Taygete Atlantis: Excavation Blogs (Antiquity)

From Wednesday to Sunday the 29th Christian Krug visited the Berlin team. He brought a little remote-control helicopter with camera to take some aerial shots of the excavated areas. He has worked on Lebanese sites before, but it was his first time in Ostia. To make this work possible, Axel had to run about the [...]

The excavations in the main forum are going well. The Berlin section is deeply impressive, with two styles of late paving (adjacent to each other) being revealled. In the Kent section we have only scraps of mosaic, but we have found a quite extensive tile and cobble spread, which seems to have been put down [...]

Today we have been going down into the robber trenches of different periods. In the main forum south, it looks like Sebastian’s team have located a trench (see above) designed to rob out a lead water pipe – which survives in one portion. This robbing is probably medieval. In the macellum, Zsolt’s team have been [...]

The main forum south excavations led by Sebastian Matz are expanding beyond the test pits to reveal part of the portico. We have a very fragmentary mosaic floor emerging, that is perhaps 0.5% comnplete, with underlying mortar. This seems to be a similar style to the main mosaic in the palaestra, which we can now [...]

Today we sucessfully opened the finds area. Our team of specialists have started work, after we recovered a bag of sherds that was left over from last year, from within our spoil heap. Thankfully the labels (of ‘context 1056′) were intact. Stefano and Helen got straight to work, on the arduous business of pot washing, [...]

Work has now started in the Palaestra of the Forum Baths – first with the geophysics (which we have finally got working), and also with some surface survey of the walls. It is now clear that the phasing of the late Roman repair is more complex than we thought. The little temple seems to be [...]

On Tuesday morning, I had the opportunity to visit Tiryns in Greece (yes, I’m in Greece – I was not beamed there by Scotty…). My good friend, Prof. Joseph Maran, of the University of Heidelberg, the director of the excavations, gave me (and my son Netanel) a great tour of the site, including both new and older parts of the excavations (as you may recall, that is all the way back to Schleimann…).
Without going into the details of the great finds at the site, one thing is quite clear – that if the Mycenaeans are in ANY way related to the Philistines, then at most, they are their well-to-do, cultured, 4th cousins, twice removed…
:-)

Aren

Today was boiling hot on site. It was officially 33 degrees in Rome but it felt like 36 in Ostia, and in the windless cistern it must have got much hotter. I lift my hard hat to the drawing team recording the late roman stylobate down there. To combat the heat we spent part [...]

Today the Kent team are close to completing the removal of backfill on the 4th c. macellum (the foro della stauta eroica). This has been a dispriting task, as no new archaeology is involved, and the days have been hot. We cant help remembering with what effort it was all buried at the end [...]

The German team have started work in the main forum of the city. Axel, Alex, Katrin, Lena and Gunnar are the initial part of a team of 20. They constructed a sunroof in order to do surface archaeology of the main Forum’s slab-areas. Thanks to five days of work half of the Forum-portico is archeologically [...]

Ostia looks as beautiful as ever. The pines are tall and their shade inviting, providing cool spots from which to view the extensive ruins of the city. It is however actually not that hot. The thermometer is barely passing 30 degrees here, which is odd for this time of year. As a result of [...]

Today our international team arrived in Ostia to set up camp at Castel Fusano, 5km from the site. The group includes students from Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, Canada and the US, which is represented by Doug Underwood, a graduate student from Missouri. We are now setting up camp at Castel Fusano, whilst Doug (above) sets [...]

Louise Hitchcock, long time staff member of the Safi team and director of the Australian team has just gave a public lecture in Melbourned on her impressions on the 2010 season. You can listen to the lecture here.
(thanks to Jim West for providing the link)

Way to go Louise!

Aren

The thing is, it ain’t…

Earlier this morning, Amit and I met up at the tel and went over to the suspicious stone. It turns out that there were in fact a nice amount of angular, deep incisions on a rather flat face of the rock, but alas, ’twas not an inscription.

The question was raised whether I had been under the effect of a psychoactive material when I first thought I saw it – but I promise I wasn’t!

In any case, now that there is one less candidate on the tell for a stone carrying a very important inscription, we can move on to the next one…

Nil desperandum!

:-)
Aren

A new paper by Brian Tomaszewski and I on the political geography of the Toluca Valley is in press at the Journal of Historical Geography. The proof copy is now online.

Tomaszewski, Brian M. and Michael E. Smith
2010    Politics, Territory, and Historical Change in Postclassic Matlatzinco (Toluca Valley, central Mexico). Journal of Historical Geography (in press).

ABSTRACT:


Historical interpretation of political dynamics in pre-conquest central Mexico from indigenous records is fraught with difficulties. Beyond the basic challenges involved in interpreting fragmentary evidence is the fact that the majority of evidence comes from the dominant imperial polity (Tenochtitlan) and paints a biased and overly generalized view of political and social dynamics in provincial areas.We present a reconstruction of the political geography of the Toluca Valley of central Mexico in Aztec times that avoids these biases by focusing not on the events described in native histories, but on the individual towns and their spatial locations. We find that a theoretical perspective that defines political entities by networks and relations among people more adequately captures the historical situation than traditional models that define polities based on territory and boundaries.

2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserve

For all of you who like to plan early on, we have set our dig dates for the next year, with the summer season set from June 12 through June 30, 2011.  during these three weeks, we invite you all to come join us and help uncover Tel Burna.

For those of you who can’t make it then, we will also be in the field for two weeks in the spring, from March 27th until April 7, 2011. Fo rthe first week, we will be working with the pre-military academy from Kibbutz Beth Guvrin.

Finally, on November 28th and 29th, we will be in the field, doing some test pits, surveying and cleaning with the Israel Bible-Extension Program (IBEX).

Can’t wait to get back to the field and hope you will join us!!!

Yesterday, while giving a tour of the tell to a very nice group, walking on a path that I had walked on perhaps a thousand times before (whose location I won’t say at this time), I passed by a large stone (ca. 50x50x100 cm) with a flat side to it. On this flat side there were several angular incisions. While I did not have time to look at it carefully (or clean it, or for that matter, photograph it…), there is a possibility that it is part of a large inscription!

Clearly, I’ll have to go back ASAP to check this out, but in the meantime, we can all dream of what this might be…

How about one of these:
“Welcome to Gath”
“Goliath’s house this way”
“No spitting on the city gate!”
“Careful not to bump your head when entering – low door”

:-)

Aren

Welcome to Late Antique Ostia 2010. Over the next six weeks I will be blogging about the Kent-Berlin Late Antique Ostia Project, bringing you news of our efforts to uncover the fragmentary late antique phases of the ancient port town of Rome. We will be attemtping to re-study the hurried excavations of Mussolini, by cleaning [...]

And here is another nice aerial foto from the end of the 2010 season.

In this foto, we see an aerial view of Area F, looking southeast, towards the summit of the tell and beyond. One can very nicely see the topographical relationship between the summit (and the Blanche Garde Crusader castle on it) and the remains in Area F. On the summit is the round wooden observation post, where, on a clear day, you have one of the nicest views in the entire land of Israel! Note that the NW tower of the outer fortification of the castle was found in the Area F (in the back center of the area).

In the upper part of Area F, there is the later Iron Age remains, including the very nice evidence of the 8th cent. BCE earthquake.
In the lower area there is evidence of various stages of the early Iron Age, the LB, and one sees the very impressive MB fortification wall (running NW-SE).

The pile of white sandbags to the north of the area is not a military emplacement – it is simply where the Area F people collected the sandbags that were used after the foto for in-between season conservation.

That’s it for now for aerial views of the site.

Aren

As promised, here is another nice aerial foto from the end of the 2010 season.

In the foto there is a view form the top of the upper tell (more or less half way between Area A and Area F, on the northern part of the middle of the ruins of the Arab village, looking north towards the lower city (and the excavations in Area D). You can see the excavation squares in Area D, and just beyond it, the river bed of the Elah Valley. One can vividly imagine how impressive the city must have looked back in the Iron Age IIA, when both the upper and lower cities were extensively settled.

Quite a view!

Aren

As promised, here is another aerial shot from the end of the 2010 season.

This foto is an aerial view, looking west, over Areas E and A, situated on the eastern side of the tell, and then behind these areas, to the west, one can see the center of the upper tell (with one of the modern Palestinian cemeteries on the terrace above Area A, and behind it, the ruins of the village of Tell es-Safi. On the back, left hand side of the picture one can see the summit of the tell, with the observation point and the Crusader fort Blanche Garde. To the left of the Areas A and E, one can see one of the pathways that led up to the Palestinian village. All the way in the background, in the center and right, one can see the coastal plain to the west of Tell es-Safi/Gath, and all the way in the background one can see some of the buildings of the modern city of Ashdod.

Nice view!

Aren

Since things have been a little slow in the last few days, in the next few days I’ll post some nice aerial foto of different parts of the tell – taken at the end of the 2010 season.

Here is a nice aerial of Area D (the lower city), looking west, towards the coastal plain. Just to the west of the excavation area is the river bed of the Elah river, and beyond, the fertile fields leading towards the coastal plain.
In the excavation squares, one can see the walls of the Iron Age IIA buildings quite clearly (that were destroyed in the “Hazael” conquest), and if you look closely in the areas just west of the excavation squares, there seems to be hints of additional architectural features, perhaps the continuation of the Iron Age II walls, just below surface.
The finds from Area D clearly demonstrate that Gath expanded substantially during the Iron Age IIA (and perhaps even during the Iron I) and our earlier estimates that the size of the city during the Iron Age IIA reached ca. 45-50 hectares (based on the survey results) are quite accurate (some of our colleagues [e.g., D. Ussishkin, Y. Dagan, A. Shavit], who apparently have not been following the excavation updates in the last few years, still claim till this day that the site was much smaller during the Iron Age IIA, despite the clear results from the excavation [in addition to the survey] that indicate the large size of the site at the time).

Aren

Today, I had a first opportunity to look at the new, reopened Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Although here and there there is still work to be done, overall the new campus is ready – and quite outstanding! The new facilities are much better than before and the exhibits that I saw are also very well done – and match up to any museum in the world.

Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in the archaeology wing – and it is a substantial improvement over the former version. In addition to new materials, many of the exhibits are re-organized, or completely changed, and the end result is really quite impressive.

Not that I don’t have suggestions to add things, add some explanations, etc., but overall – very impressed!

There were a few finds from Safi as well, including 2 of the phallus shaped vessels (which were labeled as something like “religious ceremonial vessels”…), the nice lion headcup base, one of the strainers, and the so-called “Goliath inscription” (which was placed upside down… :-().

Absolutely, definitely worth many, many visits…

Aren

Yesterday, I received my copy of a very nice, interesting, and diverse volume in which a joint paper on finds from Safi appeared.

The article is: Maeir, A. M., Greenfield, H., Lev-Tov, J., and Horwitz, L. K. 2009. Macro- and Microscopic Aspects of Bone Tool Manufacture and Technology in the Levantine Iron Age: A 9th Century BCE Workshop from Tell es-Safi/Gath, Israel. Pp. 41–68 in Techniques and People: Anthropological Perspectives on Technology in the Archaeology of the Proto-Historic and Early Historic Periods in the Southern Levant, eds. S. A. Rosen and V. Roux. Memoires et travaux du Centre de recherche français de Jérusalem: Archéologie et Sciences de l’Antiquité et du Moyen-Âge 9. Paris: De Boccard.

The article deals with the bone tool workshop that was found a few years ago at Tell es-Safi/Gath, in the 9th century BCE destruction level in Area F (a summary of which appeared previously and was mentioned here). In the present study, we combined both a macroscopic analysis of the bones, along with a microscopic study of the tool marks, which then enabled a general insights on the technology, technological traditions, production framework and other aspects relating to these finds.

Do note that the volume contains many other interesting studies as well, covering a broad range of topics, materials, and periods. A must for anyone interested in ancient technology and its interface with society.

Aren

We are pleased that this blog - Lapis Gabinus - has been recognized as a  'Top 50 Archaeology Blog' for 2010 by the website 'OnlinePhDPrograms.com'.

Here are some nice fotos from the work this season in Area D (the lower city) that Amit just sent me:

Here is Alyssa Thomas holding, quoting Elmer Fudd, a “widdle jugwet” that she found…

Here is Krista Elliot holding a “widdle toytel” that she found (actually, it is a young Spur-thighed Tortoise [Testudo graeca] - which is quite common in Israel).

Here Amit is taking a picture of the work in progress with Jill Guttman, Krista and yours truly …

Here is a picture of Amit trying to be nice to me…

And finally, here is a great picture of a Little Owl (Athene noctua) standing on a sign post near the tell. This beautiful little bird of prey, is quite common around the tell, and can be seen during the day and night (I previously had written about this bird a few years ago on the blog).

Aren

Here is a short video clip of yours truly describing the evidence for the mid-8th century BCE earthquake destruction in Area F at Tell es-Safi/Gath, and its possible connection to the earthquake mentioned in Amos 1:1 (see earlier discussion of this here).
Note that the clip was taken with a HD video camera (thanks to Stefan Drueeke, one of our team members this year), so it is possible to view this in HD. The clip was taken at the end of the 2010 season.

