A Day in the Life of an Archaeologist

Hi everyone. Today I thought I would talk a bit about our daily schedule. See what you think about this...

Wake up is at 4:30 AM unless like me you are crazy enough that you manage to wake up at 4:00 without the help of an alarm. (Like I said, crazy!). We wake up that early in order to finish a full eight hour work day before it gets too hot but you don't really think about that when you wake up and it is pitch black outside. You mostly think about how you must be crazy.

Once we manage to pull ourselves together we wander downstairs for First Breakfast (like Hobbits we have a few extra meals built into the day) which usually consists of tea or coffee, bread and jam and what we affectionately call "bug juice" which is sorta but not really like Tang. 5:00 sharp the bus pulls up to take us to the dig site. It is still dark and the ride never takes as long as we would like it to.

By 5:10 we are at the Pottery Compound where we one and all race to grab our tools. We do this by the light of the florescent moon which pierces the still dark morning. Honestly, it is still dark! Then, tools in hand we strike off in the direction we believe will lead us to our designated excavation areas. (We haven't lost anyone yet and, fingers crossed, we won't this year.)

By 5:30 we are usually hard at work even though we can't really see anything. We work using a range of tools from dental picks and tiny paint brushes on up to full size pick axes and shovels (although they have a more fancy name). We dump all the dirt we dig up into buckets called gufas and then haul it away.

We break for Second Breakfast at 9:00 which is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is good because we get a break after a morning of
manual labor and because the meal is pretty good even though we sit in the dirt to eat it (unless you are lucky enough to track down a nice patch of grass). And breakfast is pretty good; all you can eat (at least until it runs out) eggs, bread, olives, cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, yogurt and more. The only real problem is that you have to go back to work and it always seems much, much hotter after the break.

And then we go back to work until our next opportunity for food or sleep, whichever you need more. Fruit Break happens at 11:15 or so and it only manages to be a Fruit Break if you saved some fruit from breakfast. From that point, however, the morning is almost over and even
though it is so hot your eyeballs are sweating the last bit of the day doesn't seem too bad. 12:50 we pack up our tools. 1:00 we board the buses and go back to the hotel. Once there we get cleaned up and go down to lunch.

After lunch we have free time until 4:00 when we get back on the bus to go back to the Pottery Compound (basically our office at the site) where we work on processing and analyzing the objects we found earlier in the day. We do that for a couple of hours before getting back on the bus to return to the hotel where we then attend evening lectures on any number of subjects from numismatics (the study of coins) to my favorite, Ashkelon in the Islamic period. And then, only then do we go to dinner (usually around 7:15) after which it is again free time. Which in my case lasts until about 8:30 when I go to bed.

So what makes us do it? Well, next time I'll write a bit about what we do when we are working.

Also, the answer to the latest "Who? What? When?"

Hey staff and volunteers! We are inching our way ever closer to the start of the season. Room and grid assignments are done, the hotel is
full (at least on the weekends) and the grids are dirty! See everyone on Saturday.

The Basilica

It was a busy day of work today as we started preparing two areas for excavation. Perry, Hamilton Elementary School's traveling bear, visited one of those areas. This is an area in the central part of the site where many of the city's important public buildings were located. It is here that a man named John Garstang first identified one of ancient Ashkelon's basilicas. Today the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon continues to work in the same area so that we can better understand it. We are currently in the process of expanding the area in which we want to work and getting it prepared which means we have to clean the dirt. That's right, clean the dirt. What that means is that we sweep it so that we can see everything in it and believe me there is a lot. When we can see different colors in the dirt we can see things such as pits, floors and sometimes even walls.

This was Grid 47 before work commenced today. Wait until you see it after!

Today work also began in Grid 51 which is being expanded and prepared for excavation. After a week of cleaning both it and Grid 47 should be ready to go.

In Ashkelon

We are here! And I'd like to send a big shout out to the students of Hamilton Elementary School in Chicago, Illinois who will be following this blog for the last few weeks of school. Welcome to the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon.

Accompanying my son and I to Ashkelon this summer is Perry, Hamilton's traveling bear. He will be making appearances throughout the summer so keep an eye out for him.

