Dig Week Two (days 6-10)

After some discussion between Liz and Julie (by which point I was too tired to care), it was decided I would stay back at “the house” to help with pottery. All my notes from nearly a week ago say are:

·      *  Very hot and humid  -- it did seem warmer in week 2 than in week 1

·      * Pottery – write on pottery, clean pottery

·      * David commented this is the best dig teams he has seen (shh….don’t tell his past dig teams)

In the side I wrote “lovely women speaking several languages, daughter and friend.”

It might make more sense if I combine the week instead of separating each day.

Alhan and Fahrhad (I’m sure I am misspelling their names) are a local mother/daughter team. Alhan's father and brother guards our dig site from 1:30 pm to 5:30 am every day.  We have no mischief with his protection. The women are lovely, and hard workers. It is not glamorous washing pottery for 7 hours a day (trust me on that). Though their English is only marginally better than my Arabic, we manage to smile and laugh through those hours. The daughter uses Google translate to ask me questions. We share pictures, and listen to a wide variety of music together. In the future when I hear about Arabs in the news, I will think of them.

Joining us has been Noy, a student at Ben-Gurion University studying under Gunnar, our pottery expert. She came for three days to help out. It was a treat having her. I learned about Israel’s national service program. My American thinking about the program is that every 18 year old was in the military learning how to fight. To hear Noy talk about it, it is a service program. Everyone has to do it, so everyone is starting college at 20 or 21. Those who go into the military serve for 3 years, the others for 2. Noy was a special education pre-school teacher before working in a military office. Hardly the lean, green, fighting machine I pictured.

Speaking of green fighting machines, one day we had a group of soldiers take over several of our rooms. The feel of the place changed. I called them the “green army men and one woman.” The woman stood out because she was put into service carrying the food-related items. 

Stereotypes exist everywhere.

In addition to cleaning pottery in the courtyard, Julie and I have been putting numbers on the keeper pieces. Don’t get too excited about our keepers, many of them are discarded by Gunnar, and returned to Tell Keisan. The true keepers may sit in boxes at the university. A very rare amazing find might end up in a museum.

We had our scariest day of the dig on the second Tuesday. One student, Traci, went to the ER after a large rock landed hard on her hand. Fortunately it was only bruised and not broken.

That night another volunteer, Tati from Brazil, was bitten by a poisonous snake. Fortunately the linked newspaper account made it sound much more dire than it was. She was released on Friday in good health.

At the time our leaders said "every dig has one bad day," but us novices did not believe them. Rumors were flying we were cursed. Turns out most of the problems were limited to one square (out of six-ish, they were fluid) and really only happened on that Tuesday. We made it through the rest of the experience without any trips to the hospital.