Aren

Here I am in the pacific port city of Guaymas, Sinaloa. After a nice norrth Mexican arrachera steak and a margarita, I'm resting up for the final day of the drive home. Whew, that was a hectic final 2 weeks in the lab. The previous post, by Angela, describes our petrographic sherd sample, one of our three massive sampling programs, all carried out during the last 2 weeks. We also picked a couple of hundred sherds for INAA analysis, and Adrian Burke picked around 250 pieces of obsidian for XRF source analysis. Each sampling program involved numerous searching through bags and boxes, cross-checking, measuring, etc. We take sampling seriously on this project, since we want the results of our technical analyses to represent various contexts, time periods, and artifact categories as well as possible. Why the rush during these 2 weeks? We needed to complete the seriation, so that we could assign the excavated deposits to phases, so that we could pick intelligent samples to monitor change through time (and other things). The seriation was not completed till just recently (I think we were too busy to post a description of this; maybe Angela or I can do this from ASU in the next few weeks).

Also, Adrian ran around looking for obsidian sources (one trip with Brad and Akiko and I to Las Palomas; and one trip just Adrian). The above photo shows Akiko and I on the hill of obsidian at Las Palomas. Brad and Akiko worked on the technological analysis of obsidian. Brad found some time to knap some of the Las Palomas obsidian (the preliminary report is, ok for bifaces, but not for blades). We got a bunch of miscellaneous cataloging done. Charles and Maria Stapleton stopped by for a day to finalize their report on censers. Kristin Nado spent several days cleaning human bone. I picked some more charcoal samples for C14 dating. Two Mexican students from the new archaeology program at UAEM, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, in Tenancingo (Rosario Endañú and Ali Sarabia) stopped by to help us for a while, and ended up with thesis topics. AND we reboxed the gound stone (it had been stored by provenience, and now it is stored by functional type). AND we got a number of new ceramic bags sorted. AND we pulled out ALL of the Aztec black-on-orange (even from already-analyzed bags) and re-sorted it (which had to be done before we pulled the sherd samples). All in the final 2 weeks of lab work. Wow, I'm amazed that we got it all done. Well, actually we only got 1/2 of the petrographic sample pulled. Now we could say that we ran out of time, but I'd rather say that we decided on a two-stage sampling and analytical process, so that results from the first batch will affect how we sample for the second batch. I could even come up with a citation or two to support multi-stage sampling. That sounds much better, doesn't it?

This cartoon is called “Indiana Cohen”…

Aren

Since the question has been raised on how we have identified the temple as a temple, without going into too much details, here is a bit of the reasoning behind our suggestion:
1) No – we have not found a sign saying welcome to the Temple of Dagon (or Patgayah, etc.).
2) Due to the fact that this structure was not destroyed in a sudden manner, the level of preservation of the architecture and related contexts and finds, is not high (such as with the impressive preservation of the finds from the 9th cent. BCE destruction level), and important parts of the temple are not preserved.
3) Nevertheless, I believe that there is a series of indications which argue strongly for its identification as a temple. This is based, inter alia, on C. Renfrew’s (1985) 12 criteria for IDing a temple, which were very nicely employed back in 1989 by Levy and Alon in their discussion of the Gilat temple.

This includes:
a) A special building, set aside for unique functions, different from other contemporary buildings surrounding it. In this case, the building is quite different from other “non-cultic” structures in this and closely dated strata on the site (and other Philistine sites). In addition, the size of the building and impressive nature of the architecture (in comparison to other contemporary buildings around it) appears to indicate significant investment in the construction of the building.
b) Similarity to other know cultic buildings from related cultures (in this case similarity to the Qasile X temple, and the possible relationship to Aegean LH temples.
c) Located in a location that is used for cult in later phases as well – in this case it is positioned immediately below a cultic corner/structure of the St. A3 (9th cent.) level.
d) There are various “special” facilities in the structure that seem to be related to the practice of ritual (in this case – several plastered floors with finds; benches; channels; pits apparent to deposition of cultic discard; metal production area in the immediate vicinity; etc.)
e) Objects of symbolic significance were found in relationship to the proposed cultic building (in this case, fragments of cult-oriented objects, such as cult stands).

These points, and several others, all seem to indicate that the identification of the structure as a temple/cultic building is justified. Clearly, we will continue to look for additional evidence when we more fully analyze the finds from this and previous seasons, and, hopefully, in the future, when additional finds relating to this fascinating structure are revealed.

But, as should happen in good research, once we provide a more detailed publication of the related finds, we welcome debate and other opinions!

Aren

Apparently, the press release about the temple and the earthquake has reached the press, and all morning I’ve been talking to radio, TV and newspaper people

For the item in the Jerusalem Post, see here.

For Maariv (in Hebrew) see here.

here is the story on the Arutz Sheva/Israel National News website.

Just to remind you – for what I actually said – see the blog yesterday…

Aren

Mindy has put together a great slideshow, made up of pictures from the dig.  while some of the pictures you may recognize, seeing them together is really nice.  thanks to Mindy!

Here is the link:  http://www.vimeo.com/13666301

A short article on the excavations has appeared in the internet edition of Yediot Ahronot (YNET) – although as of yet, only in Hebrew.

Aren

Since we have finished in the field (today we finished all the regular fotos and tomorrow we have the aerial shots and the covering over left), I thought it would be a nice opportunity to show two of our nicer finds of the season.

The first is a working view of the structure which I believe we can now firmly claim to be a temple! The structure, which has at its center two large pillar bases, and some of the exterior walls, had various cult related objects found in its vicinity. In addition, a metallurgical working area was found right next to it. It should be noted that it is located right under a cultic “corner” of St. A3 (9th cent. BCE). Of interest of course is the similarity to the Philistine temple at Qasile, St. X, with the two pillars in the center of the structure. As noted in the past, this floor plan might be reflected in the Samson story, where the architectural imagery of an Iron Age Philistine temple with two pillars might have served as the background for narrative of Samson standing between two pillars etc. And just to make sure that this is not mis-understood: 1) This does not mean that this story occurred here (in the Bible it occurs in Gaza); 2) And this in itself is not proof that the story happened! Rather, this might reflect a cultural awareness on the part of the biblical story of what a Philistine temple of the early Iron Age might have looked like.

Here is an image of the temple:

2) The second image is of the very impressive collapse of a large brick wall that was found in Area F (near the summit of the tell). This wall, which appears to be over 20 m in length, was moved laterally about 2 meters, and then toppled. Based on the tight stratigraphic context, this can be dated to the mid-8th cent. BCE (above the 9th cent. destruction level, followed by level of wind-blown sediment, then the collapse and then 2, late 8th cent. levels). After discussing this with seismologists, it has been agreed upon that this in fact could have only have been caused by an earthquake, perhaps one of major force (ca. 8 on the Richter scale). Based on the dating of this event to the early/mid eighth century, it may very likely be evidence of the earthquake mentioned in Amos 1:1 (and perhaps also in Isaiah 6:4).

Here is a picture of the collapse. Notice how bricks were moved off the stone foundation and then toppled over as a “deck of cards”.

Now I know all the “friendlies” will now come of the woodwork and claim that I am, shock horror, a biblical archaeologist – forcing a biblical agenda on the archaeological finds.

To this I answer: 1) Yes, I am a biblical archaeologist (I’m proud of that title!), and as such, I use various ancient near eastern texts, including the Bible, to help understand the archaeological finds; 2) Not to use the biblical text when relevant, just because the “bon ton” of many is to stress the lack of historicity of the biblical text, is no more than not relating to relevant evidence and interpretive possibilities – since although the bible is a multi-layered text, composed and edited over an extended period, it does contain clear Iron Age cultural and historical references – which should and must be related to; 3) Tough…

Aren

We are in the midst of wrapping up the season, and yesterday, July 27th, the team spent the day cleaning the areas, preparing them for final fotos. As always, this is a hard day, since the tarps come down, and the brushing is done in the fully exposed areas. For some reason, whenever we do this it an extremely hot day, and so by the late morning, everyone is totally exhausted and on the verge of collapse. The difference between working under tarps and in the exposed sun is quite astounding, and whenever I think back to the time that I was a student (more than 20 years ago) when everyone worked without tarps, I find it hard to believe how we even managed to think at the end of the day…

As always, in the last cleaning some interesting this came up, and so, in Area D, as we were removing some vessels that had to be taken out, we could see that additional finds were in place – but they will have to wait for next year.

We had a few visits to the site yesterday, including a documentary team from a Christian TV channel in the US – who are making a movie about David.

In the late afternoon we started the final fotos, but due to the fact that there was no cloud cover at all, we only managed to finish part of Area A. This morning, and again this afternoon, we will continue. Tomorrow, Thursday morning, the balloon for aerial photography is coming and we will take the aerial shots of the site. Once that is finished, we will cover over the areas and/or do the architectural conservation that we have been asked to do.

Then, all that is left is to send the finds and equipment back to the various places that they are stored (in BIU or in our containers in the area of the tell), and have the final party on Thursday night (homemade pizza!).

Just for fun, here is a nice foto of a little faience figurine of the Egyptian god Bastet that we found a few weeks ago in Area A, just near what I now am convinced is a Philistine temple dating to the early Iron Age IIA

And here is a view towards the white cliffs on the northwestern side of the upper tell, with the excavations in the lower city in Area D in the foreground:

Aren

One year later, but who am I to complain?

Un anno dopo, ma io chi sono?

The View From Your Window - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Over the last few days (here and here), we have been discussing the results of an experiment we carried out 2010 in order to assess the relationship between the number of artifacts we see in pedestrian survey and the number actually on the ground.  You can read about the first two phases of these experiments here and here.

Today we consider the kinds of artifacts that we observed during total collection and the sorts of material that made up the surface matrix.  When we set up the experiment, we consciously decided not to collect artifacts via the chronotype sample as we normally do in our pedestrian resurvey.  What crueler thing could one do to the project ceramicist than overwhelm him with 1,000+ surface artifacts? (After all, the logic of sampling is to manage human resources more effectively.) Because we didn’t identify the artifacts from the total collection grid according to chronotype as we did for the survey units, we limited the kinds of comparisons we can make between the pedestrian survey sample and the total collection.

Even still, there were still some things we could do to give us a sense of the kinds of material on the ground, especially their fabric and functional attributes.  How much of the surface assemblage of a high-density unit at Koutsopetria consists of cooking ware, coarse wares, coarse wares with surface treatment like combing, and table wares (slipped or unslipped)?

To address this question in part, we sorted all pottery from each total collection unit into three basic fabric classes: semi-fine and fine ware (whether decorated or not), cooking ware, and medium-coarse and coarse wares (including amphora sherds).  The results below show the count of each of the categories in each of the total collection grid squares and give in parentheses the percentage of that fabric group in terms of the total number of potsherds in the unit.



 

Fine ware constitutes 7.6% to 15.4% of the number of potsherds in each subunit; cooking ware only 1.7% to 5.4% of the total number of potsherds; and coarse wares consistently 80.2-87.2% of the overall assemblage.  Unsurprisingly, for a predominantly Late Roman assemblage, the great majority of the sherds are coarse, a small percentage are fine, and tiny percentage are cooking.  The disparity between coarse wares, on the one hand, and fine and cooking wares on the other would have been even greater had we compared weight instead of count, since most fine and cooking ware sherds are thin-walled and small.

We also counted the “parts” of the vessel according to the standard ceramicist categories of rims, bases, handles, shoulders / necks, and body sherds.  Rims represented 2.9-7% of the total sherd count, bases less than 2.2%, handles from 2.2 to 5.3%, neck and shoulders typically less than a percent. Body sherds typically represent over 90% of the surface assemblage.

Finally, we tabulated the data in a slightly different way, breaking down the surface assemblage for each subunit by both fabric group and part.  The results shown in the table below suggest that this Late Roman assemblage includes for fine wares mainly body sherds (73.8% of fine wares) and rims (19.5%), for cooking ware mainly body sherds (84.5% of cooking wares) and handles (6.9%), and for coarse ware mainly body sherds (92.9% of coarse wares).  

Coarse ware body sherds make up 79.5% (n=1474) of the total number of sherds (n=1,854) counted for all 4 subunits.  By contrast, fine ware rims make up 2.2% of the total pottery assemblage and cooking ware rims form only .11% of the total pottery assemblage!!!  The 71 fragments of slipped and glazed fine ware (i.e., not including fine ware lacking clear glazing or slip) represent only 3.8% of the total number of potsherds counted (n=1854).  These few black glazed Classical-Hellenistic sherds and red slipped Roman-Late Roman sherds are the typical objects used to provide most of the chronological information for dating archaeological sites but they represent less than 4% of our surface assemblage of this unit at Koutsopetria.

Finally, it is worth asking what percentage of coarse body sherds have surface treatments and decorations like grooving, combing, and ridging — the kinds of surface treatments that usually lead to them being collected in most regional surveys.  To address this question, we counted the coarse sherds for two of the subunits (G1 & G15) with spiral grooving, combing, or wheel ridging.  The 66 sherds represent 12.5% of the 526 coarse body sherds from those subunits and 9.8% of 672 total sherds from those units.  These “diagnostic body sherds” then are more visible than glazed and slipped fine ware but still quite unrepresentative of the surface pottery as a whole.

I suppose our next steps with the results of these experiments are to compare them with 1) the chronotype sample from the broader survey, and 2) the data from subsurface excavated deposits.  I think the interesting results of the experiment certainly justified the time it took to totally collect the subunits and will allow us to understand how close our chronotype sample is to the population of ceramic artifacts on the ground.

Last Thursday, we introduced the survey experiment that PKAP conducted in June 2010 to assess the relationship between the number of artifacts that we see when we walk across a survey unit and the number of artifacts actually on the ground.  In other words, we wanted to assess how effective our survey methods are in actually assessing what was on the ground.  On Thursday, we compared the artifact densities detected by the project’s untrained student fieldwalkers to those counted by trained senior staff members.  Today we will discuss the second phase in our 2010 experiment, an assessment of the total population of all artifacts on the surface of select subunits.  This part of the experiment was designed to give us a total count of all surface artifacts that can be compared with the artifact counts reported in yesterday’s discussion.

