Omrit 2010

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

2010-06-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

I'm at Ben Gurion Airport ready to leave in 2 hours. This has to be the best airport in the world since it has free wifi.

A highlight of the trip today, we went to Herodion. This is a large hill just west of Bethlehem where Herod (yes, that Herod) leveled the top off and built a palace.Here are few pictures from the top.
Herodion had a very deep cistern.

Then on to Bethlehem. But through the "security fence." What a monstrosity.

I might as well show you a picture of the crusader Church of the Nativity.

Monday, June 21, 2010

2010-06-21T06:17:00.000-07:00

What a crazy hotel. No clock, no news channel on the TV and no free Internets. A good tub to soak the dirt off though.

Did I mention that we were going to a reception at the American Colony Hotel last night? Since the president and trustees of Macalester College are still in the country (yes, still), an alumni event was planned for any in the region who could make it. Some did but it was mainly the Omrit students who scarfed down the free beer and wine. Which helped make it a successful evening.This morning I took the hotel shuttle down to the Old City of Jerusalem and walked back, about 2 miles, getting back before it got too hot. I'm spending the afternoon in the air conditioning! Here's a few pictures from my walk:I only enclose this picture of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre because of its famous ladder.
I'll blog from Ben Gurion Airport tomorrow night and then this adventure will be over!

Sunday, June 20, 2010

2010-06-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

Sunday, we begin the trip home, 3 days in Jerusalem and then a 13 hour flight to Atlanta. John, Mickey and I have our own wheels and so start out with a latte at Katusha Corner. Katushas are the rockets that fell there in abundance during the last war with Lebanon. Then to Megiddo, the location of Armegeddon as outlined in Revelation. It dominates a valley that was a major road from Egyptian times on. Lots of battles there so it became a metaphor. The ultimate metaphor. There was a lot of archaeological activity there and we mouched a tour of one of the sites. We are, after all, comrades.

In Jerusalem, we're at a fancy hotel from which we can almost see the old city.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

2010-06-20T08:01:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the delay, I had trouble at the kibbutz getting on the Internets, but now I'm at a 5-star hotel in J-Town. But more about that tomorrow. Or today, as it is.

Saturday started out early – one trip out to the square at 4:30am to draw pictures. We have to make a grid drawing of all the stones left in the square. And also all the stones in the sides of the square. But it was cool with a soft light and actually pleasant. (Thanks, Caroline for going out to help.)

In the afternoon, a little cleaning up around the kibbutz, storing equipment away, finishing up the paperwork. Done! At night our last BBQ around the kibbutz's olympic size pool. A little self-congrats, passing out of t-shirts to local friends of the dig, a lot of beer, and then a good sleep. And I did. Here's some pics from our closing ceremonies:

Friday, June 18

2010-06-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

OK, last day in the field. Well sort of, a little cleaning up to do. Here is a shot of the 2nd square I worked on. Lots of good stuff, tumble from the temple when it fell, however it fell.Here is a shot of a plain, round column drum that has been fluted with plaster. It's easier than carving the fluting. Kinda neat.Friday night we went to a Druze village for supper. We got a tour of the town (yes, we did look silly and got a lot of attention.) There are two Maronite Christian churches in town (one in ruins). But after all the wars and commotion in the Golan Heights there are only two Christian families in the village. We were assured that every one got along. The Druze are a heretical offshoot of Islam, started about 1000CE in Egypt. They didn't fit in too well there and soon moved to this more remote area. We got a lot of information about the Druze belief in reincarnation. (It seems God is giving us a lot of chances to prove ourselves.)

The restaurant was outdoor and had a grape arbor for an overhead cover.

Thursday, June 17

2010-06-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

A hectic morning, finishing up our square to be photographed. I'll try for pictures tomorrow. We had a grand showing of a frescoed wall that surrounded the earliest temple here at Omrit. It dates to around 40BCE. We don't find many spectacular things here (aside from the temple itself, of course), but this 20 ft x 10 ft section of wall is certainly one of them:The afternoon was spent getting my paperwork ducks in a row, still a bit left on that. In the late afternoon we took a student to Akko (ancient Acre of the Crusaders) to catch a train to the airport as she's leaving early. Here's Katherine and John at the Akko train station (Hi, Katherine), followed by the sun starting to set over the Mediterranean.
When we arrived in Akko and opened the car door, the air was warm and humid and down at the shore there was the smell of the sea. I could only think of one thing: Florida!

Wednesday, June 16

2010-06-16T10:28:00.000-07:00

Here is a not very good photo I took yesterday on the bike trip. Under the "a" is where we dig. Under the "b", up the hill, there was a battle between Syria and Israel during the 67 war. Above and to the right of the "a", up on the slope of Mt Hermon, is a Crusader castle.Just as we were finishing up our dig for the month (cleaning for photos tomorrow) we found this piece broken off from a Corinthian Capital from the top of a column:Since we are finishing up our square, we went into town to eat a little shwarma or a vegetarian falafel. Here we are at Shlomo's Baguettes:

Tuesday, June 15

2010-06-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

Well, we have one day of digging left and a day of cleaning up the square, sweeping dirt mainly, for the final photographs. Here's a photo of a column capital from our square:This afternoon John went for a run to the Jordan River and I went with him on the bike. It's about a 5 mile trip round-trip on dirt roads through agricultural fields, easy enough on a bike. Here's John with some rapids behind him.Who knew the Jordan had rapids? It has lots of tubers and kayakers too.

