Well, tonight is the last night I will be spending at the Kibbutz Revadim and it is with both a tinge of sadness and delight that it is so.  I will miss the new friends I’ve made while here as well as the work of active archaeology that I have so long dreamed of doing.  But I am delighted to see my wife and kids and can not wait. 

Hump day of the last week is here and the digging continues.  We found out today that on Friday, the digging will cease in our area and next week they will spend it cleaning up and getting ready for aerial photos.  A part of me is glad that I don’t have to do that because I don’t like cleaning dirt off of dirt.  It’s one of the funny oxymorons of archaeology.  Anyway, I didn’t go to Ashk

So I started my third and final week at Tell es-Safi. I am looking forward to getting home, but I also sort of wish I could stay for the final week, just to see things through and finish what I started. With my luck, someone will find the most amazing things in the area I worked after I leave. But oh well, that’s how it goes. I did go to the Dead Sea yesterday and it was one of the most amazing things that I’ve ever done. After dropping down to the lowest place on the planet while still on the land (the surface of the Sea is around 1300ft.

We had a good second week as we began to see verifiable strata as well as human habitation.  It was gratifying to find something.

We finally found a layer yesterday that shows an inhabited level.  It was a great accomplishment for our team whom have been working feverishly to get down through the earth to reach this level.

Area P (my area) is still digging down to reach the level our supervisors think is the start of a “live” level.  At this level, theoretically is the place where we should get into more datable strata to start making assertions about our particular square.  At times I feel like a human backhoe, just moving dirt and filling sandbags ad nauseum.  Regardless I too look forward to reaching the level so that we can begin piecing together what is happen

My apologies for taking so long to post.  Computer time is very difficult as they keep us really busy.  This in my area (Area P) are beginning to take shape.  Now that we have taken off the winter-wash, we have begun to see some things.  In the particular square that I am working in, we have uncovered what appears to be some sort of structure, though we won't know until we are able to dig deeper around it.  It is kind of exciting to think what it might be.  In regards to Area P, the purpose of the site on the Tell is to get down to levels that perhaps the Phili

Today I got to experience firsthand what winter-wash is.  For those who don’t know, winter-wash is all the debris that was washed into a particular area since the last dig season.  As the area that I was working in was immediately next to a steep hill that they had dug into, there was needless to say a lot of debris that needed to be removed.  But our team managed to remove the vast majority of the wash, as well as the old sand bags

Day 1 - July 8,2007