We began by selecting four 10 x 10 m subunits based on the densities of the 10 x 10 m artifact densities counted by the experienced senior staff members.  As with past experiments (published in the RDAC 2007), we selected our 4 subunits to represent the range of density variation: the lowest density quartile (G15), highest density quartile (G9), and two middle quartiles (G1 and G6).  Each total subunit was 10 x 10 m, representing 1/16 (6.25%) of the 1,600 sq m survey unit.

To vacuum a high-density unit, you really have to spend a lot of time picking individual artifacts off the ground.  For each of our units, students Andrew, Zane, Valerie, and Luke, and I  walked very slowly in adjacent passes across each selected square gathering together in 1 or 2 corners of the unit all the artifacts present.  An initial pass was never enough for we observed how many artifacts we missed initially.  Usually two additional passes were necessary to vacuum the surface completely, and each pass involved either crawling on hands and knees, or bending so that you had a closer view of the ground.  I have to admit that my back and neck got sore after a while of this.

The results of this “total collection”, shown below, are interesting to compare with the “pedestrian survey counts” discussed yesterday.  You have to keep in mind with the comparison that the pedestrian counts represent a 20% sample of each subunit while the total collection counts represent a 100% sample.  You have to multiply the pedestrian count by a factor of 5 to estimate the “total putative count” (i.e., an estimation of what the total count would be for 100% of the unit) for the pedestrian-walked unit.

The first outlined set of grid units below shows the total counts from each of the total collection units.

The second set of grids compares the total collection counts with the pedestrian survey counts in parentheses (multiplied by 5 to create the 100% putative sample).  

The third shows the factor difference between these two types of counts.  

Here is where it gets even more interesting.  We can estimate that the 940 artifacts experienced fieldwalkers counted through pedestrian survey across the entire unit (i.e., the pedestrian counts from 4 walker swaths) would produce a putative pedestrian survey count (factoring for the 20% sample) of 4,700 artifacts.  In other words, had we walked 100% of the unit, we would have counted about 4,700 artifacts.  Now, if total collection (vacuuming) produces on average 2.96 times the number of artifacts as pedestrian survey, we can estimate that there were 13,212 artifacts actually on the surface of the ground.  To provide some perspective, we collected and brought back to the museum 8,788 total artifacts from the 252 grid squares of Koutsopetria and 19,657 total artifacts from our survey of the entire Pyla-Koutsopetria area.  A single survey unit at Koutsopetria totally collected would produce 1.5 times the number of artifacts sampled from all 252 grid squares at Koutsopetria and .67 of the total artifacts sampled across the entire Pyla area.  If we were to apply the same multipliers to all 252 forty x forty meter grid squares, i.e., the main part of the site of Koutsopetria, the total artifact count of 19,182 would produce a putative total count of 95,910.  Our estimated total population of artifacts (based on the 2.96 factor) is at least 284,894 (and in reality, poor visibility in many units often limited our sample to 50% of the ground).  This is *why* sampling is important!

As for TIME, total collection requires a huge commitment.  Although we (for clarification here, "we" means David - Bill) initially considered surveying all 16 subunits, i.e., an entire 40 x 40 m unit, this proved unrealistic given the time it took for 5 individuals to vacuum a single subunit: 1.5 hours each for G1 and G6, 2 hours for G9, and 1 hour for G15.  Using the total time it took to hoover 25% of the grid square (6 hours) as an index for hoovering this unit, we estimate that 5 individuals could hoover a high-density 40 x 40 m unit in about 24 work hours or well over 100 work hours!  If the typical survey work day is 6 hours long (say, 6AM-noon), it would require 4 full days of a team collecting artifacts from the surface.  Truly this would be an incredibly time intensive task!  By contrast, sampling 20% of the unit through pedestrian survey takes about 20-30 minutes.  In this perspective, total collection requires 72 times more time than pedestrian survey collection!

One final comparative result is interesting to note here.  The “other” category increases dramatically through total collection, including numerous pieces of ancient glass (9), lithic stone artifacts (7), shells (24), slabs (13), gypsum (141), ceramic bricks (2), stone vessel (1), marble revetment (3), and a ceramic tessera or gaming piece.  Although total collection was time intensive, this sort of qualitative information is quite useful in filling out our picture of the overall survey unit and indicates something of the functional variability within each survey unit.

Tomorrow, we will conclude our discussion of experiments with an overview of ceramic fabric categories.  Stay tuned!

 

Today we worked in all areas, even though the teams were a bit smaller. Most of the areas were cleaning and drawing sections, but some excavation was still carried out.

In Area D, as they Amit and Joe and their team were cleaning, they came upon some more finds, including two concentrations of astragali bones, a loomweight and several other finds. Clearly, we will not finish all the work in the squares and we will have to return next season again (which we knew in any case…).

In Area E, a very nice EB III bowl was excavated, of a type that we had not yet uncovered in previous contexts.

In Area A, the work was all cleaning, but in Area F, they have some very nice finds, including additional sections of the MB and possibly EB fortifications, a nice jar still on situ, more parts of the very interesting plastered LB installation, and other things.

Towards the end of the day, most areas took down the tarps, and by tomorrow, all areas will be without tarps.

Also, today was Jeff Chadwick’s birthday, and Yossi Baruchi, who used to work in Area F, brought him a cake to celebrate!

Here are some nice fotos:
This one shows a group of us all happy looking at a newly discovered chalice (taken in the 2nd week):

The second one is a nice group foto of the team – taken last Friday:

Tomorrow we continue cleaning and as today, I’ll try to have the streaming video up and running for the first 2 hours or so of the dig.

Aren

We are now starting our 4th and final week of the season, and the team has gone down to about 70 people.
On Friday, we continued work in the different areas and since it was a short day (we work till 11 am) there was not much new in the various areas.
Tomorrow, we really have a last day of digging, and from then, in basically all areas, we start cleaning a preparing for final fotos – which will be on Wednesday and Thursday (aerial fotos from the balloon on early Thursday morning). After that, we cover over the areas and do the required conservation and then season will be over.

As almost in all seasons, there are good chances that some interesting finds will come out in the last days – so we have to be ready for the surprises!

Tomorrow evening we were invited by the head of the Yoav Regional Council (the local regional council) – Rani Trienin, to a classical music concert at the Beth Guvrin caves. There will be chamber music (Vivaldi and others) and it should be a lot of fun – and very pretty.

Tomorrow, I will try to set up the internet camera in the field, but since we won’t have a generator in the field this week, it will probably work for only an hour or two in the morning.

Have a great week!

Aren

This year's press conference coverage.

Now that we have a basic handle on the seriation, we are picking samples of sherds from each phase to export for thin-sectioning and petrographic analysis. This analysis, which will be done by Dr. Jennifer Meanwell, will hopefully tell us two things. First, it will let us know whether the variation we think we are seeing in ceramic pastes is real at a structural level. Second, we should be able to look at changes in the frequencies of the different paste types (provided that they exist!) over time, which could relate to changing patterns of trade.
Thin-sectioning and petrographic analysis is both expensive and time consuming, so we have developed a rather elaborated sampling strategy in an effort to get a representative sample of each phase. Julie Novic and I are taking rims sherds only, dividing them into categories based on vessel types (bowls, jars, and other vessels), and then dividing each of those categories into two groups, based on paste. (This has been a good opportunity for Julie to teach me how to recognize the various paste groups, but I clearly have a ways to go!) I then get a list of randomly generated numbers and use those to pick sherds from each of the six stratified groups. So far the random selections seem to be a pretty good representation of their parent groups. Since we also have a couple of specific ceramic types that we’re interested in, I go and pull out examples of them if they weren’t chosen during the randomized selection process.
Because we are sampling by phase, our sampling unit is the stratigraphic layer, rather than the excavated lot, which is how our material is stored. Since the former usually consists of several of the latter, we have to have several different lots open at the same time, which means that we are labeling every rim sherd to avoid confusion. The practical result is that all the ceramics tables in the lab are covered with neat lines of sherds, and we are starting to eye the patches of open space on the lithics table enviously!

The photos show Julie with her trusty pliers for checking paste types, and a portion of the bowl rims from a single group.

Today we did preservation work at Tel Burna – We’ll tell you all about it once I get the pictures Amit took.

In the meantime, Chris and Mindy each updated their blogs with Burna pictures and information.  here are the links:

http://seekingahomeland.blogspot.com/

http://mmckinny.blogspot.com/2010/07/liberated-hard-drive-burna-labeling.html

Definitely worth checking out.  Enjoy.

Angela and I have isolated three ceramic phases for Calixtlahuaca through our seriation work. We'll post something soon on the new chronology. Here I want to talk about some linguistic research I've been doing. Our earliest period covers the Middle Postclassic period (ca. AD 1100-1300, but don't quote me yet), and the other two correspond to the Late Postclassic period. We have decided to use indigenous terms in the three local Oto-Pamean languages to name these phases. It is almost certain that the original builders and residents of Calixtlahuaca spoke one (or more) of these languages: Otomi, Mazahua, and Matlatzinca (see my previous post on this issue). The use of native terms for our time periods is one way of showing respect for the peoples of these groups. All three languages are still spoken today.

For the earliest phase, we will use the term "Dongu," which is an Otomi term for ancient or old house. This seems appropriate for the earliest occupation period at the site. Dongu is also a placename in the Otomi region in the north-western State of Mexico. The photo above was taken at the tiny hamlet of Dongu, located between the town of Acambay and the archaeological site of Huamango (thanks to Emily Root-Garey for taking the photo during our trip to Huamango a week ago).

René García Castro suggested to me yesterday that Dongu has another sense in Otomi native histories: it may refer to ancestral locations of the Otomi ruling families or ruling "houses" of the Postclassic period. This would make the term even more appropriate for Calixtlahuaca, the Middle- and Late-Postclassic capital of the Toluca Valley.


Speaking of Otomi toponyms, I just read an interesting new article on the topic (Lastra 2008). Two place names jumped out at me:


(1) Calixtlahuaca:  n-dahni,  "viento, pega el aire." This toponym was collected in 2002 from San Andrés Cuexcontitlán (just north of Toluca, and northeast of Calixtlahuaca). Could this be a clue to the ancient name of the city? As I started to get excited about this, it occurred to me that this could be merely a modern reference to the archaeological site, where it is well known that the main temple was dedicated to the wind god, Ehecatl. Interesting, though.....

(2) Huamango: karendó, gran escalera de piedra. This was also collected in 2002, in the town of Acambay (heading south from Huamango, past Dongu). This is another appropriate-sounding toponym. For information on the site of Huamango, see my previous post.


Lastra, Yolanda
    2008    Topónimos otmíes. Estudios de Cultura Otopame 6:381-314.


** PS - I apologize to the linguists out there for not including the proper diacritics for these Otomi words. Not only am I a linguistically-challenged researcher, but my computer cannot handle the necessary symbols and diacritics needed to properly render Otopamean terms.

While Brad, Adrian, Akiko, and I were driving around the wooded mountains northeast of Toluca, looking for an obsidian source (which we found! more on this later, I hope), we stopped in at the "Centro Ceremonial Otomi." This is one of the more bizarre built environments I have ever experienced. It is a huge monumental complex built of stone, located in the mountains northeast of Toluca (in the municipio of Temoaya) with a beautiful view down into the Toluca Valley.

The Centro was built in 1980, by Jorge Jiménez Cantú, governor of the State of Mexico. Its purpose was supposedly to provide a tribute to the Otomi peoples of the state. The design seems to have nothing to do with Otomi culture or history, from the pictorial mosaics to the architectural arrangement and elements To me, it looks like the modernist architectural monuments built by 20th century authoritarian regimes (huge monuments that dwarf human visitors, abstract decoration, large open area for ceremony, etc.).


This complex was  used in the James Bond flick "License to Kill" as the "Olympatec Meditation Institute" (see photo below).

Residents of Toluca said that at one time there was a museum featuring Otomi culture at the monument, but all we saw was a big empty room. There is a small market with traditional crafts. We didn't see much evidence of Otomi activity at the site, although the Wikipedia entry on Temoaya says that Otomi ceremonies are held regularly at the Centro.

The Centro Ceremonial Otomi is open to tourists, and it houses dormitories for athletes who come to train at the high altitude (more than 3,000 meters ASL).

If I were governor and wanted to do something for the Otomi residents of the state, I'd spend my money on education, health, and jobs. If you want to know more about the Otomi, see some of these sources:

Carrasco, Pedro  (1950)  Los Otomíes: cultura e historia prehispánica de los pueblos mesoamericanos de habla otomiana. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City.

Fournier García, Patricia  (2007)  Los Hñähñü del Valle de Mezquital: maguey, pulque y alfarería. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

Galinier, Jacques  (1987)  Pueblos de la Sierra Madre: Ethnografía de la comunidad otomí. INI, CEMCA (Centre d'études mexicaines et centraméricaines), Mexico City.

García Castro, René (editor)  (1999)  Códice Xiquipilco-Temoaya y títulos de tierras otomíes: edición facsimilar. El Colegio Mexiquense, Toluca.

Lagarriga Attias, Isabel and Juan Manuel Sandoval Palacios  (1978)  Otomies del norte del Estado de México: una contribución al estudio de la marginalidad. Serie de Antropología Social. Gobierno del Estado de México, Toluca.

Lastra de Suárez, Yolanda  (2006)  El Códice Huichapan (Compact Disk). Serie Códices de México vol. 4. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

Lastra de Suárez, Yolanda  (2006)  Los otomies: su lengua y su historia. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Mexico City.