Monday, June 14

2010-06-15T07:48:00.000-07:00

A couple of interesting items today. Firstly the president and some trustees from Macalester College, a co-sponsor of the dig, are visiting Omrit, they even came out and dug in our squares for a while. Great fun was had by all. A sign for the Omrit Archaeological Park, still a bit of a distant dream, was unveiled while they were here. Here's me and John mugging for the camera:If you zoom on it you should be able to read it.

That evening John, Mickey, Claire and I went to my favorite restaurant, maybe anywhere. It's in another kibbutz about 10 minutes from here. Oh the joys of your own wheels. The couple who run it, who used to run a coffee shop in NYC, are moving to a bigger place in a nearby town next fall.I had an eggplant lasagna and a thick chocolate pudding/mousse for dessert. And a great German white wine and an espresso. Heaven.

Sunday, June 13

2010-06-13T04:02:00.000-07:00

Whoops I skipped a day, let it be. Yesterday we went out to the site for half a morning. Our big mound of dirt and rocks is almost gone and the square leveled. It's all a 13th century habitation, a time when the whole site was occupied. What people were doing here is not totally clear but perhaps quarrying what was left of the temple for stone. There's evidence of a settlement then all over the site. We read our pottery in the afternoon which gave this dating information. If we get below this layer we should find the type of stones we found in our first square.

I have a ton of paperwork to do, recording data in multiple places and then using that data to write weekly reports. Ugh. So Saturday was kept busy. Watched a little of the USA-England football match.

Today was more paperwork, John went off to tour Israel but I stayed behind. More restful. Tonight we get a talk by a former commander of the Israeli Navy (among other things). It'll be interesting to hear what he says about the flotilla.

Here's a few pictures from inside the temple foundation, where an earlier shrine had been covered over and buried by the podium. All the material from inside the podium is not yet removed, but it's getting there.

Friday, June 11

2010-06-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

Thought I would give you an idea of our daily schedule. We get up at 4am. Really. John and I listen to the BBC News over the Internet and get all our stuff together. We get on a small bus at 5am and go out to the site. Takes about 10 minutes. We work in our squares until 8:30 when breakfast arrives. I have a boiled egg and a little bread, but peanut butter, tomatoes, cucumbers, cheese or balony are available for the starving. We work until 11:30 when we walk down the hill and the bus takes us back.

When we returned, my square washed pottery. We soak what we find for a day and then scrub off the dirt. Sometimes 100s of pieces. We didn't finish so after lunch at 12:30 (fallafel burritos) we continued and finished about 2, Then a couple of us reviewed our pottery collections for this week since an expert is going to look it over tomorrow. Finished at 3. Done for the day.

World Cup at 5, supper at 7, In bed by 9 and start all over...

I do want to say though that the weather has been cooperative. High 60s this week in the morning and only in the mid 80s, at most, when we leave at 11:30. Quite pleasant, especially since we get a nice breeze.

Thursday, June 10

2010-06-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

First let me tell you about that pottery I had a picture of yesterday - I got a query and I, unthinkingly, had thought everyone would know what it is. It is an oil lamp, sometimes called a boat lamp from it's shape. Olive oil into the big hole and a flame from the small hole.

Allison and Sarah are guest blogging today:

Hello! This is Sarah and Allison from Bill’s square, your guest bloggers for the day. Today was kind of boring - we continued taking down the tumble in our square and moved a lot of rocks out of the way. So we’ll talk about the highlights of the last few days instead.

On Tuesday, we took a walk to the Jordan river. It’s a pretty walk, with fields of sunflowers and apricots on the way. Here’s a picture of Allison with the sunflowers:
And Sarah at the river:
Yesterday, Allison went to visit Tel Hai College, to meet up with students from the Center for Peace and Democracy, whom her “Background to the Modern Middle East” class at Macalester skyped with several times. At the meeting, they talked about the recent flotilla incident and planned for future joint Macalester/Tel Hai classes.

Meanwhile, Sarah went to a Golan Heights winery with Bill and some others. We toured the winery and had a wine tasting of all the local varieties.

Sarah and many others drink “spa water,” which is regular water in a bottle with cucumbers, lemons and sometimes mint. We’ll get Bill to post a picture of this deliciousness soon.

We would also like to mention that Bill’s wheat lecture yesterday was awesome. Who knew there was so much to say about wheat!

And finally, a nice photo of the sunrise over Syria. It almost makes getting up at 4:30 am everyday worth it. Almost.

