel rather dehydrated and needed to play it safe
and head back to the pottery compound.
The pottery compound was not all that interesting, because I really just
sat and straightened wires and built small boxes for various items that we
might find throughout the dig. Not
the best way to celebrate my birthday.
I did find it interesting that we started on my birthday, which is also
the 27th year of the Leon-Levy Expedition. We are exactly the same age J. I drank about 5
liters of water today so I am hoping that tomorrow I feel better and am ready to
get back at it for a full day. I
can’t wait to see what we dig up!
Day 2, June 11: I
woke up feeling much better today.
I went to bed around 9:30 last night and didn’t wake up early today,
which I regretted. We wake up at
4:30 every day and board the buses at 5:00. They have a little bit of breakfast available to us (really,
its more like cakes, coffee, and light snacks) but I have a hard time eating
such sweets in the morning. I made
sure to drink a ton of water yesterday and today and felt much better. This morning when we got to the grid we
started off finishing the work from yesterday. We still had a bit of the collapse to clear but we knocked
that out before breakfast. After
we finished with the collapse, Patrick and I were assigned to sand bags. We had way too much fun making sand
bags, and in retrospect we both agreed that we must have been delirious from
lack of sleep and the sun. We
repaired the sandbag stairway that leads to the Northeast gate, while
simultaneously removing sand from a pit that eventually needs to get
emptied.
After
we finished with our sandbags, we were assigned to work with Ryan in square 35
(double check sq. #). Ryan wants
to do a probe to see what we can find, and to try and determine how deep
Garstang dug. Oh, I guess I didn’t
mention Garstang. He came to
Ashkelon in the 1920’s and was here for two years. The site that we are in now is the one that he worked on,
which is a blessing and a curse.
The upside is that some of Garstangs plans help us to piece together the
puzzle. The downside is that we
have to clear out his fill, and that archaeology did not necessarily have
established procedures the way that we do today. The probe that we are doing is approximately 3 meters square
and we are hoping to find where Garstang ends and what lies underneath.
Today
I got to use the pick-axe to break up the dirt for the probe, but the majority
of the day was spent turiyaing (yea, I just made that a verb) and guffa-ing
(yea, that is now a verb too). Our
grid seems to work really well together as a team, which is really nice. Everyone is very concerned for one
another, and we frequently switch around to make sure that everyone is doing
their share and everyone gets to take a break. We have mastered the art of the guffa train. I also got to spend a few minutes today
with the patishka (Name). It is a
small tool that looks like a mini pick-axe and is used to help create flat
walls (balks). I learned that it
is important to make the walls nice and flat so that you can see the
distinction between the different dirt layers. I also broke in my mason’s trowel, which was very exciting
for the 10 seconds I used it for.
By the end of the day, we found a big piece of marble in the probe. We have uncovered the top of it thus far,
but nothing else to indicate that we have gotten past Garstang’s fill.
In
the afternoon (yes, that was all before 1 pm), we got to go back to the pottery
compound and learn about pottery cleaning. Every day, we head to the pottery compound from 4-6 pm. We take the buckets of pottery that we
have collected throughout the day and gently rinse and wash them. It is really important to make sure
that the artifacts stay with the buckets that they are associated with,
otherwise they are almost useless because they can not be dated. The first step is to dip the pottery in
the bucket of water and then examining the pottery to see if there are any
inscriptions or artwork visible.
Oftentimes, this will show up more prominently once the pottery is
wet. If we don’t see anything, we
use a small brush to clean both the top and the bottom as well as the
sides. They emphasized the
importance of making sure to clean the sides as well so that we can see if
there are different layers of material or anything like that. While I was brushing my 2nd piece,
which was about 6x8 cm, I broke it.
Oops. They said that it
happens all the time and isn’t that big of a deal, but to try and be
careful. Luckily the piece that I
broke didn’t appear to be very interesting or unique.
After
washing a bucket of pottery, I went with Laura to pull some Philistine
monochrome pieces from the Iron Age.
They need to be photographed so we went through a bunch of boxes to
remove the exceptional pieces for photographing. It was really cool, I got to handle the pottery and learned
a little bit about the terms used to describe the pieces. Dana was working across from me and was
talking with Jacob (a masters student at Harvard) about identifying pieces. They were talking about the fabric, in addition
to some other things, so I asked Dana to explain it to me a bit more. Apparently the fabric refers to the
material that the piece is made from and the method in which it was produced. There are many methods of producing
pottery including by hand, a slow wheel, and a fast wheel. A lot can be determined by studying
small, incomplete pieces, which surprised me. I assumed that they could determine the size of jugs and
containers with small pieces but was surprised to learn that it doesn’t stop
there. It was interesting talking
to Laura as well because she knows many of my professors, including Susanna
Garfein, who I absolutely love.
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