Muñoz Samayoa, Fernando and Irma Ramírez González  (2008)  Artesanías mazahuas y otomíes en el Estado de México. In Homenaje a Noemí Quezada: VI Coloquio Internacional sobre Otopames, edited by Verónica Kugel and Ana María Salazar, pp. 335-348. Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional de México, Mexico City.

Wright Carr, David Charles  (2005)  Lengua, cultura e historia de los otomíes. Arqueología Mexicana 13(73):26-29.

Wright Carr, David Charles  (2008)  La sociedad prehispánica en las lenguas Náhuatl y Otomí. Acta Universitaria (Universidad de Guanajuato) 18(especial):15-23.

Today we had a nice day in all areas with many interesting finds. Among others, in Area A we found a small faience amulet with an Egyptian inscription; the “temple” is becoming more and more clear and we apparently have a nice section of the central floor of this structure.
In Area F the 8th cent. destruction level is really impressive; there may be an additional section of the EB fortification under the MB city wall; and additional sections of the Iron Age sequence is coming out.
In Area D, more and more finds have been uncovered from the 9th cent. BCE destruction level, including several more complete vessels (including a very nice chalice), a possible section of “plaster” with possible painted decoration.

In an non-dig related aspect, we were just in the middle of the story of the missing soldier, and all day long we had a large amount of police and army units crisscrossing the area and in fact, we had a hard time getting to the tell and getting out again. I do hope that we will be able to get to the tell tomorrow…

This evening, we had a great end of the week party, and we said goodbye to over 40 people who are leaving.

Aren

When I announced my plans to conduct a survey experiment where we would “vacuum” an entire 40 x 40 m unit, Dimitri and Bill both laughed and told me that I had to try it simply for its absurdity.  The 40 x 40 m survey unit was our standard size for the 252 units that we laid out across the Koutsopetria plain .  As far as survey units go, 40 x 40 m (or 1,600 square meters) is a relatively small unit compared to that typically employed by those who conduct distributional survey.  At the same time, when on the group, 40 meters is still vast when compared to the dimension of most lived space.  After all, a 40 x 40 meter unit is over 130 square feet on a side and over 17,000 square feet which makes a single survey unit much larger than even the most over-sized suburban McMansions.  The reason that my suggestion was humorous, however, had to do with the method I proposed for collecting artifacts.  In our typical pedestrian survey, we only looked at 20% of the surface of the unit (for a more reasonable and suburban 3,400 square feet) and only collected each unique artifact from what we saw on the surface.  My proposal was more extreme: get down on our hands and knees and completely “vaccum” (or “hoover”) all the artifacts from 100% of the unit to produce an exhaustive (and exhausting!) total collection rather than a quick 20% sample.

Why?  I had the suspicion that the amount of artifacts we see when we walk across the unit is but a fraction of the total number of artifacts actually on the ground.  The suspicion was based on experiments conducted in 2004 & 2006 where we ‘vacuumed’ artifacts from a 5% sample of our 40 x 40 m units, producing on average artifact counts that were 4 times greater than that produced through our 20% sample using pedestrian survey.  We also proved through these experiments that the substantially larger number of artifacts did not really contribute much new chronological or functional information that warranted the additional investments of time and energy.  We published a report on those experiments in an article by the authors in the Report of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus 2007.  However, we were aware of the substantial fluctuations of artifacts within 40 x 40 m units and the risk of a 5% sample (80 sq m) being unrepresentative of the unit as a whole (1600 sq m).  The point of our 2010 experiments, then, was to test the results with a much more robust sample.  While I initially wanted to vacuum 100% of the unit, time constraints prohibited me to vacuuming 25% of the unit.  Even still, 25% of the unit is 5 times greater than what we sampled in 2004 and 2006.

Due to the limited time for fieldwork this season (and time constraints were one of the reasons that we sampled the units to begin with!), we could only resurvey a single unit placed in the highest-density area immediately northeast of the excavated apse of the early Christian basilica.  We picked this unit to overlap with our very first Discovery Unit, a grid square of 40 x 40 m surveyed in 2004 northeast of the enclosed excavated part of the site of Koutsopetria.  We divided the 40 x 40 unit into sixteen 10 x 10 m subunits, each representing 6.25% of the overall unit area (1,600 sq m).  The grid squares have been given the prefix of G followed by a number between 1-16, as the following plan shows.

In our interest in comparing artifact counts noted during pedestrian survey—where a surveyor walks across the unit examining a 2 m wide swath and counting all pottery, tile, lithics, and other artifact types—with the total population of artifacts actually on the surface, we implemented two stages to the experiments.  The first stage (pedestrian survey) we will report on today.

We began by having four fieldwalkers walk across the unit, recording all artifacts visible in their swath, giving a 20% sample of every 10 m of space across a 40 m transect.  We collected ‘sub-tract’ artifact counts every 10 meters to produce density figures for each of the subunits (G1-G16) and assess the fluctuating density of pottery, tile, and lithic artifacts within a survey unit.

We collected the data for pedestrian survey three times.  The results of these three separate pedestrian survey exercises are shown in the four figures below.  The numbers represent artifact counts of each type (pottery, tile, other, and total), and the gray shaded columns with orange numbers represent the total artifact count for the swath per fieldwalker.  

The first time (see figure 1.1 below) a group of untrained students walked the units—Andrew, Luke, Valerie, and Zane—who who had only seen artifacts at the museum and not in their "natural" (or better, archaeological) contexts.



A steady light rain the following day provided the chance for these same students to rewalk the unit a second time (see figure 1.2 below) with artifacts slightly more visible as a result of the washing of the dust.

Finally, a group of experienced fieldwalkers—David Pettegrew (DKP), Dimitri Nakassis (DN), and Bill Caraher (WRC) —walked the unit and counted artifacts (see figure 1.3).

Hence, the variables in these three episodes of pedestrian survey were experience, and, to a lesser extent, the amount of dust and dirt obscuring the surface of the pottery.  Otherwise, between episodes environmental factors were constant, as were methodological factors and figure 1.4 shows the average of all the counts produced.

We walked these units on June 9 and 10 and each took between 15 minutes and half an hour.

Comparing simply the total artifact counts (the bottom right grid within each of the outlined figures), it is interesting to note that the rain appears not to have made a difference overall in density counts between units [1.1] and [1.2].  Although one student count went up significantly after the rain (LHM: 118  243), and another student count was slightly greater (AMH: 200  241), VAW’s total counts were essentially unchanged (335 to 334), while ZRB’s total counts actually declined (238).

As far as the other variable (experience) goes, there were some significant disparities between experienced walkers and inexperienced walkers as evident in counts for particular grid squares (compare G1 for [1.1] and [1.3]).  Otherwise, the overall artifact counts were comparable for the units: the lowest-density and highest-density subunits occurred between all three walking episodes.  If we look at total artifact counts for each unit as a whole, students counted 942 artifacts in [1.1] and 1056 artifacts in [1.2] while experienced walkers counted 940 artifacts in [1.3].  That is remarkably close!  

We noticed one major difference, however, in the “other” category, which includes all artifacts besides pottery and tile: marble revetment, gypsum, shell, ancient glass, and ground stone agricultural implements.  The experienced field walkers noted 2-4 times the number of other artifacts in [1.3] than inexperienced fieldwalkers in [1.1] and [1.2].  An experienced walker counted 4 lithic artifacts (chipped stone & ground stone) in G3 and G7 that an inexperienced walker missed.

This week, we saw the first article dealing with the archaeological project at Tel Burna see light. The article was published in The Leiden Journal of Pottery Studies, Volume 25, by Joe Uziel, David Ben-Shlomo, David Ilan, Itzhaq Shai and Aren Maeir. It discusses the way in which pottery was made at three different sites: Tel Nagila, Tell es-Safi and Tel Burna. In short, we visually examined the Middle Bronze Age pottery from the sites, and using petrography, and found that their seems to be a general cultural tradition in the ways in which pots were formed, yet not in the clay recipes, which vary from site to site.

We hope that this is one of many articles that will appear in both scientific journals and more widely read forums!

Today we were back excavating full strength after the 9th of Av fast, and work was carried out in all areas.
In Area A, we now have very clear architecture of the apparent temple, with two pillars in the center and two well-built walls on the eastern and northern sides, as well as some features within. Louise and her team are slowly uncovering various early Iron I floor levels, and among other finds found a fragment of an animal figurine.
Jill and her team are working in the 9th cent destruction level, and uncovered what appears to be a dead animal in the destruction.

In Area E, they have almost finished removing the EB donkey, which seems to have been placed in a pit, partially tied.

In Area D, they continue to excavate fantastic finds from the 9th cent. destruction level.

In Area F, Jeff and his team are working on various periods, including dramatic evidence of the brick collapse of the apparent 8th cent earthquake, LB levels, and various early Iron I features.

In addition, this evening we heard a very nice lecture by Prof. Daniel Masters, co-director of the Ashkelon excavations, on some of the very interesting results of the Ashkelon excavations.

Tomorrow, the video feed will be in Area D from 6 am.

Aren

In 2010 the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project was above all the year of the potsherd.  Excavations generate a lot of material.  Our thirteen Excavation Units in 2008 and 2009 generated pottery at rates faster than our poor ceramicist, Scott Moore, could read and pottery began to pile up at the museum while we were finishing our work.  We promised Scott that 2010 would be different and we were fully committed to getting the material read.  In fact to our surprise, some bureaucratic snafus getting our permits to do fieldwork prevented the collection of additional materials, and allowed us to devote more time to processing the material collected in past seasons.  So rather than venturing out into the field, we spent each mornings out at the museum processing hundreds of bags of ceramic artifacts and our afternoons processing digital data from previous years.  The result of all this is that we caught up.

Now to the untrained eye, ceramic processing looks like a bunch of people doing just one or two different tasks.  If you had come to Larnaka and peeked into our work space, you might only discern a couple of obviously different activities say, washing vs. analysis.  But the team was conducting a wide range of different tasks related to the finds.  The most obvious and important preliminary activity involved washing artifacts.  There were a slew of them to wash, 147 bags to be exact, each bag containing dozens, sometimes hundreds of artifacts.  Student enthusiasm for washing artifacts declined over a period of a week and a half but that is to be expected.

Dallas Deforest photographed every catalogued artifact at a resolution high enough to be published.  In 2010, Dallas took over 1,200 digital photos of our catalogued artifacts to join the 3,100 artifacts taken in previous years.  Two of our PKAP veterans from 2009, Becky Savaria and Melissa Hogan, began the process of labeling these photos.  In late June, David spent about 10 additional hours getting all the photos in order.  Now we have an archive of 4,300 digital photos of the 700+ catalogued artifacts and uncatalogued artifacts.

Building 13 was the central hub of ceramic analysis.  Our co-director and golden child, Scott Moore, spent 3 weeks analyzing the ceramics from excavations including those occurring in the 1990s at the site of Koutsopetria and our more recent ones at Koutsopetria and Vigla.  Scott analyzed the pottery in two different ways.  First, he “scanned” less significant contexts from stratigraphically unimportant matrices like the plowzone, the kinds of contexts where reading pottery in great detail is not all that beneficial.  “Scanning” involves 1) sorting pottery into broad categories based on fabric groups (e.g., fine ware, cooking / kitchen ware, and coarse ware); 2) setting aside the most distinct and diagnostic artifacts; 3) making basic observations about the context as a whole on a scanned unit form; and 4) analyzing in greater detail the most diagnostic pottery.  Indeed, scanning is common in Mediterranean urban excavations where excavations might easily produce hundreds of thousands of artifacts (or millions).  The more important contexts Scott read more thoroughly by identifying every artifact with a specific chronotype.  A chronotype is simply a specific, limited identifier for known groups of pottery that combines date, potential functions, shape, and appearance.  The point is that Scott read (and this is an estimate) 200 contexts while in Cyprus this year.

The other activities going on in Building 13 were data management (Bill), illustration (Becky Savaria, Melissa Hogan) and artifact cataloguing.  David, Dimitri, and several students wrote more detailed catalog entries for particularly significant finds from the survey and excavation.  In 2007, we completed a formal catalogue of the most significant artifacts from our archaeological survey.  This year, we completed the catalogue of artifacts recovered in the two years of excavated soundings.  The combined total of catalogued artifacts now exceeds 700.  While it is unlikely that we'll be able to publish a catalogue of 700 different artifacts, we plan to eventually release this complete catalog in a digital form and publish on paper a smaller number of "greatest hits".

We recorded the following information for each artifact in our catalogue.

Artifact Number:

Dimensions:

Munsell:

Description Fabric:

Description Shape:

Description Decoration:

_______________________________

Besides this work, we did a variety of more specialized work.  Sarah Lepinski and Bill completed the documentation of the architectural and painted plaster from the excavated area at Koutsopetria producing a complete catalogue of material for publication.  Sarah's pain-staking examination of the plaster from the excavated area has revealed not only several phases of reconstruction and redecoration that remained obscure in the stratigraphic record, but also import clues about the architecture and even construction techniques used in the building.  Nearby, several students completed a special project analyzing artifacts from the plowzone which we plan to report on later in the week.

In sum, at the end of the 2010 season, we can offer this summary of the quantity of artifacts processed by team PKAP between 2003 and 2010:

Total number of units processed (from both the survey and the excavation): 711.  Each unit represents a discrete archaeological context either in terms of stratigraphy, method, or horizontal space in the survey area.