Wednesday, June 9

2010-06-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

Today I'll give you a picture of our current square. We cleared most of the dirt from the tumble of rocks holding up the dirt mound and will soon clear those rocks and work down to surface layer. A lot of dirt. There was some surprising pottery found on the edge of that mound, the nicest of which will be the 2nd picture:
And here's a picture of almost all our crew:

Tuesday, June 8

2010-06-09T07:58:00.000-07:00

Boy, if one doesn't blog daily, it's hard to catch up. I think for today I'll give you the final picture of the square we finished. With all those column drums:Also tonight I gave a presentation I developed on Emmer wheat. This wild crop, from which our modern wheats arose, grows as a weed in this area of the world, say within a 100 miles of where I'm sitting. And only here in any great amounts. And surprisingly, this wild plant was only discovered by western science 100 years ago. This from the New York Times in 1912:

Monday, June 7

2010-06-07T07:11:00.000-07:00

Hello blog followers! Bill has asked me to guest-blog, and to inform people of other site developments.

My name is Lindsay, and I co-supervise square O12, which is a semi-isolated square located Northeast of the temple complex, and South-southwest of the Colonnaded way/Industrial Complex. Our square is not part of the temple complex, or the industrial area, but rather sort of a mystery section of the site. The best explanation for this area is that it is potentially an early Christian basilica. The next-door- neighbor square, N12, was excavated last year (by yours truly), and some of the architectural features helped to create this hypothesis.(The square before excavation)

Unfortunately, O12 was once the dump site for another square in the area, meaning we were digging through dirt and rocks for about 50-150 centimeters. Although we found staggering amounts of pottery—about 2000 or more pieces by my current count—and bone (including a complete animal jaw which jumped out of the balk, scaring Shannon quite a bit), it took us nearly a week and a half to do more than simply move dirt out of the square. However, this week we found a water pipe system that is incased partially in concrete, partially in bedrock that had been cut for the purpose. We have found, as of today, 2 broken systems of water pipe, and one complete, in situ pipe that runs under the bedrock. Kate, my co-leader, swears that this section smells fleetingly of death, and although several haikus have been written on the topic, the smell has not been confirmed. Additionally, we found a complete floor. Our group was originally excited to find a wall in our square; however, a floor is nothing to scoff at. Also, I learned from Andy that the best way to test whether an architectural feature is a floor or a wall is to take a nap on it—and for the record, our floor is very comfy. This test is not unlike the test where you lick a rock to determine whether its pottery or not. (The floor—above in the raised section of dirt is the location of the water pipes.)

After pottery reading the fate of our wall/water system is unclear. In the words of the ceramist, 99% of our findings are from the 5th-6th century Byzantine period, but one or two pieces of Early Roman Import or 13th century Crusader pottery is completely throwing off the dating of our square. Hopefully, the last few pieces of pottery we find (which are on or below the floor) will provide a clearer picture the date and purpose of the features in our square, hopefully providing a bit more illumination to the site.

Soon we will be opening O11, which is a square directly south of ours, and the process will begin again. This time, however, we may, in fact, find a real wall, or, as rumor has it around the square, the gates to the underworld.

Until then, here’s a photo of the wonderful team that is (on any given day) the “Boisterous Band of Byzantine Bandits in a Bucket Brigade”, or “Hydration Station” at Bet She’an:Lindsay Morehouse

Sunday, June 6

2010-06-06T09:27:00.000-07:00

Today is an off-day and most of the masses went on a tour of Beit She'an, an amazing Hellenistic/Roman city of the Decapolis just south of the Sea of Galilee.

But both John and I have been there before and, having our own wheels, we decided to visit another site near the Sea of Galilee: Gamla.

Gamla, like Masada a few years later, held out against the Romans in 67 CE during the Jewish Revolt. Well, for a while they held out, but were eventually utterly destroyed. The Romans were masters of military violence.

Gamla is on a high ridge between 2 valleys so only needed one wall and was easy to defend. The people of Gamla had hope that they could outlast 3 Roman legions. No way. See the link above for further information.

Here you see the ridge between the valleys that is Gamla:(Don't forget to zoom!) In the far distance (we're looking west), over those hills, is the Sea of Galilee. There was a grass fire a few weeks ago that darkened the landscape.Here's a breach in the wall made by the Romans:Here's my roomie John, who traveled down from Canada to be here, next to the car we rented for the month here.

Saturday, June 5 Update

2010-06-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

Well, My group met for the pottery reading and it came out fantastical, at least from my perspective. And the way one hopes and the way it should, but, of course, it doesn't have to. The date readings on our pottery, collected in small increments, depth-wise and geography-wise generally contained more that one possible range of dates. But those ranges got older and older the deeper we went. The upper buckets tended to be 13th century Islamic (The last time there was habitation at Omrit, that we know of) and the deepest buckets were Early and Middle Roman. This was to be expected but it's nice confirmation that my square is digging correctly and carefully. If you pick up a Coca-Cola bottle cap in your deepest layer, it totally destroys your dating.

Oh, here's Amy, whose mother is following the blog.

Saturday, June 5

2010-06-05T05:19:00.000-07:00

A half-day of work on the Jewish sabbath but then we can travel on Sunday and tourist sites will be open. Here's a shot of our new square. Note the mound in the background that has to be dug through and the exposed column capitals in the foreground and the left background.During the rest of the day, a pottery expert from Jerusalem has come up to date our pottery. By pottery, I mean small pieces and chips. Most is not useful but some is "indicative". Each square meets with her in turn and we take furious notes. This will be part of the permanent record of our square. Here is a group meeting this afternoon under a tree:We haven't collected much pottery in our square of tumbled column drums. Here's our measly stash waiting to be evaluated.