In the meantime, while we begin to prepare for the summer season we are simultaneously working on a number of projects. Here you can see two of Ashkelon's staff members "reading" Iron I pottery. Iron I pottery dates to 1200 - 1000 BCE and the time of the Philistines. When we "read" pottery we look at the shape and decoration of pottery (bowls, pots, lamps, jars, jugs and so on) to determine when it was used. The Iron Age
pottery in Ashkelon comes from many different places including Cyprus and the
Greek Islands. There are even imports from Syria. The vast majority of the pottery, however, was locally made.

We "read" ceramics from all different periods. While Josh and Laura are working on the Iron Age I am working on Islamic period pottery. At the site of Ascalon, our Islamic period pottery dates from 640 - 1270 CE. During this period we have imports from many different places including North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran and as far away as China.

The sun is hot, the breeze is mild and it's time to start digging. Stay tuned for more from Perry and for regular updates on our progress this season.

Let the Fun Begin -- Soon

The answer to the last "What, Where, When?" is that the picture was taken standing on top of the remains of an unexcavated church located on the South Tel. The view is looking to the southeast towards what may very well have been the intersection of the city's main north-south road with its southernmost east-west road. The stones at the very bottom of the picture are from one of the church's apses.

This summer we return to Ascalon's city center and a building first discovered by John Garstang in the early 20th century. The building he found was a long rectangle roughly oriented north-south with an apse on its southern end. Garstang believed he had uncovered the city's main basilica with, perhaps, a senate hall or some other type of attached structure. In 2008 we decided to return to the basilica to test the accuracy of Garstang's work and to further expose and examine the monumental structure he unearthed.

Over the course of two seasons of excavation we found that Garstang's work was generally very accurate. What we also found forced a major reinterpretation of the building. It now seems clear that the apse at the southern end of the building is in fact an odeon, a small Roman theatre. What does that mean for the remainder of the building? Is it a basilica? Are we actually looking at one single structure or are we in fact looking at several? How does the odeon fit into the urban plan of Ascalon?

We hope to answer these questions and more as we expand Grid 47 to the east and the south. Moving east is particularly important because we believe it will be an area undisturbed by Garstang's earlier work and, therefore, an opportunity to better understand the occupational sequence in the city center.

In addition to Grids 38 and Grid 47, which I will be supervising, there is one more area that will be excavated. Grid 51 is situated on top of the South Tel near the Mediterranean Sea and was originally opened as an excavation area in order to determine to full extent of the ancient city. In other words, we wanted to know whether or not the area of Grid 51 was inside or outside the city wall. This season work will continue and be expanded under the direction of Dr. Kate Birney with the goal of reaching the 604 BCE destruction of the city.

Three excavation areas, three different periods of the site's occupational sequence, three sets of questions and a world of archaeological exploration. This season promises to greatly expand our understanding of some key aspects of Ascalon's past. It will almost certainly be fun and tiring and fun and exhausting and fun. To those of you joining us, welcome. To those of you thinking about next year, keep an eye on the blog for regular updates. And for those of you just curious about an archaeological excavation and what we do, enjoy.

See you there! One week and counting.

Now, "What, Where, When?"

Summer Plans

The object shown in the most recent "What, Where, When," is a Fatimid imperial inscription over which a Crusader knight carved his shields. The inscription was found, broken into many pieces, at the bottom of a section of stone talis located just to the west of the main park entrance. The inscription was carved into what excavators suspect was originally a marble tabletop, measuring approximately 1.49 x .63 x .10 m, from the Roman period. The 22 line inscription commemorates the construction of a fortification tower by the local Fatimid governor on the orders of the Grand Vizier in Cairo and even includes the date of the work, 1150 CE.

Just three years later Ascalon would fall to the Crusaders for the first of three times. What happened to the marble slab and the Fatimid inscription after that is unclear until it fell into the hands of a knight named Sir Hugh Wake who went on crusade with Richard earl Cornwall in the mid-13th century. Richard is believed to have built a fortress in Ascalon in the 1240s and it was at that time that Sir Hugh Wake carved his emblem over the earlier Fatimid inscription. The three large shields belong to Sir Hugh Wake, the smaller shields belong to a less important knight accompanying him.