PKAP Pottery Processing by the Numbers

Batches of artifacts processed: 12,900.  Scott divides the pottery from each unit into batches of similar types of artifacts based on the artifact's fabric, the part of the vessel represented, and the chronotype.  Over the past 8 years Scott has processed slightly fewer 13,000 batches.

Total number of artifacts processed: 37, 141.  Each batch has an average of 2.9 artifacts.

Total weight of artifacts processed: 1,482.1 kg or 3,208.7 lbs or over 1.5 tons of pottery.

Artifact Photos Taken: 5,500

Artifacts Catalogued: 727

 

Here is a nice picture of the Australian team, with the Australian ambassador and yours truly.

Aren

Here is a picture (courtesy of Richard Wiskin) of an intimate moment between me and the Australian team’s mascot – skippy, the blowup kangaroo!

Aren

Today was the 9th of Av, which is a fast day for observant jews, so some of the team did not excavate today. Although I was fasting I went to the tell and walked around, but by the end of the day I was quite exhausted…

A few updated of things from today and the last few days:
On Sunday, we visited the Kh. Qeiyafa excavations, and Yosi Garfinkel (HU) showed us around the site. They have some very interesting additional finds, which clearly support the 11th/10th cent. dating for the use of the Iron Age fort. While the rumours that they had fantastic ground breaking finds were not confirmed, perhaps we were not shown all the finds…?

Yesterday, July 19th, we had nice day, although right now (perhaps due to the fast) I can’t recall anything special.

Today though, we had a few interesting things:
1) In Area A, we uncovered some bones in situ in the destruction level, which at first we thought might be human. In the end, they turned out to be animal bones, probably burnt in the 9th cent. destruction. Liora Horwitz (project zooarchaeologists) and Marian Faerman (project physical anthropologists), both from Hebrew University, came down to the site, and after close examination, it was clear that these were animal bones. Nevertheless, the bones were carefully excavated and in fact, we took precautions and excavated them in “sterile” conditions, so that they can be studied, perhaps, for ancient DNA.
Here you can see the excavation of the bones, with Yair and Marian wearing the special suits.

Down in Area D, there were a few iteresing finds, including several additional complete or restorable jars from the 9th century destruction level, incluing a bowl full of pig bones and an additional petalled chalice.

In Area F, we have some new developments. In Mike’s square in the slope between upper and lower F, he seems to be getting to LB levels, which are much higher than the LB levels in lower F. If so, we have a good chance of catching earlier LB levels (LB I, LB IIA [Shuwaradatas city?]) in this area – up until now, we have only reached late LB levels on the tell.
In addition, in Eric’s area, we have some nice Iron I walls, and additional sections of the massive MB city wall.

Finally, today we started with the live video feed from the dig. Since it was the first try, we had some breaks here and there. Today it had been set up in Area D, and tomorrow I will try to set it up in Area A. Look for this between 6am and 12:4 am tomorrow morning (the link is on the BIU home page).

Here is a foto of the video filming with Area D in the background.

Aren

Perhaps the greatest misimpression about archaeology today is that it mainly consists in digging holes in the ground.  Excavation is the perhaps the most glorious and maybe even the most exciting, component of archaeological work (provided you find something!), but it’s still only a tiny part of the pie.  As you may have gathered from this blog, our own work rarely involves traditional excavation.  In the field, we’ve devoted lots of time to pedestrian survey, geophysical prospection, aerial photography, illustrating, and recording notes—and lots of time to processing all those artifacts, i.e., washing, analyzing, cataloguing, photographing.  Beyond the field season, we spend most of our time processing data, reading, writing, and publishing their finds, and preparing for the next field season.  Students who join us every summer in Cyprus for 3-4 weeks may forget that most of our work goes on for months after Cyprus.  And the work is harder, not easier.

This morning we mailed a copy of our 2010 final report to the Cyprus Department of Antiquities.  If the press release posted yesterday represents a kind of quick and dirty abstract of our work in the Pyla area, the annual final report provides in excruciating detail a full outline of our work.  Anyone who does archaeological work has got to produce these things, and they’re not fun to write.  This year’s report with contributions by Scott, Bill, David, and Sarah Lepinski, was about typical in numbering 77 single-spaced pages.  They have been longer (100 pages) but they’re rarely shorter.  Why so long?  What we do is complicated and has to be explained in enough detail that it makes sense to anyone reading the report in the future.  We tend to provide more detail in our reports than we need for our articles which does make it easier at a later point to create papers about our work.

As we’ve discussed here and here, the point of our 2010 field season was completing the analysis of artifacts from our 2008-2009 excavations of the sites of Koutsopetria and Vigla.  We also anticipated being able to conduct additional fieldwork at these sites.  As it turned out, for reasons we’ve explained elsewhere, we were unable to excavate and we received permission only at the 11th hour for our other fieldwork activities.

Even still, as we outlined in our final report, we’re not disappointed and did manage to accomplish the following tasks:

1. We finished a preliminary “read” of all the artifacts collected during intensive survey (2003-2007) and excavation (2008-2009), cataloguing in greater detail about 300 finds from survey and excavation.

2. We finished documenting and illustrating the area excavated by Maria Hadjicosti. We have posted about that here and here.

3. We took low-altitude blimp photographs of the excavated area and the landscape. We have already posted the results of that—including the disastrous flight of …. — here and here.

4. We continued documenting subsurface remains using ground penetrating radar.

5. We conducted limited resurvey of ridges to the west of Koutsopetria.

6. We conducted experiments designed to calibrate the results of the intensive survey in the study area.

Such activities lack the dazzle of opening another excavation unit (as exciting as that can be) but, we would argue, prove more important in the long run for our understanding of the site and create a solid foundation for the final publication of our fieldwork now in preparation.

In the next few days we will be providing some behind-the-scenes glimpses of the kinds of post-processing work that we have been doing in the month since our field season ended.  Since we have already written about #s 2-3 elsewhere, we will focus our comments on #s 1, and 4-6.  Enjoy.

Yesterday, I recieved a copy of the most recent issue of the Leiden Journal of Pottery Studies. In it, there is an article by some of the Safi team members which is of interest.

Here are the details:
J. Uziel D. Ben-Shlomo, D. Ila, I. Shai, and A. M. Maeir. 2009.
Middle Bronze Age II pottery production in the western Shephelah: Comparing methods from Tel Nagila, Tell es-Safi/Gath and Tel Burna. LJPS 25: 141-162.

I don’t yet have a pdf, so I can’t send out copies.

Check the article out!

Aren

Today, finally, we received the equipment for the live video broadcast from the dig!
A link from which you can watch the feed can be found on the Bar-Ilan University homepage where there is a banner that links to the feed.

The direct URL for the feed is:
http://media.motion-stream.com/biulive

Although we won’t be broadcasting throughout the day, I suggest that you check this out once in awhile (particularly between 6am and 12 am in the morning and again in the mid-afternoon on weekdays (Israel time).

Aren

Last night, I received some great news regarding grants for research.

The Israel Science Founation (ISF) published the lists of those who were awarded research grants for the coming years – and it seems that members of our team hit the jackpot!

In addition the yours truly, who received a large 3 year grant to work on the Iron Age IIB finds from Safi, Steve Weiner was awarded a grant in his “other” field (biomineralization) and Elisabetta Boaretto was given a grant on the dating of the Natufian culture!

This is great news for all, since these grants serve as the basic funding for important aspects of all of our work, and without them, it is hard “to breathe”. Needless to say, additional funding is still required and we can but hope that additional grant requests that have been submitted will be met with similar success.

Without a doubt, the Safi team wins the prize for the most ISF grants awarded to the members of an archaeological team for 2010!

Way to go!!!

Aren

Friday, July 16, 2010, was a busy day, not only for archaeological aspects. In addition to excavation finds, we had a swarm of visitors to the site.

But first to some of the archaeology:
In Area A, among the finds of note on Friday was a small, but very nice bone handle from Jill’s area, and a decorated jar, which was actually excavated partially by the Australian ambassador (see below).
Here is a picture of the jar after it was fully uncovered:

In Area D, additional vessels from the 9th cent. destruction level continue to “pop” up.
In Area F, there were several important finds. Ely Levine continues to uncover the collapsed bricks of the possible 8th cent. earthquake, and there is now what appears to be more evidence of the earthquake (bricks apparently lying in a “wavy”, undulating position). Mike and Zach’s teams have begun uncovering clear evidence of stratified deposits in the two squares that connect the upper and lower parts of Area F (various phases of the Iron Age), while Eric’s team (including the CBC group – led by Mark Jenkins) have uncovered an additional section of the MB fortification wall (known already from previous seasons), but with an apparent floor on the inside face of the wall. This may be very important, since it may help us determine whether the MB wall was reused in later periods (LB and Iron Age) as well.

As far as the visitors, they seemed to start pouring in from the very early morning.
The first visitor was Israel Finkelstein, who came to see the various areas and in particular the aspects of research going on at the site that are connected to his ERC project. We had some great discussions (some of the team were very excited, as he is considered by some to be the “rock star” of near eastern archaeology… :-), and he was quite impressed (kept on stressing how Safi and the finds from it, are such so central for the undestanding of various issues).
Here are some pictures of Israel’s visit:

This was followed by a visit from a bus load of staff and volunteers from the Megiddo excavations, led by Eric Cline, who toured around the site. We tried to stress to them that although Megiddo is nice, there is no comparison… :-)

The real star of the day was the visit of the Australian ambassador, Andrea Faulkner, who came to the site to visit the team, and in particular, the Australian team from the University of Melbourne, led by Louise Hithcock. The ambassador arrived on site bearing presents as well, including a cake (!), several bottles of Australian wine (quite good), and copies of Australian papers with the Aussies were very interested in reading. After being introduced to the team, Mrs. Faulkner got tour of the Aussie excavation area (in which an Australian flag and a blowup kangaroo had been setup), excavated a little (she worked on the top of the decorated jar mentioned above), joined us for breakfast, and then spent about another hour on site, hearing explanations about the site and our work (she was very interested and asked many questions), and then finally spending a considerable amount of time talking personally with all the Aussies.
Here is a picture of the ambassador talking to Sam Crooks, one of the Melbourne team:


We finished off the day with the regular Friday “tell tour” – which was accompanied with popsicles for all!

Aren

The Mexican newspaper Milenio just ran a full-page spread of photos taken in our lab (at the Colegio Mexiquense). For a pdf of the article, click here.

The article is called: "Desentierran varias piezas arqueológicas en la entidad."  Milenio, July 15, 2010. Section: Milenio Edomex, page 8. It is a "fotoreportaje" with photos by Iván Carmona, and text by Caludia Hidalgo. They visited us July 14 (Bastille Day). The photos in this post were taken by Carmona, but not used in the article; they are reproduced here with his permission. A longer text piece by Ms. Hidalgo is scheduled to appear in the newspaper Tuesday July 20.



These photos show Brad with his obsidian, Angela checking Janeth's classification of sherds, Julie recording ceramic attributes, the someone's hand with a spindle whorl (probably Angela's).


Milenio ran a story on Calixtlahuaca last year, by Ernesto de la Cueva, and it is probably the best journalistic account of my research I have yet encountered. It was called "Calixtlahuaca: La Nostalgia del Poder." The title relates the the observation that 600 years ago Calixtlahuaca was a large powerful capital city and Tollocan (Toluca) was a small village subject to the capital, whereas today the situation is the exact reverse.

The volunteers have left, the grids are swept and ready for their moment in the sun (or out of it actually so that we can get good photographs tomorrow) and the bookwork continues. 

The party was a rousing success and I suspect if you check Facebook many of our volunteers will already have posted pictures.

 

During the party Professor Stager honored two great friends of the excavation who we recently lost.  First, Lord Anthony Quinton, 

Lord Quinton readily shared his wit, wisdom and curiosity for the world around him during his annual summer visits with his wife, Lady Marcelle Quinton. Members of the expedition looked forward every summer to Lord Quinton's annual lecture which was delivered with admirable skill and a dry sense of humor.  

Perhaps the greatest reward, however, was to talk about literature with him. Lord Quinton, who once possessed the largest private book collection in England, was as happy discussing his favorite childhood book, Treasure Island, as he was the latest philosophical text on the desk in his study.  It is with great sadness that we mourn his loss.

 

 

This spring the expedition's long time major domo Moshe "Musa" Shimoni passed away and we lost a true friend and staunch ally.  Musa was the go to guy and whatever we needed he made happen.  Usually with wit and wisdom and a forbidding frown for anyone who got in his way.  Musa and his wife Carmella provided the expedition with a valued friendship over the years and he will be missed. 

 

Next time you see Professor Stager ask him about the time he and Musa had a close encounter with some young Orthodox Jews.  It's a story that tells you just about everything you need to know.

 

Stay tuned for more pictures (the grids really do look great and you won't believe the transformation of grid 47 if I do say so myself) as well as the answer to the last, probably long forgotten "What? Where? When?"

 

So long until next year, the dirt is no longer available for excavation.  Let the countdown to The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon 2011 season begin.

Blast from the past: last year's press conference coverage from RAI's TG3.

Reports of the now traditional end-of-season press conference (updated as I get them):

• Il Tamtam
• Spoleto City

Another three weeks have gone by, another couple of visitors in the trenches, a whole bunch of soil excavated, a mess of coins and a few other very interesting finds. It's just me left in Massa Martana now, as Sarah and the students have gone down to Rome (Scott should be on the plane as I write this).
Lots of work to do to close up the site and get the finds catalogued and stored until next year, so more soon! At right the official (for what that's worth) end-of-session photo.

The dolium turned out to have the number 13 scratched into its shoulder before firing (in Roman numerals of course). Here's a shot of Sarah and Federico holding up their find after the press conference—for which we left the dolium beautifully in situ—at the end of our official "day after the last day," with a close-up of the number from another photo as inset.