Friday, June 4

2010-06-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

A little change of pace, I want to talk about our meal tonight. Our directors are good friends with an Israeli couple who live on a nearby kibbutz. They invite the staff over for a meal each year, a banquet really, and square supervisors are fortunate enough to be included.

I had a conversation with their son, a third generation kibbutznik, who is a film studies student (and whom I also met in January when I was here). He's written a script of a film he plans to make this fall about kibbutzs (kibbutzim actually). In recent years there have been a many changes in kibbutzim, as they move away from the socialist/communist model to what he describes as being just small towns or suburbs, really. His story focuses on a middle aged man who has grown up on and still lives on a kibbutz. But, now, with the communal features disappearing and no family around he lives a lonely, isolated life, as the film will detail. The film maker's insider view of current kibbutz situations was most interesting. Not a new theme, perhaps, but I look forward to seeing it on YouTube.

Thursday, June 3

2010-06-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

Our square is about finished except for the shouting. We've already been assigned the square next to it to see what's there. Sigh. It has a large 3/4 meter mound on half of it that also has to be cleared out carefully. We'll probably be on this one until the end. I'll get a picture tomorrow. Here's (another) John standing in our cleaned square. That area where he is standing is relatively clear of stone so we're digging down to the wall's foundation. If he stood as far as we've gone down, only his head would show. Behind is the wall of the podium on which the temple stood and around him is where it fell.

Wednesday, June 2

2010-06-03T10:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay, a very busy day. After a full morning of work, I "volunteered" to go back in the afternoon for sandbagging duty. Parts of the earliest temple has beautiful fresco work on it's outside walls. Each year some preservative is applied by an expert and the fresco is reburied with sand and sandbags. Then each year it's uncovered the the work repeats. Some of us go out every afternoon to help uncover it for this year's cycle.

Our square is about finished. We've uncovered many column drums and 2 column capitals: the fancy stone at the top that holds the roof structure. Here's part of one we just finished cleaning off.And the other one:Then for dinner, John and I and new friend went out for dinner to a fancy place. First time we've gone out for dinner and a great time was had but we arrived back in time for sleep.

And here's Grace (on the left) with her friend Lydia. Her parents follow the blog.

Tuesday, June 1

2010-06-01T05:28:00.000-07:00

I hear the Israelis shot up some peaceniks off (way off) Gaza yesterday. Or rather, they shot up "rioters" as an Israeli news service stated. Everything is calm and peaceful here. Somehow I'm not reassured.

It's about 100 degrees F this afternoon, though it feels hotter. I'm room-bound. Pleasant this morning in the field though.

We have encountered lots of "big stuff" in our square, as you've seen in the pictures, though, perhaps, not exactly all the right stuff. We are going to move to the area adjacent to ours and level it too. After we gussy up what we've done for photos.

I didn't take any photos today so here's one from yesterday and also one from my "birthday" party on Saturday.

Monday, 31 May 2010

2010-05-31T11:02:00.000-07:00

Dig we must! We're making good progress, too good perhaps since we approach bedrock and will soon get another square. What's up with that? Hope none of my square is reading this. And roomie John may also get a square of his own.

Here are some of the crew digging away:Don't forget you can zoom in on any of these pictures by clicking on them.

We've uncovered a lot of mundane column drums and moved a lot of dirt and rocks. Is this all there is to life? Guess so...

Sunday, 30 May 2010

2010-05-30T10:18:00.001-07:00

I didn't want to spoil the surprise so let me tell you that yesterday I celebrated my 66 years and 8 months birthday. That makes me 2/3 of a century old! I bought enough cake for our group at Saturday night dinner.

Sunday is an off-day, but excursions are planned. Today we went to the Decapolis city of Hippos. There were (only approximately) 10 of these Greco-Roman cities mostly on the east side of the Jordan. (And, hey, I've only been to 5 of them.)

Hippos is on a high plateau on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. It has a great view looking west over the water.

An original paved Roman road

Oh yes, here's a picture on Lindsay on the bus. Her parents read the blog faithfully.

Saturday, 29 May 2010

2010-05-29T08:10:00.000-07:00

A half day's work today, 3 1/2 hours (from 5am to 8:30am!). We are going deeper but didn't push ourselves too much today. Here you see active work amongst our 3 column drums that are showing.In the afternoon we visited Tel Kedesh (which I visited in a January post) and an ancient synagogue in a national park at Bar'am, which dates to about the 3rd century C.E. (below)Personalizing the tools, Sarah and Allison

Friday, 28 May 2010

2010-05-28T11:13:00.000-07:00

A good digging day: The soil got looser and items started appearing, as expected. Early in the day we exposed a column drum. The columns of the temple weren't made in one piece but rather "drums" were made and then piled one on top of the other. Of course when a column fell those drums went every which way. As I said yesterday, it is hoped to reconstruct some of those columns eventually.Later in the day 2 more drums appeared. I'll have more pictures tomorrow. We put in a half day on Saturday.