The importance of Sir Hugh Wake's shields on this marble slab cannot be overestimated as to date they are the only direct proof for Crusader occupation in Ascalon in the 13th century. This in spite of the fact that sources record Ascalon was occupied until 1270 CE when it was finally destroyed once and for all by the Mamluks.

For some of us departure to Ascalon and the 2010 field season is only two months away. For the remainder, departure isn't too far behind that so it is a good time to start thinking about the season and our research goals. The longest continually excavated area (including a hiatus of a few years) is Grid 38 which is centrally located near the city center of ancient Ascalon. This summer Grid 38 will be supervised by Joshua Walton, a graduate student at Harvard University. I asked Josh what his goals were for this season and this is what he told me,

"This year in 38 we have three areas of focus. In [square] 74 we will be trying to further understand the LB levels, particularly the domestic structure that was partially uncovered in 2008, and trying to get a better idea of the LB sequence there. In [square] 84 we will be trying to find any evidence for the MB occupation of the site, which was hinted at by the ceramics in some of the deeper probes in 2008, hopefully we will be able to uncover some accompaying architecture. In [square] 85 we will be finishing the excavation of the Iron 2 fills, and hopefully reach the phase 17 and 18 philistine levels, which we will be attempting to connect to the last few years of excavation in [square] 75 to gain a better picture of the philistine domestic structure on the east side of the street. In this area we will also be working with the Weisman institute of archaeological science to try and employ some of their techniques for understanding the philsitine occupation."

In addition to working in Grid 38 Josh will continue to lead the Persian period pottery project. Work began on this project last summer when staff and volunteers processed several industrial sized containers worth of Persian pottery that had been in storage for, well, seemingly forever. More than one scholar has tried to tackle the Persian period pottery project and failed but this time it looks like things are well on their way. After last year's progress this summer Josh tells me the plan is to work on identifying phases, marking the pottery and, if all goes well, to start a general typology.

Josh will also be involved in a pre-season project which will refine pottery readings for some of the earliest Philistine floor assemblages.

That is just one of the excavation areas and some of the projects that we'll be working on this summer. Stay tuned to learn more about what we'll be working on this summer.

Now, "What, Where, When?" This time it's a little different. Where was this picture taken and what does it show? (The photo quality is terrible but you should be able to get the idea.)

Remember, there is still time to apply for our summer field season.

On the Road to Ashkelon

"What? Where? When?" The short answer is that it is a Roman period bath (dated to the fourth century CE) discovered on the North Tel in the mid-1990s. Excavation of the bath uncovered the furnace, hypocaust tunnels which supported a partially preserved floor and two chambers. The scene depicted in the picture is a group of Romans hanging around in their togas as they relax at the bath. Ok, truth be told it is some volunteers engaged in a re-enactment for the benefit of other volunteers on a Tel tour, a once a week opportunity to visit other excavation areas and learn about what is being discovered. For bonus points, where exactly is the bath located on the North Tel? And can you name one of the two supervisors of this area?

On to other things...

I found this article while procrastinating on some work and include a link to it here as an introduction to Dr. Daniel Master, co-director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon.

The story is a familiar one as my road to Ashkelon parallels that of Daniel’s to a great extent with some obvious differences (he is a co-director and I am not for example).

This is my story.

My freshman year of college my roommate was an anthropology major which I thought was cool though less practical then my history major. Sure Indiana Jones had lots of great adventures but really, who would pay you to do that sort of work? I wasn’t convinced there were too many people that would. I was, however, more easily convinced that it would be fun to try an archaeological excavation, that spending a summer digging in the dirt under a blazing hot sun would be a great experience.

So, like many students before me I perused the help-wanted ads in Archaeology Magazine and Biblical Archaeology Review. In other words, I combed through their annual listings of excavations that take student volunteers and chose one at random. Ashkelon was the winner. I suppose the Harvard University name attached to it may have had something to do with my choice but I really don’t remember. What I do remember is that once the idea hit me I didn’t let it go until I found myself in Ashkelon several months later.

I liked it enough that first season that I returned a second season as a volunteer happy to pay for the privilege of once again wallowing in the sewers of Ashkelon. My hard work, enthusiasm and willingness to dig just about anything paid off and I was invited back as an assistant square supervisor for the 1991 field season.

