What Is This Doing Here?

At first I thought another skull but no it was pottery and an import at that it was Greek. Around 1500 BC the best pottery was imported from Greece and it was expensive so to leave it in the tomb most likely meant that it was a treasure of one of the dearly departed and left with that person.

Dennis

I met a lot of very interesting people on the Ashkelon dig and this man was one of them. Dennis was one of my three room mates and is a commercial archaeologist who usually digs in places where federal dollars are being used for construction. When artifacts are found during construction an archaeologist has to check the dig for the significance of the find. This sometimes means closing the construction during excavation. 

So Dennis was taking a buss mans holiday by digging in Ashkelon. Here is a man for whom his work is his play. In this picture he is examining a piece of chert. Dennis is an expert on flint of all kinds. I never saw a man drink so much vodka and remain sober - well alert and able to work.

Washing Pottery

As I noted in previous post we found a LOT of pottery in the Ashkelon dig and it was all dirty having been buried for thousands of years.

Every afternoon the students and volunteer would gather in the pottery yard to wash pottery, clean bones and other artifacts. As we collected lots of pottery it took a lot of people to carefully wash each piece. Here is what that process looked like. Each one had a small bucket of water, a finger nail brush and boxes of pottery that had to be kept with their tags. 

This was also a good time for informal conversations with other diggers so we usually grouped in circles like this to talk as we worked.

Some Pottery I Found

Here are a few of the pottery pieces that I excavated in the tomb including the two twin vases in the previous post. That dish in the center was found broken in three equal pieces and was very nicely glued back together.

Dorrie/Westy is sure doing a great job with my layout. Thanks Dorrie you are wonderful. Go over to my Pastor's Desk and see what she did with that layout. :-)

Off to one side of the Canaanite tomb I was brushing dirt with a soft paint bruch when two identical shapes began to emerge. Twin vases about six inches high laying up against the wall of the tomb. What ever was in them when they were left there was gone and only sand filled them.

What a joy it was to find them and remove them from the tomb. Someone else had the pleasure of cleang the dirt off and out of them. Later I will show you the display of the cleaned pottery from this tomb.

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.