After lunch a few girls asked if I would take them into town for shopping. We started at the "secret gin store", so named by the staff many years ago because it had a paucity of signs. Today it's a little more obvious. Here they are in the parking lot: Katy, Maggy, Sarah (who's in my square) and Alysa.

Thursday, 27 May 2010

2010-05-27T02:47:00.000-07:00

A very eventful third day. We awoke to a 20 mph wind coming from the Jordanian desert to the east. We worked in a sandstorm for a couple of hours and then quit. Got a lot dirt moved though. On the right below is Mike Nelson, a faculty member at Queens College CUNY, our art historian. That means he knows how to put our temple back together from all the parts we find. And he knows it very well. Note the protections from the wind. Except for Mike, of course.After breakfast back at the Kibbutz Norman wanted to head into Kiryat Shmona to buy a keffiyeh for wind protection. So off go John, Norman and I. Not found in that Israeli town so we headed into the Golan to a Druze village. A fine adventure but no result. But... On the way we stopped at a roadside stand for "Druze Pita". Their pita is a large flat pancake folded a few times. We got it filled with a spicy yoghurt mixture (labaneh) accompanied by an Arab coffee and 2 kinds of olives. Yummm. On the way out we bought a kilo of cherries and a homemade cherry liqueur (!).

And this all before noon!

Oh yes, on the way we stopped at a bike shop where John bought a water bottle. Turns out the owner's wife was born in Detroit. Who knew?

Wednesday, 26 May

2010-05-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

An uneventful second day. We continue to remove the "contaminated" surface layer. Since we're on a slight slope, we're trying to level out our square. We're about a third of a meter down our podium wall and only a few centimeters on the other side. Just rocks and dirt so far. But hey, look what's popping up just outside our square. A nice column drum. We expect to start finding lots of those soon.Here's a picture of our noble crew, John, Allison and Sarah. Just 4 of us though we get two more tomorrow, late arrivals due to finals. John also has a blog that I've linked to on the left. We sure have a nice view, don't we?

Tuesday with runners and moon

2010-05-25T09:10:00.000-07:00

My roomie John (he and I have been on 3 digs together, one in Jordan and two here) was told how to run to the Jordan river (about 2 miles away) through the agricultural fields so he and 2 friends took off and I followed on the bike.Unfortunately I had a flat tire halfway through and had to drag the bike back. But I can handle it and it was a nice walk. We passed a gigantic field of sunflowers in full bloom. They were ignoring the sun and all saluting the rising moon over the Golan. Look hard.

Tuesday, 25 May 2010

2010-05-25T03:55:00.000-07:00

Off at the crack of dawn to my little piece of Israel. We had marked out for us a 5 meter x 5 meter square. Within that square we knock off some lengths on each side to get a 4x4 square. This leaves a "balk" between each square to allow for access when a lot of adjacent squares are dug out. We then constructed an overhead shade to keep the sun out. Here was the final result:

We are on the outside of the edge of the temple podium. The podium is the platform on which the temple sits to make it more visible and prominent. This podium is at least 6' high, but you can see that there has been much dirt that has accumulated against the podium so we are up near the top. That's the dirt we will remove. What do we expect to find? Well, take a look at the already dug-out square next to ours:It appears that a column fell off the podium sideways and most of it has been uncovered. We expect to uncover the rest of it and more besides.

The rest of our morning we started to take off the top layer of dirt in our square. There is not much to be found in this layer, so the top 10 cm or so is pretty much ignored. But boy it's a surprisingly large volume. A great many barrows of dirt were moved to a dump pile before the "time to clean up" call went out. We didn't quite make 10 cm. but will finish that first step tomorrow.

Monday, 24 May

2010-05-24T05:56:00.000-07:00

A light day, but interesting. I got promoted today, in a barrel scrapping move, to square leader. This means I, with a helper, supervise 4 newbies in digging down our 12' x 12' square of Israel, making sure we do it properly (I can do that) and making sure we record properly everything we do and we find. Since this involves over a dozen different forms, not to mention drawings, this is a challenge. But it'll happen. Spare time will be way down though.

After breakfast we went out to the site for a quick orientation. Here you see one of our supreme leaders cluing us in. He will also be eyeing my paperwork for correctness.When we returned we had a talk by a local policeman. One of the bomb squad. Since a landmine was found on the site last year, we will now get an general orientation every year. Omrit is safe, having been tromped around for over 10 years now. (The item found last year was probably dumped by an off-season visitor.) As long as we don't cross any fences that say "Danger Landmines" we'll be fine. Unfortunately a few months ago an Israeli family somehow got inside such a fence with unpleasant consequences. The local policeman says they find mines, shells and rockets ranging from WWI to the Lebanese war a few years ago.After lunch us newly-minted lower middle-management had an orientation where we rec'd our stripes and our paper-work. Later this evening there will be a general orientation for everyone. And then off we go at 5am tomorrow!

Oh yes, my area will be just outside the temple podium where that was a lot "tumble" (a good technical term) when the temple was dismantled, or fell, or whatever. We'll be cleaning around some very big, very important pieces of stone that perhaps we won't have to move.

