The Cover Up

As the dig came to a close, we had one final task on our last day: cover up what we found. One of the problems with archaeology is that it’s inherently destructive. You can only dig something up once. Sometimes, an exposed area is left for people to see. Other times it is buried again to preserve it. Our area was in between those extremes. First, we took some large rolls of material to cover over the major pieces of our area, steadying it with rocks and the jute bags that lined around our excavated area. Normally, this would be […]

Hard Rock

I’ve talked about digging up pottery and bones. Is that all? There’s more to find than that! There are a plethora of rocks to find, too! Rocks are numerous in Israel. Generally what survived was made out of rock, which was (and continues to be) a plentiful building material in Israel. However, not all rocks are useful. We dug through plenty of rocks which were not of any interest. Such rocks were called “floating”, meaning they were floating in the dirt and not attached to anything. We ended up with a sizable rock pile by the time the dig ended. […]

Bone Head

The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. Ezekiel 37:1-2 Last time I wrote about digging up pottery. That isn’t the only thing we found during the dig. I frequently found bones, too. Why are bones useful to find? Let me give you a few examples! Bones show what […]

Pot Head

“Woe to those who quarrel with their Maker,    those who are nothing but potsherds    among the potsherds on the ground.Does the clay say to the potter,    ‘What are you making?’Does your work say,    ‘The potter has no hands’? Isaiah 45:9 I dug up a lot of pottery at Tel Dan. Some sherds (broken pieces of pottery) are small while others are large. The most important pieces are those with distinctive attributes, like handles, bases, or rims. Most body pieces aren’t distinctive enough for good analysis. Why is pottery so important? Pottery is used to date what […]

Dirty Business

An archaeological dig involves, well, lots of digging. We have been moving a lot of dirt out of Area T1 at Tel Dan. Some of it goes to sifting, but most of it is dumped in a nearby pile (we do look through it while digging, but I’m sure plenty has been missed). We’ve been searching for an Assyrian wall that was assumed to go through the area because it was mapped in other places. The dig was a total of four weeks long and I was part of the last two. Watch the progression of our excavation! (Click for […]

A Day of Digging

Aragorn: Gentlemen! We do not stop ’til nightfall.Pippin: But what about breakfast?Aragorn: You’ve already had it.Pippin: We’ve had one, yes. But what about second breakfast?Merry: Don’t think he knows about second breakfast, Pip.Pippin: What about elevenses? Luncheon? Afternoon tea? Dinner? Supper? He knows about them, doesn’t he?Merry: I wouldn’t count on it. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring What is it like being part of an archaeological dig? Now that I’ve been doing it a week, here’s an example rundown of a day: 4:45 am – wake up, eat pre-breakfast in my room that I got the […]