In those days Ashkelon was huge. On average 80 to 120 volunteers and a staff of 50 to 60 people. The excavation was large not just in terms of numbers but also in numbers of areas being worked. Each excavation had a Grid Supervisor, the person in charge of directing, collating, processing and interpreting the data collected from however many 10 x 10 meter squares were opened for excavation within that grid. Each square, of course, had a Square Supervisor who was responsible for the day to day decisions within that square. And it was not unheard of for each square to have an assistant supervisor who, obviously, assisted the Square Supervisor while receiving the training with which to overthrow their bosses.

Such was my position in 1991 when not even a week into the season I was promoted, without any overthrowing required, to a Square Supervisor in Grid 50 where I stayed for many years. I even made the cover of BAR one year -- of course, the scenic excavation area overlooking the Mediterranean Sea undoubtedly had more to do with that than I did.

And maybe along the way the power went to my head because I decided archaeology really was cool and that it didn’t matter it was less practical than history (remember, I was young then and I liked to study history). I decided graduate school was the way to go but I wouldn’t do what it seemed like everyone else at Ashkelon was doing. No Bronze or Iron Age archaeology for me. No, I decided that I wanted to study the late periods, specifically the Islamic period. This proved to be a very fortuitous decision as I was able to write about Ashkelon for my dissertation. No one else wanted to do it and I had my choice of topics.

I continued digging at Ashkelon throughout graduate school and in 1997 I became a Grid Supervisor and had the privilege of opening a new area for excavation.

Next it was on to a stint as the Ashkelon Lab Director for which I am most well-known as the author of an unheralded but very amusing (I am told) Lab Director’s Manual. The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon maintains a lab facility year round in the city of Ashkelon in order to facilitate research and other ongoing projects associated with the excavation. That can mean anything from moving pottery crates from one rat-infested warehouse to another, hosting visiting scholars or team members working on various research projects to supervising, shall we say, the delicate use of mechanized equipment to prepare for the upcoming season of excavation. A varied and demanding job it is nonetheless quite rewarding and puts you in near proximity to some amazing archaeological discoveries on a daily basis.

In 2008 I went back to serving as a Grid Supervisor and there I have stayed. Every year there are new problems, fresh faces and the opportunity not only to uncover the history of Ashkelon but also to teach the next generation of archaeologists who will pursue our dream of revealing and interpreting the material remains of this ancient city.

How will your Ashkelon story read?

And now for the next installment of “What, Where, When?” Thoughts?

Until next time.

Dr. Moshier Part 2

Here is the second installment of Dr. Moshier's blog reprinted with permission. Enjoy!

Blog Entry: The big one that got away (posted July 6, 2009)

Ashkelon is a city on the coast. There is a casual “beach town” vibe here that is not much different from places in the USA like Corpus Christi or Ft. Lauderdale. During the weekends (Friday-Saturday) the population of Ashkelon must triple, at least the occupancy of our hotel does.

Of course, there are disadvantages to living along the coast. The beaches of Corpus Christi and Ft. Lauderdale are frequently traumatized by hurricanes. But, such violent storms are not spawned in the warm waters of the Mediterranean; it’s just not big enough and lies too far north of the equator for strong cyclonal patterns to develop. Other dangers lurk in this tectonically active region that can result in devastation to the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts. Something really catastrophic happened here about 3600 years ago.

In the Aegean Sea between southern Greece and western Turkey, and due north of the Island of Crete there is a crescent-shaped island (or rather strand of small islands) named Santorini, also known as Thera. The Minoan culture was thriving in this region during the Late Bronze Age. Minoan art and ceramics are colorful and sophisticated. There may be cultural and ethnic connections between the Minoans and other people groups scattered around the Western Mediterranean, such as the Philistines, Phoenicians, Hyksos, etc. But Minoan culture basically ended with a bang when Thera blew up. Thera is a giant volcano. Or was.

So much ash was pushed up into the atmosphere that it probably explains evidence of climate disturbances in China and frost damage to trees in California and Ireland (Science v. 312, p. 548). Ash from the eruption has been recovered in Greenland ice cores and sediment cores in the Nile Delta. A little global cooling was the least of worries for people living along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts. The eruption resulted in the collapse of the center of the island creating a caldera and surges of pyroclastic material flowed in to the surrounding sea. The displacement of water produced the dreaded tsunami waves that propagated in every direction.