Sunday, 23 May

2010-05-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

John and I are sitting outside our room at 6:30am Monday with Norman from Arizona. He was here 2 years ago and is back (like John). Norman is Jewish and his grandparents are from Iraq and Kurdistan. I'll post a picture I just took. It's 68 degress F, surprisingly cool. Today we're going to do an orientation of the site for all the new people and not much else. Fine by me.

But yesterday. A long boring flight (11 1/2 hours) and an uneventful drive up in the rental car. Missed a turn along the way but we did fine in the dark. As we approached the north, traffic thinned out to nonexistent and the road became a 4 lane superhighway. We figured it's like the autobahns in the 30s, good transportation for the military. I was wicked tired but could only sleep 2 hours.

It's 7am now, the sun is coming up over the Golan Heights and breakfast is soon. More, much more, to follow.

Norman

Early start

2010-05-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

Regular blogging will start on Monday but here's a few Andrew Sullivan-type blogs about Israel to whet your appetite:

Land mines are still a problem in the Golan but the Israelis may be wakening up to it. We're always careful!

The Israel-Lebanese border is heating up? Maybe.

We have lots of vegetation at Omrit that always needs to be cleared. The Israel military uses antelopes. Between 500 and 700 of them!

And here's a note from Andrew about settlements in the Palestinian Territories. I think the Israelis have lost all claim to the moral high ground.

New web site

2010-05-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Regular posts will begin after 22 May but I wanted to tell you about this great new web page on Omrit from BibleWalks.com. Great photos and more info about Omrit than I've seen yet in one place. There is also local geographical information and an attempt to place Omrit in an historical context. I've listed it in the column on the left. Don't miss this one.

Friday, February 5

2010-02-05T13:22:00.000-08:00

Dan stayed on and Michael arrived. Here are pictures and a short guest blog from Dan:

Here are a few key shots from before our departure. The gentleman in the purple shirt is the new President of Tel Hai. Note the surviving paving on the SE corner of the podium, not to mention the huge corner cornice block. Also got the column drums off of the north end of the stairway. Lots of clean up to do, but makes a big difference.

Friday, Jan. 22

2010-01-25T11:50:00.000-08:00

A guest blog from Greg:

"I extended my stay in Israel so that I could do the aerial photography today. It was the first clear day that we've had since last Sunday.

WOW! I had an adrenaline rush for about 2 hours after the flight. Dan said my eyes were as big as dinner plates when I got off the ultralight, which was basically a go cart attached to a kite. In addition to the pictures for my project I got all sorts of great photos of the site and the general region, including one of my favorite Thai restaurant outside of Kiryat Shemona. Actually, I think it's the only Thai restaurant in Kiryat Shemona...

Was the flight archaeologically valuable? Well, the Xs in the middle of our control points are tough to make out. You can see the circle of rocks that we spray-painted around each X, so I'll have to aim at the middle of that when I'm rubber-sheeting onto my total station data. That data is sound, and will be usefull. Further, there were several features visible from the air that I don't think we've ever seen on the ground before, and it was great to see the overview of the route up to Banias and the contents of the minefield on Tel Azzaziyot.

In general, it was tough to be systematic about the photography while flying. At one point we were hit by some wind which made the Wizard roller-coaster at Great America feel like a tricycle ride. (Riding the Wizard when I was 6 years old is sort of my standard for excitement. I have no idea if I would find it scary at all today at the age of 34.)

I came off the ultralight with my face covered in dried tears and snot because it was really, really, cold. Heavy fog over the airfield made the pilot start to consider "alternate" landing places. We had to circle around for about 10 minutes until he felt he could see enough to make the landing. But when we were done with the 1 hour flight we still had about 3/4 of our fuel left, so we were doing okay.

If I had to do this again I would try to mount a video camera on the bottom of the plane and have him fly level transects across the site. Then I could pull out individual frames for my map, and be assured of both 100% coverage and significant overlap for the stereo effect. A balloon might also give me better control for framing the shots.

Dan and I will see what we can do with the photos that I took and then re-evaluate the process. The pilot also took some pictures (Hey Man! Keep your hand on the stick!) which are more scenic. My most useful pictures are the ones of grass and stones, not very exciting at all."

Greg ready to fly:

The temple at Omrit from the air:

The land between the wadis
Note the temple center right

Thursday, Jan. 21

2010-01-21T12:38:00.000-08:00

Last post. Still raining! Though it quit around noon. The morning spent packing and lunch at Luizza, my new favorite restaurant. Then, with Greg driving, off to the coast and Akko where I caught a train directly to the airport. Swift indeed. Stopped off at Kedesh, across the Hula Valley from us. There is a later Roman temple there also that has never been dug.

Greg at Kedesh

Sarcophagi at Kedesh

Sunset over the Mediterranean

Wednesday, Jan 20

2010-01-20T07:53:00.000-08:00

The heaviest rain yet! Greg is extending his stay to attempt the flight on Friday or Saturday. I'm leaving late tomorrow night and arriving Friday afternoon. I hope. I'll blog one last time from the Ben Gurion airport.

I'm reduced to meals and the Jordan River!