The last two weeks have flown by us, scarcely leaving time to make a post on the blog!  We are in the midst of a heat wave here in Italy, but you would be hard pressed to tell considering how hard our team is working - they are undaunted by the heat.  The last two weeks have been exciting and quite busy.  We were fortunate to have Mario Torelli (Perugia) visit us on Friday, July 10 and it was great fun to show him around the site and benefit from his insights.  This week our colleagues from the Archaeological Prospection Services of Southampton visited us to check various magnetic anomalies discovered during the 2007-2008 survey phase; we were also lucky to have several sets of parents and relatives of team members visit us, so Gabii has been a busy place.  But for the most part, we have been digging - and doing a lot of it!  Our Area B has finally emerged from the overburden of Roman tombs and occupation evidence is finally appearing.  Elsewhere on the site we continue to analyze various bits of evidence, including an in-depth examination of animal bones and the ongoing collection of environmental samples.  In all, we are extremely please with the progress we are making and look forward to the week coming up.

As is traditional, during yesterday, the official "Last Day" of the season, a lovely find turned up: at least half of a large dolium (storage vessel) resting virtually on top of the lovely cocciopesto floor Sarah has been excavating for a few days now. Some may prefer the 17 coins that were found just to the north in this same area yesterday, but the dolium has its charms. More tomorrow.

Today, we had one of those really unbelievable days! The sky was falling with finds in the various areas, and in fact, due to the large amount of finds, we were in the field until 8 pm….
In Area D, in the lower city, we uncovered in situ finds from the late 9th cent. destruction level, with intallations, loomweights, vessels (including a fantastic chalice) and oodles of other finds, in excellent preservation. We managed to take many samples for analyses as well, and if possible, this large assemblage may provide a very nice example of vessels for organic residue analysis.

In Area A, things were “flying” as well, including – more and more conclusive evidence that Alex and Cynthia are in fact working in a temple (such as what appears to be a foundation deposit), while Adi and Naama continue to uncover additional evidence of metallurgy, apparently both Iron and Copper production!
Louise and her team had some nice finds, including some gold and silver jewelry.
Itzik’s team is deep in the EB and now has nice evidence of an apparently substantial EB II level beneath the EB III.

In Area F there were some nice developments. In lower F the CBC team seem to have uncovered an additional portion of MB wall and glacis. In upper F, we were visited by Amotz Agnon of the HU, who is an archaeoseismologist. We looked at the brick collapse over the 9th cent. BCE destruction level and he is now more and more convinced that it is fact earthquake related. While we still have to work on this, it is looking more and more that we may in fact have the so-called “Amos earthquake” – dating to the mid 8th cent. BCE.

Finally, the BBC crew came back again, and tomorrow, we have a visit from the Australian ambassador!

Have a good night!

Aren

Just a quick hello as we get ready for the season ending dig party.  Dr. Master's lecture is written and the Finds Display is being set up...

Five weeks into the dig, I finally found a reasonably priced version of the tent I wanted to get from the start. Officially it's a "gazebo" here in Italy, and it needs some sheets or something on the sides to keep the sun out when it isn't overhead, but still, an improvement.

On the way home from dinner at Carlo's last week.

 

Let the Games begin Dr. Adam Aja proclaimed during Ashkelon's 3rd Annual Tel Games Extravaganza during the 5th week of excavation.  You can see him below explaining the rules, the very long, complicated and involved rules of what promised to be the most epic version of the Games ever played! In an effort to limit the rampant cheating, both seen and unseen, in previous years Adam made this years games an individual competition.

Participants had to wear to flags and carry around a gufa. Within a designated area (which shrunk with each passing moment of competition) participants had to retrieve pot sherds from buckets placed in random spots throughout the field of play. Those worthy souls brave enough to participate had to retrieve as many sherds as possible (bodies = 1 pt. and diagnostics = 5 pts) and register them with the Registrar while keeping their flags. 

 

 

 

Here you can see some of the participants lined up and ready to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Which one of these brave volunteers will win?  And will they have to cheat to do it?

 

 

 

Angels of Death patrolled and ruthlessly policed the field of play and the status of each participant's flags. Lose one flag and the AD would pronounce the participant wounded which meant that they could only move with the help of a friend (ha ha, that never happened) or with one hand on the ground (while the other one still gripped the gufa full of potsherds). Drop the gufa or get the second flag stolen and the AD would pronounce the participant dead and out of the competition!

 

 

 

And to further complicate things there was an Antiquities Dealer strolling around... Lose a flag? You could trade potsherds for a new one with the Antiquities Dealer. If you trusted him...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, the participant with the most points would win the coveted Ashkelon Cup.

 

 

 

 

Have you ever seen such a glamorous, prestigious trophy? Nor had any of us and as you might imagine everybody was eager to get their hands on it.  (Larry worked very hard to make it.  When you see him please tell him how lovely it is.)

 

 

 

 

 

It was cutthroat with contestants from Grids 38, 51 and 47 going after their own grid mates before moving on to the competition.  The injured were plentiful and the participants quickly started dropping like the crows swooping down to snatch thet remains of Second Breakfast.

 

 

 

In the end Maria from Grid 51 was victorious! Yea Maria. Her name was the first to be inscribed on the coveted Ashkelon Cup.  Who will it be next year?

Yesterday (to be continued tomorrow as well), I was interviewed by BBC documentaries, for a program on bible and archaeology that will deal with the biblical and archaeological correlates relating to the David and Goliath story. The program (which may yet develop into a series) was hosted by Dr. Francesca Stavrakopoulou, a biblical scholar from Exeter University, who in fact participated in the excavations at Tell es-Safi/Gath three years ago. We “trepsed” around the site all morning and discussed various issues relating to this topic, and I believe we covered the topic quite nicely.

Here are some pictures of Francesca and myself talking while the cameras are rolling.

Here we are discussing issues overlooking the Elah Valley, just to the north of Area A.

Here we are in Louise’s area in Area A, and I am talking about the complete bowl, part of a foundation deposit, that had just been removed.

Aren

Just a quick update for some of the finds for today, Tuesday, 13/7:
1) Area A: Alex and Cynthia’s team seem to have found some architectural features connected to the possible temple, including some walls, plastered features and perhaps a portion of a floor.
2) Louise’s team uncovered an additional complete bowl – in a deposit below the “hydrauic plaster” from previous seasons, and a very nice floor with a nice collection of phtyoliths on it.
3) Jeff’s team is working in apparent Iron I and Iron IIB levels, and more of the possible earthquake collapse has been uncovered.
4) Amit and Joe are busy working in the 9th cent. destruction and more and more vessels and other interesting finds are popping out! A very interesting find is a jar filled with very clean ash – perhaps meant to be used in some production process.
5) Jill and her team are also working in the 9th cent. destruction level, and among other things, found a very large chalice.
6) Itzik and his team continue to work in the LB and EB in Area E.

Here is a nice picture of the pottery (including the jar with the stopper) from Area D

Aren

It's here, the new 2010 Ashkelon dig shirt! 

Seen in the image is a decorated brazier fragment from the 2nd century BCE found during excavation in Grid 51.  In the 2nd century cooking was often done by putting a metal stand over a fire.  The decorated fragment of the brazier seen on the t-shirt would have been an insulater between the metal stand and the pot in which food would be cooking.  We have good parallels for this from the site of Tel Dor.

By Arnd Adje Both

Favourable circumstances sometimes allow a sound of the past to be recovered and brought to our ears again. This is the case of a little bird-whistle from Calixtlahuaca, so far the only instrument from the site found intact (many fragmentary instruments were recovered in the excavations).

Its little high-pitched sound is the only one that has survived until today. The whistle (a globular flute without a fingerhole) is in the shape of a bird, and it is not surprising that it produces bird-like cries, which reminded us of a raptor. Does this whistle resemble the bird shown on the shield carried by the local king? We don’t know.

When I made a recording of the whistle in the patio of the ex-Hacienda of the Colegio Mexiquense in Zinacántepec (site of the Calixtlahuaca laboratory), Mike and Angela noted a definite effect on the many birds around. These birds made a lot of noise (or song, as the Aztecs would say), and notably were attracted by the sound produced by the whistle.

Click below for a short excerpt from my

recording of this whistle.


For more information on whistles like this and other Aztec musical instruments, see:

Both, Arnd Adje  (2002)  Aztec Flower-Flutes: The Symbolic Organization of Sound in Late Postclassic Mesoamerica. Studien zur Musikarchäologie III:279-289. Rahden/Westf.

Both, Arnd Adje  (2005)  Aerófonos mexicas de las orfrendas del recinto sagrado de Tenochtitlan. PhD dissertation. Lateinamerika-Institut, Freue Universität Berlin.

Both, Arnd Adje  (2006) On the Context of Imitative and Associative Processes in Prehispanic Music. Studien zur Musikarchäologie V, pp. 319-332. Rahden/Westf.

Martí, Samuel  (1968)  Instrumentos musicales precortesianos. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City.

Today, although it was very hot (close to 40 degrees C!), was very successful. We had a lot of interesting finds in the various areas, including:
1) Three complete bowls from Louise’s area (Iron I); and from he same area we finished excavating a pit with animal bones deposited.
2) In Alex and Cynthia’s area, we continued excavating the metallurgical areas, and in fact, Adi Behar and Naama Yahalom, two experts in ancient metallurgy, who as you may recall worked with us last year as well, came to supervise the excavation of this context. They found additional evidence of bronze production, including additional fragments of a crucibles, possible tuyeres, and many more small fragments of slag. This definitely is becoming very interesting!
3) In Jill’s area they recovered, among other finds, a few loomweights.
4) In Area E, a frament of very nice EB bronze axe was found.
5) In Area F, Jeff and his team are working in different periods, including LB, Iron I and Iron IIB. Among the interesting finds was a nice faience scarab.
6) In Area D, a whole messload of vessels and other finds were discovered, including a complete strainer bowl, and quite a few restorable jars, including one with a clay stopper still in the jars mouth.

This is just part of the finds that popped up today, and it appears that many will appear in the coming days.

Tomorrow, we have a camera team from the BBC coming – they are making a documentary on things related to the Bible.

Aren

Last week, I mentioned that we had found in Alex and Cynthia’s area (in the western part of Area A) fragments of a vessel that looked like a crucible, in which there was a thick residue of a slag like material. I had mentioned that if this is in fact a crucible related to metal production, this would be the first clear evidence from Iron Age Philistia of metal production.
Today, we got the initial result of the analysis of this slag, and it is definitely a copper-based material! So, we now know that the crucible was in fact used in metal production. Now, we will have to carefully excavate this context and see if we can find additional evidence of metal production. Clearly, this is importance from many perspectives, and I will keep updating as we have more info.

Aren

By Bradford Andrews

At Calixtlahuaca (like most prehispanic societies in Mesoamerica), obsidian was the most common type of stone used to make tools for a wide variety of domestic, militaristic, and ritualistic purposes. More than 94% of the tools and debitage (byproducts of stone tool manufacture and use) from the site are composed of obsidian. Analysis of the obsidian materials was initiated by me and two of my Pacific Lutheran University students, Elisa Hoelter and David Treichel, during the summer of 2009. To date almost 9,000 artifacts have been analyzed.


Obsidian is a volcanic stone made of silica that is created by the rapid cooling of volcanic ejecta. Because it cools so rapidly, it lacks a true crystalline structure (Cobean 2002). This quality makes obsidian ideal flaking sharp implements used for numerous slicing, cutting, and scraping activities. Most of the obsidian found on Aztec sites comes from relatively recent volcanic deposits scattered across Central Mexico, stretching from Veracruz on the Gulf to the western Mexican state of Michoacan bordering the Pacific Ocean (Glascock et al. 1988).

The Calixtlahuaca obsidian artifacts show some interesting variation concerning flaked stone tool production and use in Aztec period Central Mexico. Here are three patterns that stand out:

First, the collections are composed almost exclusively of gray obsidian (75%). Although data are limited, this contrasts with has been reported for other Aztec sites outside the Basin of Mexico, the location of modern day Mexico City and the heartland of the Aztec Empire. In Morelos more than 90% of the artifacts are made of obsidian from the Pachuca source in the modern state of Hidalgo, northwest of the Basin. Pachuca obsidian is typically green in color. We think, therefore, that Calixtlahuaca was supplied with obsidian by means of a different system than was the case for some of the other Aztec dominated sites in Mesoamerica. It is probable that much of it came from sources west of Calixtlahuaca, many of which are located in Michoacan. Future chemical analysis will be conducted to evaluate this proposition.

Second, most of the tools (66%) were derived from obsidian blades that do not appear to have been produced by craftsmen who lived at Calixtlahuaca. The Mesoamerican blade technology consisted of shaping a cylindrical “core” from which blades were then removed by “pressing” them off with a wooden implement (Hirth and Andrews 2002). Such a process results in byproducts of blade production that are minimally represented at Calixtlahuaca. This finding is interesting because at numerous Mesoamerican sites evidence suggests that blades were made in workshops by resident craftsmen. It seems likely, therefore, that blade tools arrived at the site ready-made for use, or were produced by traveling craftsmen who periodically visited the site and plied their wares in the market.

Third, many of the artifacts that were made using a biface technology (23%) do appear to have been shaped into various tools in Calixtlahuaca households  Biface technology entails the removal of flakes from two sides, or “faces” of a relatively flat piece of obsidian to make items such as projectile points (arrowheads) and other scraping and chopping tools. This finding is interesting because in Central Mexico evidence for the production biface tools in the majority of a city’s households is the exception rather than the rule.

