Ephesus Road

This striking picture is taken in the ruins of Ephesus in what is now Turkey but was once the capitol of the Roman provence of Asia.

Grrr you will have to click on the picture to get the full view. Sorry about that.

I wish modern roads lasted that long. I love that night sky.

Thanks Dorrie for the new layout - this is such a blessing.

My Dig Site

This is my dig site at Ashkelon - Grid 50 - This is my first view of the dig every day from the top or ground level. Over the 15 years of Harvard University digging there you can see how far down they have excavated. You can see three levels from here. Philistine at the first level and then off the the left the trail descends down about ten feet to the Canaanite living level. The Philistines conquered the Canaanite city and destroyed it and built over it. 

If you can see the half circle of sand bags the mark the edge of a 45 foot drop down to where I was digging in the Canaanite tombs.  So I droped down about 90 feet from this point and then had to come back up 90 feet at the end of the day.

This was an awesome palce to spend my summer in 1999 and I would love to go back if the ever quit fighting there.

This is the head of an idol found in the Canaanite tomb. It is quite small, not much bigger than a thumb nail and was carved from stone. It was all we found of t he idol thought it seemed clear that there had once been more to it. It was very nicely done - good artist.

The Bone Table

From six AM to Noon we worked on the dig site and brought back what ever we dug up to what was called the pottery yard. The yard was more than pottery though most of it was for the massive amounts of pottery. In the afternoon we returned and cleaned what we had brought in, labeled it for inspection by the experts and then sorted it for later study by PhD. students.

I was assigned to the anthropology area which we all called "The Bone Table" and worked there. The cardboard boxes on the table is what we used to hand Carry the bones back from the dig site. The bone fragments you see in the boxes still need to be processed. Each box was labeled with information that stated where the items found, who dug them up and when. 

Then bones were processed at the table the tag stayed with them and the box went back to the dig site the next morning to be filled again.

Working On Old Bones

Some of the ancient bones we took out of the ground were broken but were easy to glue back together. After cleaning and treating this femur I glued it back together. The tube has  sand in it so that the bone can stand up during the drying time.

I had loads of fun working with the dig anthropologist on this dig. What an experience!