Dig Week #2 Begins

June 23 -  24, 2013  Sunday and Monday

We find ourselves losing track of what day of the week it is.  The work week here is Israel is Sunday - Thursday instead of Monday - Friday like we are used to.

We've settled into a pretty steady routine.  Pete does some heavy lifting of dirt buckets and sorts through cistern mud looking for stuff.  I am in charge of tea, I set up and take down our 8:30 a.m. breakfast, and I do dry sorting, also looking for stuff.  Starting next week I will be in charge of the pottery washing.  I've done a shift to learn what it's all about, and I think I'll really enjoy it.  I imagine Pete will be glad when the cistern is finally empty.

Here's a movie of me and some coworkers at our dry sifting station.

Here's our zip line in action, used for transporting buckets of stuff across the site.  This bit of engineering is saving so much time and effort.

The strong young students will be leaving at the end of this week.  Many of them have been working down in the actual excavations, which is a good thing.  They are experiencing the excitement of uncovering the past and having to work as a team while following strict instructions.  The students have so much energy and they jump around the site like mountain goats.  Next week we will have a few new people, but the average age of the entire team will jump significantly!  It will be interesting to see what we old folks can accomplish.

On Sunday after we had cleaned up for the day, we visited another dig site.  This one is outside the original city walls.  (Our site is actually inside the boundary of the Roman-era and earlier city walls.  The boundaries were changed during the Islamic period.)  The other dig is on the south side of the Old City.  We had a little hike to get there.  What a view!  This is actually the hill where the Tomb of the Shroud is located.  The ruin on the right is the Charnel House.  The entrance to the tomb is below and to the left of the ruins.

The other dig site is being run as an educational experience for school children.  Some orthodox school children were leaving as we arrived, but we didn't get a picture of them.  But here we are, listening to what the dig director has to say about the place.

He showed us diagrams to illustrate how the Old City walls had changed position over the centuries.

They have tarps for shade on their site too.  They're digging at the base of the city walls, unearthing stuff from Hasmonean times (200 - 100 BC).

View of what's under the tarp:

Pete and I walked over to the Jewish quarter after our visit to the other dig was over.  There's a bus stop  for visitors to the Temple Mount, or Haram esh-Sharif.

We got a little closer and could see some evidence of a construction project.  It looks like a ramp.

I hope we'll have a chance to go onto the Temple Mount soon.  We didn't have time on Sunday because we had to get back to attend a lecture by Dr. James Tabor on the Talpiot Tomb discoveries.

Monday was another working day.  We actually forgot to take pictures!  After work, we got caught up on our laundry and then took an excursion to West Jerusalem, using train, taxi, and bus to get there and back.  We have a project we're working on -- I'll write about it when it's done!m