These preliminary observations on the obsidian artifacts from Calixtlahuaca provide important new comparative information on flaked stone tool production and use in the provinces of the Aztec Empire.

I presented these observations at the recent Society for American Archaeology meetings:

Andrews, Bradford W. (2010)  Calixtlahuaca Obsidian: Initial Reflections of Lithic Technology on the Western Aztec Periphery. Paper Presented at the 75th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, St. Louis, Missouri.

Artist’s reconstruction of Biface production in a Calixtlahuaca Household, illustration by Michael Stasinos.

References cited

Cobean, Robert H. (2002) A World of Obsidian: The Mining and Trade of a Volcanic Glass in Ancient Mexico. Serie Arqueología De México. Pittsburgh: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia/University of Pittsburgh.

Glascock, Michael D., J. Michael Elam, and Robert H. Cobean. (1988) Differentiation of Obsidian Sources in Mesoamerica. Archaeometry '88. Eds. R. M. Farquhar, G. V. Hancock and L. A. Pavlish. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 245-51.

Hirth, Kenneth G., and Bradford W. Andrews (2002) Introduction." Pathways to Prismatic Blades: A Study in Mesoamerican Obsidian Core-Blade Technology. Eds. Kenneth G. Hirth and Bradford W. Andrews. Los Angeles: The Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 1-14.

This past Thursday, while driving around the southern side of the site, on the way to Area F, I had a chance to get a nice, rather close-up view, of a few Stone Curlews (Burhinus oedicnemus) – a rather funny looking bird with long, stick-like legs, and big “bug” eyes – who sort of reminds you of the famous cartoon character “Road Runner“. These birds, which are common in open areas, are seen in various parts of Israel, particularly in rocky, dry environments.
Here is a nice picture of one of them:


This is just another nice example of exquisite natural resources that are to be found in and around Tell es-Safi/Gath, making it a nice example of a site at which natural and cultural heritage can be combined and conservated together.

Aren

Although it was a short day today (we finish slightly earlier on Fridays for the weekly tell tour), we nevertheless had a great day – a nice ending to a fantastic week!!!

Last night, we had the end of the week party and the whole group ate fresh falafel near the kibbutz pub.

Today, we had some nice finds in the various areas. Alex and Cynthia have started finding some interesting features (such as plaster lines) near the possible temple. Jill’s team is working in the 9th century destruction level and, once again, there are many finds. Louise’s team exposed, inter alia, what seems to be a nice hearth, a possible rubbish pit, and various other features. In the fine sifting sampling that we are conducting, various interesting finds came up, such as several small fragments of copper.

In Area F, the two squares on the slope between Upper and Lower F seem already to be in statified materials – and I hope we will be hitting late Iron I/early Iron IIA soon. Likewise, in the new sqaure that Eric’s group is opening, it appears that they are about to get to the Iron I levels.

In Area E, the very deep LB pit continues to surprise us, and in the other test pit Itzik and his crew may have reached earlier EB architecture – we will have to see next week.

In Area D, the “festivities” have began! They are now “deep” into the 9th cent. destruction level and whole vessels and other finds are popping out! It looks like next week we will have a very rich, and fun, time.

Finally, here is a picture of one of the non-archaeological activities that once in the while the team has to do – moving a “port-a-potty” to a better location…

Have a great weekend!

Aren

A picture is worth a thousand words.  well, these pictures taken by Sky View are worth even more.  they are just amazing.  There isn’t much more left to say, so Ill just give a short description of each:

This is the Tel – showing its great shape – as we look from the east

Here you can see our excavation  squares, city walls from the north and the entire summit as it stands out.

this is the square in the center of the tel, with the various architectural features, including the wonderful silo.

and here is the section we excavated on the east side of the tel, with the city walls, silos and Iron Age surfaces.

In a word – AMAZING!!!! Thanks to Sky View for these great photos.

Due to a very poor internet connection that we have been having for the last few days, I have not been able to update the blog on what has been happening since after the first day of excavation. In fact, yesterday, I had a connection for a short time and wrote out a nice entry describing the previous two days of work, and as I was about to send it, the connection was lost and I lost the entire post! Hopefully now, the connection will be more stable, so I’ll be able to update more regularly.

Since I have missed a few days, I will just give a description of some of the main issues and finds that have come up in the last few days, in the different areas.

In Area A, on the eastern side of the tell (for a map of the excavation areas, see here), we are working at full swing. Alex and Cynthia and the Sheffield team have started working in the area of the possible Philistine temple, removing walls from the 9th cent. (Stratum A3) destruction level, and starting to open a larger excavation area – so that they might be able to define whether or not the interesting structure with the two large pillar bases that was discovered in previous seasons is, or is not, a temple. In the meantime, they have a few very interesting finds. This includes a nice faience amulet of the Egyptian god Bastet, a nice concentration of a olive pits from an earlier stage of A3, and today, a context in which many finds were found, including a possible “crucible” – possibly connected with metal production – from what appears to be a nice late Iron I context. If in fact this is a context related to metal production this is quite important, since, to the best of my knowledge, there are no other known metallurgical production contexts known from Iron Age Philistia. We will be working on this very carefully to check this out (needless to say, this reminded me of I Samuel 13: 19-21 – even if this is a later source).

Steve Weiner, Clive Trueman, and Jill Katz and here YU team are working in the A3 destruction level, continuing their very detailed study of the process of destruction and decay related with this destruction event. As in last year, there are carefully excavating these contexts and taking many samples for analysis.

Louise and her team from Melbourne are digging in late Iron I, and have already found quite a few nice finds. This includes several pavements consisting of packed sherds, a nicely preserved juglet, and a almost complete stone grinding stone, which was lying a very nice layer of charred organic materials (seeds and olive pits) and a thick level of phytoliths. This should perhaps give us a nice idea of the activities associated with this item, as well as assist in providing its date.

Here is a picture of the juglet

Here are two “happy campers” (Belle Shapardon & Michelle Barraclough) from the Melbourne team removing the grinding stone!

In Area E, Itzik and his team are digging both EB and LB. While in most of the area they are in the late EB levels, in two corners they have some LB material. This includes a very nice Late Helladic IIIB sherd, a possible imported Egyptian pottery sherd, and fragment of a “Hathor” like plaque figurine. In the EB levels, they are exposing additional portions of the EB III neighborhood that has been exposed in previous years, as well as attempting to dig below this level (in several test pits) to determine if there are substantial earlier levels. In the same area, Haskel Greenfield and his team from Manitoba are busy excavating the well preserved donkey skeleton that was already discovered two years ago.

In Area F, Jeff and his team are working both in Upper and Lower F. In Upper F they are concentrating on trying to delineate the brick collapse discovered in previous seasons which may be evidence of the mid 8th-century BCE earthquake (e.g., Amos 1:1). As mentioned before, we are not yet sure whether in fact this is earthquake collapse and during the season we will have an expert in ancient earthquakes (Amos Agnon, HU) work with us on this issue. In the meantime, we are exposing this feature and have taken some micromorphological “blocks” so that we can study the interface between the 9th century destruction level, the possible abandonment phase above it, then the brick collapse and then the late 8th cent. Levels. This should be very interesting!

In lower F, Jeff and his team are busy with several projects. On the one hand, they are opening two squares which will connect with Upper F – with the objective of producing a stratigraphic sequence that will cover the entire Area F, and hopefully will span the EB through the Persian period (plus the later medieval levels). In addition, further down in Lower F, they are excavating in early Iron I and LB levels. Elisabetta Boarreto and her team are working closely with them – hoping to get a nice sequence of well-stratified 14C samples – so that a close dating of the LB-Iron I transition can be produced.

Here is a nice picture of Jeff, Zach and Eric standing at the entrance of a very nice Roman period tomb that is situated to the south of the tell. Notice the tomb has a “temple like” frieze

In Area D, Joe and Amit have returned to excavated the very impressive remains of the lower city. Despite doubts that some of our colleagues have expressed regarding the settlement in the lower city, as we have demonstrated already in previous seasons, there is clear and very impressive evidence of major building activities in the lower city (to the north of the tell), during various phases of the Iron Age. While the most impressive evidence relates to the late 9th century destruction (which we recovered in previous seasons and is once again “popping up” this season), we now have evidence of a additional Iron Age phases in this area, including, perhaps Iron I phases. Joe and Amit and their team are working closely with Dvory Namdar and her archaeological science team, who have set up an additional field laboratory in Area D. They are closely sampling the squares that are being excavated, with a particular emphasis on an attempt to define vessels that can be sampled for “organic residue analysis”. It is now quite clear that the context of such vessels is very important for the preservations of these organic molecules, and a close study of not only the vessels and their contents, but also their immediate environment (and the various processes related to them) is of much importance.
So far the finds from Area D have been very nice and it is clear that we will have extremely rich finds from this area in the coming days.

Several additional things happened on the dig:
1) Ebenezer Gay from Brown University was on site this week, trying out a pilot attempt on a very interesting, and potentially revolutionary method to record data from the excavation using ongoing still camera photography of the work. If this will work out, this may provide a very versatile, yet easy tool both to record excavation finds and contexts, but also tie it in with the various databases of information coming out of the excavation, and also, producing 3D reconstructions of all the finds. While this is still in a very initial stage of work, it does look very promising – and potentially of much importance in developing new field recording methods and interpretive tools.
2) We had several lectures this week. On Sunday, I have a general lecture about the site; on Monday, Steve and Elisabetta gave a talk on archaeological science methods; on Tuesday, Marc Brettler (Brandeis) have a talk on the biblical narrative of Goliath; While last night, Liora Horwitz (HU) have a general talk on zooarchaeology. Tonite we have the end of the week party – and we will be having Felafel, etc.
3) Yesterday, Prof. Moshe Kaveh, president of Bar-Ilan University came to the excavation with two of his grandchildren. They stayed the entire day at the excavation. Prof. Kaveh was very impressed with the diverse research activities, mixed group and great finds at the site. We can definitely say that we have a strong supporter behind us!

Here is a picture of Prof. Kaveh and his grandkids next to the complete juglet in Area A

4) Unfortunately, we have not yet set up the live internet broadcast from the site, but I do hope this will be in place at the beginning of next week.

All told, the first week, which is almost over, went exceptionally well! Despite the fact that it is such a large group, save for minor glitches, things just flowed perfectly, the team members are extraordinary, and the finds, are already very impressive. If this is the way the entire season will be going, we will have a truly exceptional one!

Aren

Today we had a follow up interview with Barnea and Dovid on the LandMines show of Israel National Radio.  the interview focused on what we uncovered this season and our intentions for future work.  you can listen to it here.

In other news, yesterday we took aerial photos with Sky View, using a balloon.  We will be posting pictures in the next couple of days.  Make sure to watch out for them – they are fantastic!!!!!

Today, we had the first day in the field! We have a great team and it looks like it is going to be a great season!

We started work in all areas and things are going very well. In fact, by the end of the day, almost all the cleaning was finished and tomorrow morning, most of the areas will be excavating already.

In Area A, were the largest amount of team members are located, Alex, Jill and Louise’s teams made good progress and hopefully tomorrow, we will start seeing some nice Iron Age material.

In Area E, Itzik and his team will start working in the EB III levels, and Haskel Greenfield and his team from Manitoba will work on the complete donkey skeleton which was found a few years ago.

In Area F, Jeff and his team are working on Iron I, Iron IIA and Iron IIB levels, and we should have some very interesting results. Among others, we hope to be able to define whether or not there is a evidence of a mid-8th cent. BCE earthquake.

In Area D, Joe and Amit are working in the lower city, uncovering evidence of its destruction in the late 9th cent. (by Hazael) and seeing if there are additional Iron age levels in this part of the site.

In addition, the archaeological science team is working in various areas, and we should be getting some great results from this as well.

Needless to say, I will be updating regularly.

So far, we have not yet set up the live internet video broadcast from the site, but hope to have it in place and working in the next few days.

Aren

Here's another installment of video showing a bit of what goes on when we're not on the site. Enjoy!

Yesterday, July 4th, the season started. Although we are only starting to dig today (the 5th), the team came to Revadim and about 10,000 things related to the season happened (among which, as usual, about 100 things did not happen as they were planned…), including arrival of the team (about 120 people!). We spent the day setting up the camp, bringing equipment, settling people in their rooms, etc. In the afternoon, I gave all the new team members (and some old ones) a tour of the site, a then in the evening, gave an introductory lecture about the site.
First days are always hard – but things are looking great! It looks like we have a great team – and that the season is going to very successful!
And today – we start digging!

Aren

As has now been released to the press, an unusual Imperial Roman lead sarcophagus was excavated at Gabii in 2009 by the Gabii Project. This new story originated with a small feature by National Geographic News, along with a news release from the News Service of the University of Michigan. A sampling of the resulting press coverage can be found digested and linked here on our blog.

The sarcophagus, which weighs around 1000 lbs, is fashioned from sheets of lead folded so as to encase the deceased, thus the 'burrito' moniker that accompanied the news story and has become something of a popular tag on Twitter and other sites. The unusual nature of the sarcophagus comes from the fact that it does not follow the normal pattern for these objects - and indeed, only several hundred imperial lead sarcophagi are known. The sarcophagus in question here was formed by wrapping sheets of lead around the deceased, crimping the 'head' end and leaving the 'foot' end open and exposed. So, while the corpus of square lead sarcophagi with lids and lead sarcophagi liners is reasonably well defined, the lead-wrapped inhumant remains unusual. We are grateful for the offers of advice and help that are coming in from colleagues from all corners - thank you!