Even some 500 km away, the coast of Israel could not have been spared of this disaster. Computer models show the waves hitting our Late Bronze city of Ashkelon about 100 minutes after those pyroclastic surges hit the ocean floor. With wavelengths of over 100 km, tsunami waves build in height as they run up on coastlines. Waves hitting the Levant could have been up to 12 m above sea level. Surely Ashkelon was smacked, but what actually happened and can we find evidence of that fateful day of doom?

Finally, there is controversy over the date of the eruption. Geochronologists using carbon-14 date the eruption at about 1600-1620 BC. Archaeologists, particularly those working Bronze Age sites in the Nile Delta and Levant, believe the archaeological indicators and chronologies put the date at 1500 BC!

Henrik Bruins, a geochronologist at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, has been looking along the coast of Israel for deposits that might be linked to the Thera eruption. He has described in great detail Thera tsunami deposits on the Island of Crete. In the spring of 2009, Ashkelon Excavation Director Daniel Master and Dr. Bruin discussed the possibility of tsunami deposits at Ashkelon. Daniel recalled a particular massive sandy layer on top of the hard kurkar dune rock along the beach cliff. It is about 6 m above present sea level. Perhaps if this deposit had the characteristics of a tsunami deposit and contained datable material and diagnostic pottery, we could establish the presence of the tsumani at Ashkelon and contribute to the resolution of the debate over the timing of the eruption.

My very first morning here two weeks ago we looked at that bed (we could not reach it due to its position on the cliff) and made plans to clean it up for study. What that means is that daredevil archaeologist Josh Walton would scale a ladder and chisel out a smooth surface with a pick and trowel. That did not happen until this past Sunday after our drilling project was finished. It took two hours hard labor by Josh and my geoarchaeology student assistant Ben before I had my first look at the deposit. Josh had already determined that the pottery beneath and within the deposit was much later than Bronze Age. I could see no evidence that the bed was anything other than typical tell sediment (thebrownish yellow loam soiling all my T-shirts). Shoot.

We decided to comb the beach cliff for other candidate deposits, using information from a previous geoarchaeological survey. About 250 m north of the disappointing deposit we found an old covered trench that was documented to contain, “fluvial sand” with Chalcolithic and Early Bronze pottery. Fluvial infers water deposition. The geologist who had described the trench wondered if flooding on the tell had resulted in the deposition of sand in narrow channels running toward the sea. It is hard to imagine that enough rainwater could collect on the tell to create such a torrent. It made sense to us that “the flood” may have been from run up or back wash from the big one. So this morning, Josh and Ben were at it again with pick and trowel, only this time they did not need a ladder. They cleaned a 4 m section and dug a 2.5 m trench. We found nothing even remotely similar to the previous description of that level (in all fairness, we might not have been in exactly the same place described in the previous report). We see no other reasonable places to look for evidence of the elusive tsunami deposit. I joked with Josh and Ben, “there goes our article in Nature.” Josh was not sure if his hours of digging would even have been acknowledged, anyway. Because they worked so hard to create a nice clean trench, we dedicated the next hour to describing the 4 m of sediment in detail, just for the record.

Even though we don’t have geological evidence for the tsunami does not mean that ancient Ashkelon was spared. From now on, archaeologists digging levels of Bronze Age occupation will be mindful to look for evidence of natural destruction. Our work to create a “bedrock” map of the tell will be used to model the effects of a wave on reconstructed Early Bronze Age topography. If waves were even as much as 12 m high hitting the coast, either as a wall or rapidly rising water, we know that some Bronze Age levels are as high as 17 m above present sea level. Even better for them, sea level during the Bronze Age was about 2 m lower than present! The ancient citizens of Ashkelon would have certainly been terrified by the giant wave or waves soaking the coast, but many may have survived by virtue of the elevation provided by the old kurkar dune beneath their city. They probably had more to fear from the falling ash. Who knows what human or natural activity might have erased physical evidence of the event? Or, have we looked in all the right places?