blast from the past
Feb. 14th, 2007 10:36 amIn the summer of 1996, I spent about 10 weeks in Israel, most of it excavating at the site of Megiddo, in the Jezreel Valley. One of the students I supervised in my trench has sent me a link to his flickr site with pictures from the dig. My observations:
1. Gee, I look older now than I did 10 years ago. I wonder how that happened? http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpleby/388488606/
2. I was surprised then, and am surprised now looking back at it, how completely traditional the dig was. Although we used students and not local workmen (except in a few cases - there was one area where it was dangerous to dig so workmen were used there, presumably because they were expendable), and wore short-shorts, and all the Israelis were glued to their cell phones, otherwise it might as well have been 1966, or 1936, in terms of the dig social structure, bureaucracy, daily schedule (4am-1pm), etc. Especially in black and white: http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpleby/388500015/
3. I had no idea this picture had been taken... http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpleby/388488358/ Luckily there does not seem to be a photo of me in my sports bra on the day we played Xena Warrior Princess on the tell.
My trench was in area H, and we were mostly excavating destroyed houses from the 8th century BCE - lots of collapsed mudbrick debris, and as featured prominently in the photographs, a completely intact cookpot. Cookpots of this kind were fairly common, but as far as anyone could say (and we had a lot of experts) nobody had ever dug one up that was in perfect condition. We were hopeful that there would be some interesting botanical material inside, but there wasn't. The houses had been destroyed when the city was sacked by Tiglath-Pileser III, one of the excitingly-named Neo-Assyrian kings (his buddies included Ashurnasirpal and Ashurbanipal.)
1. Gee, I look older now than I did 10 years ago. I wonder how that happened? http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpleby/388488606/
2. I was surprised then, and am surprised now looking back at it, how completely traditional the dig was. Although we used students and not local workmen (except in a few cases - there was one area where it was dangerous to dig so workmen were used there, presumably because they were expendable), and wore short-shorts, and all the Israelis were glued to their cell phones, otherwise it might as well have been 1966, or 1936, in terms of the dig social structure, bureaucracy, daily schedule (4am-1pm), etc. Especially in black and white: http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpleby/388500015/
3. I had no idea this picture had been taken... http://www.flickr.com/photos/umpleby/388488358/ Luckily there does not seem to be a photo of me in my sports bra on the day we played Xena Warrior Princess on the tell.
My trench was in area H, and we were mostly excavating destroyed houses from the 8th century BCE - lots of collapsed mudbrick debris, and as featured prominently in the photographs, a completely intact cookpot. Cookpots of this kind were fairly common, but as far as anyone could say (and we had a lot of experts) nobody had ever dug one up that was in perfect condition. We were hopeful that there would be some interesting botanical material inside, but there wasn't. The houses had been destroyed when the city was sacked by Tiglath-Pileser III, one of the excitingly-named Neo-Assyrian kings (his buddies included Ashurnasirpal and Ashurbanipal.)