Breakfast laid out for us in the office

Having a coffee after running errands

"The River Jordan is muddy and wide"

Tuesday, January 19

2010-01-20T07:40:00.000-08:00

Rain let up a little and we went out to the site with 2 visitors: Gaby Mazor, who has worked at (and written about) Omrit and a friend of his and Dan's from the Israel Antiquities Authority. After the tour we went to yet another kibbutz for lunch.

Inspecting some damage

Lunch!

Monday, Jan 18

2010-01-18T03:46:00.000-08:00

Rain, rain, rain.

The forecast is all rain, all the time, until we leave early Friday. Sigh.

Last night we went, with Udo, to the Luizza Restaurant on the Barukh Kibbutz, sorry I didn't take my camera. It's run by a young couple (who spent 2 years in NYC running coffee shops) who clearly had the idea of a Paris cafe. They suceeded admirably with 4 tables and excellent food, all prepared by them.

My main task today is to read (and proof a little) a book-length manuscript about Omrit to be published soon.

Here's a picture of Dan, Greg and Udo at lunch today in the Lordan factory cafeteria:

Sunday, Jan.17

2010-01-17T07:54:00.000-08:00

Today, we pretty much finished marking and shooting points for the topo map. Below you'll see Dan weed-wacking out a small circle and then the finished product. When photographed from above the points, these (stereo) photos will produce a much better product. We hope. A big storm is brewing and arrives tomorrow.

The vegetation is much higher than we expected and hides many small and big rocks and boulders, which makes navigating through tough for me, though not for my jack-rabbit friends.

Above is my stock photo looking west over the Hula Valley towards Lebanon over the ridge. Two things to be noted here. Here in the far north, where Israel ends, from here to there is as wide as Israel is. Though the Golan Heights behind me were captured in the 1967 war to provide a buffer with Syria. In the early and mid-1940's many Kibbutzim were founded in anticipation of a future war to defend this territory, which happened in 1948. We stay at one of them: Kibbutz Kfar Szold. (See also below.)

The other thing to notice is that the Hula Valley is part of the Great Rift Valley which extends from northern Syria south through here, on to the Dead Sea, the Red Sea and deep into Africa. The Arabian plate, on which we sit, is moving north and pulling away from the African plate across the valley.

Tonight the 3 of us and Udo, a Kibbutz resident, are going out to dinner. (There's a picture of Udo somewhere in the 2008 blog. He's the one holding a Syrian artillery shell.) Our restaurant is a new one in the Kibbutz Ma'ayan Barukh, another kibbutz founded before the '48 war. Indeed it seems that, outside of the town of Kiryat Shmona, most people around here live on a kibbutz. And every one of those kibbutz is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence! Still.

Saturday, Jan. 16

2010-01-16T10:57:00.000-08:00

A full work day today, mainly doing the work I talked about yesterday: First marking the points that will be used for surveying with red tape (because rain is expected) and spray paint. Then setting up the laser surveying instrument and "shooting" the points. This involved an amazing amount of movement by Dan and Greg over the site. Mainly I worked the instrument. We managed to shoot well over half the points and hope to finish tomorrow. Rain is expected Monday and Tuesday and we hope our markings survive until the aerial photos on Wednesday. Here's a photo of Greg programming the instrument and an "architectural feature" across the wadi.

Below is a picture of the village of Ghajar taken from Omrit. The heading is northwest into Lebanon. In fact the village in white you see is right on the border. Actually the border, as determined by the UN, runs right through the village! The north half is in Lebanon and the south half is in Israel. To top it all off, the villagers consider themselves Syrian. Only in the Middle East. Here is an NPR story about this from last summer. (Update: Here are recent articles about Ghajar in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.)
(And yet another reporter who also visited from Foreign Policy magazine.)

Note the column drums in the right foreground.

To finish, a not very spectacular photo of the spectacular sunset over Lebanon this evening as we headed home. And yes we arrived to work at sunrise.

Friday, Jan 15

2010-01-15T07:01:00.000-08:00

Shalom Shabbat from Israel! The sun is setting here.

Boy, we worked so hard today, I forgot to take pictures. So let me tell you what we've been doing on our 7 acre plot. Which may not seem like a lot but it's filled rocks and boulders hidden by vegetation with a couple of 40 foot slopes. Dan and Greg have no trouble walking it, but it slows me down.

We are surveying the area to make a topographic map. We'll do this by plotting about 100 points, some of which are clustered around "architectural features", and for each point we need to know the exact location, including altitude.

an "architectural feature"? Perhaps a wall
We do this with a laser surveying instrument and start with a number of points around the temple whose exact locations are known. (The exact location of these points was found using a pre-war British survey marker on a hill about a 1/2 mile away.)

Then, using those known points, we locate some exact points near our project. Then we move the instrument where it can see those points and the 100 points we will use for mapping. We find the exact location of the instrument and then "shoot" those 100 points and software will produce a topo map. Accuracy is less than a centimeter. Easy, what?

Well, first we have to climb all over these heights picking the 103 points, weed-wacking the vegetation away, marking the spot with a neon red X and with a flag (to help us find it again). THEN we climb all over these heights again with a survey rod to the 100 Xs so that the instrument can "shoot" the locations. Shooting will start tomorrow.

