We Dig It ! (we dug it), April 7, 2019

Lee and I went on our first (and probably last) archeological dig on April 7th (Sunday is not the Sabbath here).  During excavation to build a new freeway several years ago, stones were found, placed in such a way that it became obvious it was an ancient building.  Excavation stopped and the site preserved (the freeway became an overpass) and the archeological excavation started. It is estimated that this was from the time of Hezekiah and appears to be a temple complex with other governmental buildings. This is about 6 miles from Jerusalem. Here is what had already been dug in the last few years:

The picture above is of large graineries, where grain was stored.  This is considered too vast of storage to be for a village, and it is posited that perhaps is was a storage place to feed the people in Jerusalem.

At first we were asked to work with another seasoned volunteer from Czech Republic, who had worked the site since it opened, and we scraped dirt to get down to a floor level that could be seen from the vertical cut.  We found lots of pottery shards, which were all saved.  Pictured below are Lee and me with a large shard that looked like the top, rounded molding of a jug.

While we were working another group found an intact item that we were asked not to disclose, so I'm not showing a picture of it.  But it was very exciting!

I don't know if we were doing a bad job or they just didn't need us anymore, but we were reassigned to another area to dig out dirt with pick ax (Lee) and shovels (Shawna) that had underneath all the dirt, a floor, which had been covered with dirt sometime in the past to preserve it for this year's dig.  For 90 minutes we pickaxed to loosen the dirt, shoveled dirt into sandbags to make a perimeter, and carried buckets of dirt to a ravine and tossed the dirt out so the buckets could be refilled.  It was horrible.  We never uncovered the floor either.

After 90 minutes straight, we were completely done in and were supposed to be there for 4 more hours!  I knew there was no way we could keep digging for that long, and luckily, the head archaeologist called for a break.  We consulted with the other couple we had come with and the wife said she had a term paper she hadn't started that needed to be written, so we decided to go home early.  It's a good thing too, because it took four hours just to recover enough to get ready for the concert we were in charge of that night.  The next day I could hardly move or moved with a lot of pain of previously unused muscles.  Still, we are really glad that we got to experience an archeological dig!  We know more now than we did!

 

This is the ravine where we dumped over 100 buckets of dirt. This doesn't count the 30 sandbags we filled with dirt too.

Some pottery shards we found while digging.