The big red X is because we are going to take some aerial photos too. More on that when it happens.

Here's a nice photo from yesterday morning, after an evening rain, of fog that filled the Hula Valley. Eventually the fog came up and covered the temple.

Thursday, Jan. 14

2010-01-14T08:35:00.000-08:00

I wanted to blog a little about a shopping trip we took to Kiryat Shmona yesterday. It's the closest big town around and we needed some supplies. Though K-Shmona has malls and a few big department stores, it also has "Industrial Districts". Here there are many small stores, workshops and factories that can supply one with anything, almost literally. So off we went with Johnny, who was acting more as a guide to the best places than a translator. (Every shop has someone who speaks a little English.) Below right is the lawn shop we went to for weed-wacker supplies:

Although well-stocked it seems most customers were getting blades sharpened or items machined. Then off to a hardware store and an electrical shop, all run by people who know what they're doing. Here's another typical street in the area.

On the other side of the ridge in the background is Lebanon. Every now and then, more so in the past, rockets get lobbed over onto the town.

A note here about the regular digging season and finding coins. It's always exciting but soon becomes anticlimactic. The coin is dirty, unreadable and quickly packaged to be sent later to a cleaner and coin-reader. But here's a coin gussied up from a few years ago:

This is a coin of Gallienus, a Roman emperor, and was minted in 267 C.E.

Wednesday, Jan. 13

2010-01-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

An interesting day today. We started out at 6:30am full of enthusiasm. As we approached the turn-off into the site of Omrit we met with a locked gate. It was a newish gate but it had never been closed before. The gate was where our kibbutz land starts (the site is also on kibbutz land) and its purpose, we found out, is to prevent poachers from stealing the kibbutz's cattle. And the gate was put up by "The Cowboy", as he's know by Omritians. The Cowboy supervises the cattle, and he locks the gate at night. We were just too early.

We later got a key but for now the morning was disrupted, so off we went on an alternate route. Let me briefly explain the geography. Omrit stands on a western foothill of the Golan Heights. As does the kibbutz which is 3 or 4 miles south. These foothills overlook the Hula Valley. The main road is in the valley but we went up to a back road from the kibbutz to Omrit in the foothills and it runs a little higher than the valley road. Here is a photo as we approach the site (in white stone, center left) on that road.

In the background you can see a higher and dominating foothill, Tel Azaziat. In 1967 there was a Syrian bunker (a fort really) on the top of that hill - where the trees are now. (Zoom your browser for a good view.) During the 1967 war, when the Israelis decided to attack the Golan, this bunker was one of the first places attacked by the Golani Brigade of the Israel Defence Forces.

As we approached the site we decided instead to go on the memorial on top, that, suprisingly, the Omrit veterans in the truck never had visited. The memorial is basically the ruins of the large bunker, which was captured in a matter of hours on June 9, 1967.

From the top there are magnificent views of Omrit and the Hula Valley and we had a good view of the geography of the area we had walked the previous day.

This back road that we took to the site and Tel Azaziat is an ancient road, dating back at least to the Romans.

Indeed, this quite elegant bridge, over which our road crosses, may be Hellenistic and predate the Romans, though it has been reinforced many times since.

Quite an adventure before breakfast and enough for the blog today.

Tuesday, Jan. 12

2010-01-12T12:55:00.000-08:00

We all woke early, still a little lagged. And we are just 3, all who made it. Dan, co-director of the Omrit dig, Greg, a professional archaeologist currently working on a Ph.D. and looking for material from this project, and me.

Here's Greg surveying.
Greta, who supervises the kibbutz's rental rooms, brought us a nice breakfast at 8:30 and then we were off to the site. The morning we spent walking the large area we are at looking at to find interesting places to dig in the future. Unfortuately the area has recovered from the fire in the spring. Fortunately the weeds are ankle high and not waist high.

A wall worth exploring?
At 1:00 we returned to the kibbutz's factory's cafeteria for lunch and then back. Dan weed-wacked in some interesting areas and Greg and I set up the new "Total Station", a laser surgveying instrument that we will use for mapping. We came back so that Dan and Greg could have a Hebrew lesson (bokra tov, dudes!) and then into town for a little schawarma. It was a bit better than the schawarma I had in Georgia last Saturday night.

We visited a short while with Johnny and Siona and family, who are friends with Dan and who live in a nearby kibbutz. Now we're ready for an early start tomorrow!

Monday, Jan 11

2010-01-12T07:11:00.000-08:00

A short post here, we (me, Greg and Dan) left late Sunday night from Atlanta and arrived Monday evening after a 12 hour flight, having seen a sunrise and a sunset from the plane. We picked up a rental truck, fought rush hour traffic, and made the 3 hour trek north to Kibbutz Kfar Szold. We checked out our rooms (wi-fi works fine!), dropped off our luggage and then to a late supper. Finally to bed, fighting jet lag.

January

2009-12-09T12:15:00.000-08:00

The main dig will start in May, but I will travel to Omrit to help in a survey of places around the site to dig in the future. My blogs on that 2 week adventure will start around 11 January 2010.