The next phase of study of the sarcophagus will begin shortly with non-invasive tests employed to ascertain something about the contents that are currently shielded by the lead wrapping, which in itself has important value as an artifact. The sarcophagus is heading for the American Academy in Rome in the next days where Mellon Professor T. Corey Brennan has been invaluable and incredibly supportive in facilitating this next phase of research. Prof. Brennan's blog entry is here.

This sarcophagus - about which we are still learning - prompts us to consider events at the far end of Gabii's life as an urban center and also raises interesting possibilities about studying a well-preserved (albeit unusual) status burial in Imperial Latium. While those in the blogosphere are hoping that we find a dangerous vampire, mummy or ancient demon inside, we're betting on a regular Roman, most likely of an elevated social rank.

The research at Gabii is supported by the University of Michigan and its Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, as well as by organizations that include the National Geographic Society. The kind support of the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma and, in particular, Dr. Angelo Bottini and Dr. Stefano Musco, is also gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to our friends at LAND srl who so carefully prepared the sarcophagus for removal from the tomb and transported it to safe storage.

THE SARCOPHAGUS 'IN THE NEWS'

U.S. media

• Free Republic. 29-March 2010
• e! Science News. 29-March 2010
  
• WDIV Detroit. 30-March 2010
• WWJ • 950 Detroit. 30-March 2010
• LiveScience.com. 30-March 2010
• Click on Detroit. 30-March 2010
• Yahoo! News. 31-March 2010
• Fox News. 31-March 2010
• Suite101.com. 31-March 2010
• Encyclopedia Britannica Kids. 2-April 2010
• American Academy in Rome's blog coverage. 2-April 2010
• Blog entry of the University of Michigan Press. 6-April 2010
• Archaeology magazine, July/August 2010 issue. 'From the trenches'
  

Canadian media

• National Post. 30-March 2010
• Montreal Gazette. 31-March 2010
• Calgary Herald. 31-March 2010
• The Vancouver Sun. 31-March 2010
• Edmonton Journal. 31-March 2010
• Ottawa Citizen. 31-March 2010
• Canada.com. 31-March 2010
• Global Toronto. 31-March 2010
• Hamilton Spectator. 7-April 2010

U.K. media

• Heritage Key Digest. 30-March 2010
• The Independent. 31-March 2010

Italian media

• Antikitera. 30-March 2010
• Il fatto storico. 31-March 2010
• corrispondenti.net. 1-April 2010
• Centro Ufologico Taranto Magazine. 1-April 2010
• La Stampa. 14-April 2010 interview with Anna Gallone
• Le Scienze. June 2010 issue - news digest item.

Asian media

• South Asian News. 30-March 2010
• National Geographic News - Japan. 31-March 2010
• newKereala.com. (India). 31-March 2010
• Bí ẩn chiếc quan tài gần 2.000 năm tuổi (Vietnam). 3-April 2010
• Nguoi Viet Online (Vietnam). 4-April 2010
• Vietnamnet.vn (Vietnam). 10-May 2010

Hungary and Romania

• Terra Magazin (Romania). 31-March 2010
• tudomany.ma.hu. (Hungary) 2-April 2010
• Hirado.hu. (Hungary) 2-April 2010
• hirszerzo (Hungary). 3-April 2010
• Ziare.com (Romania). 3-April 2010
• Realitatea.net (Romania). 3-April 2010
• MNO Magyar Nemzet Online (Hungary). 2-April 2010
  

Other world and web-based media

• SciTech Report. 29-March 2010
• LabSpaces. 29-March 2010
• RedOrbit. 29-March 2010
• Phenomica. 31-March 2010
  
• Softpedia. 31-March 2010
• Press Enterprise. 31-March 2010
• Ciência Hoje: Jornal de Ciência, Tecnologia e Empreendedorismo. (Portugal). 31-March 2010
• El Solitario de la Vega Real. (Spanish). 1-April 2010
• svt (Sweden). 3-April 2010
• Spektrum Direkt. 31-March 2010
• Avalon: revista digital gratuita (Spain). 3-April 2010
• ntvmsnbc (Turkey). 31-March 2010
• aktualne.cz (Czech). 3-April 2010
• Forte (Estonia). 9-April 2010
• Postimees (Estonia). 30-March 2010
  
• Milliyet.com (Turkey). 31-March 2010
• Historiek.net. 1-April 2010
  
• Poisk news (Russia). 18-April 2010
• El Reservado (Spain). 29-April 2010
  

For those of you interested, Chris McKinny and Mindy McKinny have both posted their own take on the work at Tel Burna.  everyone should take a look.  Mindy (who not only excavated, but also took many of the pictures for the dig) has several posts, sharing her take on the work, and including many pictures.

Chris give us some background on the possible link between Libnah and Tel Burna, including a timeline of events taken from the Biblical record, in which the city was involved.

These are great for anone who wants to learn a little more about the site, but also get a feel for what things were like on the dig.  thanks a lot to Chris and Mindy for the blog posts, pictures and their hard work on the dig!

Once the excavation, survey, and architecture teams leave for work each day, the villages are for the most part transformed back into their usual sleepy selves. The sherd yard however, managed by registrar Leslie Hammond (pictured above with a feline friend) and assistants Sarah Linn and Sarah Beckman, becomes a bustling center of activity.

According to the staff, staying around the village has it’s perks: “If I forget my trail mix, its no big deal! I just walk up the hill!” notes Sarah Beckman. And there’s the joy of patient discovery, explains four year veteran Sarah Linn: “It’s cool when you’re washing something and you don’t know what it is and then you uncover something, like a naked body.”

An Ano Karyes resident herds sheep up the path next to the sherd yard.

The first week of 2010 fieldwork at Gabii has flown by -- and in such a quick fashion that week two is half over and we are just now composing this update! In all, the first week on-site was fantastic - the weather was good (cooler than average) and the progress in terms of work was excellent (certainly above average!). We are pleased both to see a lot of new faces on this year's team, but also to welcome back numerous familiar faces; old and new team members are bonding well together and are giving work on-site a great atmosphere.

The first day dawned a bit cool, and was sprinkled with spots of drizzle. This did not stop us from bringing everyone to the site, signing out equipment, and taking tours of our own work site and the larger area of ancient Gabii. Students saw both the temple of Iuno and the excavated area that belongs to the Soprintendenza in Rome. Inside our own area we recapped the 2009 field season by exploring the various features brought to light and also observing various new features exposed by natural erosion and also our enlargement of the excavation area. We discussed with the team this year's excavation strategy and the key points we hope to address. These include further investigation of the road system identified by geophysical survey in 2007 and 2008 and further work on architectural remains on our Area B and Area C, wherein we see Imperial phases and their post-abandonment layers and for which we hope to construct a broader narrative in terms of phases of use (and disuse).

As the week progressed, the weather warmed up decently, but was pleasant. Italy's wet spring has produced a bumper crop of wildflowers and it almost seems a shame to weed them out of the excavation area. We all spent a good deal of time this first week cleaning the site and beginning to understand the newly expanded areas A and C. This cleaning, though a bit tedious, is a great opportunity for the team to begin to gel and already signs point toward a great and productive season with a great group.

UPS student Laura Hollister has been practicing her Italian in the trenches, but today she went native and got her hair cut. First time it's been short since she's been three, she says. You never know what'll happen.

Today, a bunch of the staff (Alex, Jeff, Louise, Amit, Netanel, Silvie and yours truly) had a day of work on the tell in preparation for the season (which starts on Sunday!).
We had several things to do:
1) With the help of our surveyor Yehuda Shapira (and his son Shachar), we went to all the excavations areas and measured new squares, re-measured old ones, and marked triangulation points for setting up the total station in the field.
2) We went over the planned strategies in the different areas and where we expect to excavate, etc., discussing various issues for the coming season.
3) Went over the various logistic issues in the field (location of tarps, dumps, breakfast areas, parking, etc..)
4) Met with the field warden of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (Yossi), to coordinate our work this season (since the tell is within a nature park and all our work is licensed through them [as well as with the Israel Antiquities Authority]).
5) Made a quick check of what was doing at Kibbutz Revadim.

All told, things are looking good. We managed to get everything done; the tell is in good shape for the most part; the weather was great – it was even slightly overcast (I doubt it will stay this way…).

Here is a picture of some of today’s participants – Louise, Alex and Jeff, in Area F.

Things are definitely “smoking” – we are ready to roll!
:-)

Aren

Today was our last official day in the field.  We spent the day taking final pictures, sweeping for pictures, washing pottery, helping J draw the architectural features, and scouting around for other areas of the site to excavate.  We will post a more complete summary of the season in the next few days, with some more detailed pictures, but we just wanted to share a few more pictures with you and say thanks to all the volunteers who came from near (as close as Kibbutz Beit Near) and far (as far as New Zealand) to work hard at making this season such a great success!!!!  We also want to thank Dudi and Tali from Kibbutz Beit Nir, who gave us a home, which served as our base camp, and help us with the tools and anything we asked for.

On Tuesday we will back at the site, taking aerial pictures.  Watch out for those – we’ll post some.

Here is Sandy cleaning out one of the four pits/silos we discovered this season.

The moon over the tel (quite poetic, as night falls on the first season

And here are some of the volunteers enjoying themselves

Quick, can I write an entry before pottery washing and still have time to get some Ice Coffee? Let's see.

Today, in our latest edition of "Getting to Know You" I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Daniel Master, Co-Director Ashkelon Excavations and Associate Professor of Achaeology at Wheaton College. Here goes.

Dr. Master doesn't remember what he wanted to be when he was little but he does remember that he was notorious for telling his cousins where to dig. Today, Dr. Master is still telling everyone where to dig. In fact, that is an important part of his job as co-director. Dr. Master's job is to plan the season's work, find people who want to do the same work and then make it happen and do whatever he can to make sure all the work gets done. His favorite part of the job is working with people he likes. And he has no least favorite part of the job because, he told me, if there was something he didn't like he would change it.

Favorite tool: Trowel
Most interesting find he has excavated: 604 BC destruction of Ascalon
Favorite treat while in Israel: Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia Ice Cream Bar covered in Dark Chocolate

BTW, the answer to the question is "no." I wasn't able to post this before pottery washing. At 8:19 it is now just 11 minutes until my bedtime. Until next time, the dirt is ready!

If all goes as planned, we may have a live, internet broadcast of the dig throughout the entire season!
I hope that we will have a camera or two on site during the actual excavation (and possibly during our other activities as well [such as pottery reading, lectures, etc.]), and this will be broadcast through the internet, live to the world. While truthfully, watching (and not participating in) an excavation for hours is not the most exciting thing in the world (…), for those who have never been on a dig, or who would like to keep updated on what is happening on the dig and what it looks like (and what the site and its surroundings look like as well), this will be a very nice opportunity to get a “taste” of the site and our work.

While I am aware of a few short term live broadcasts from excavations (such as here and here), to the best of my knowledge, I do not know of any excavation which has offered a live broadcast of a full season of the actual excavation in the field.

More details will follow as soon as things are finalized!

Aren

Angela and I are working on ceramic seriation right now. We are using counts of ceramic types to define ceramic phases (time periods), and we will use the results to assign as many of our excavated and surface contexts to a time period. I'll post more details when we have made more progress. But for some time how we have noticed an interesting chronological pattern that is very different from the ceramic situation at the provincial sites I excavated previously in Morelos.

We have noticed a strong association between the three ceramic types pictured here:

1. comals (tortilla griddles)
2. Texcoco fabric-marked (salt transport vessels), and 
3. Aztec III black-on-orange.

In Morelos this correlation does not exist. There, salt vessels and comals ran throughout the sequence (Middle and Late Postclassic periods), whereas Aztec III was only found in the Late Postclassic. Most comals were locally made, and there are lots of them at the Morelos sites. The other two types were imported from the Basin of Mexico (as we showed with chemical analysis).

At Calixtlahuaca, however, the strong correlation among these types suggest that people were not using comals in the Middle Postclassic, and that they were not importing their salt from the Basin of Mexico at that time either. Then in the Late Postclassic, they started importing Aztec III bowls, Texcoco fabric-marked vessels, AND comals. All of our comals resemble closely the Late Postclassic comals from the Basin of Mexico; also, comals are much, much rarer at Calixtlahuaca than in Morelos.

So what does this mean? Until our seriation work is complete I don't want to speculate too much. Howeever these three types suggest very different patterns of trade and interaction between center and provinces than I documented in Morelos. And if they didn't have comals prior to the Late Postclassic, then they weren't eating torillas. Unfortunately we have been unable to identify vessels for steaming tamales, the logical tortilla alternative.

Stay tuned......

Yes I know, its an old joke, but thats what it felt like today at Burna.  With the days coming to an end, and getting ready to close things up (doesn’t it seem like we just started?), we were in cleaning mode.  most of what we did today was sweep, straighten and  try to define certain elements that weren’t clear.  that didn’t stop Seth, working with Debi, for defining another pit:

then Ido, Sandy, Tirtza and Michal joined the fun, and found one in their square.  this one cuts the wall, meaning it must be later then the wall.

That means that if the pit gates to the 7th Century, the wall must predate it and is certainly an Iron Age feature!

Here are a row of shots of the squares, as requested by some of the team, so that they can see how their hard work has paid off – way to go guys!

Today, some of the Safi staff had a training day on the new Trimble M3 total station that we have just acquired for the dig. We will be starting to use this really nice, and quite sophisticated (but very easy to use) instrument in the coming season, and the first group of people on the staff trained on it today at the Kimmel Center at the Weizmann Institute.

After many years of measuring the location of finds in traditional methods, with the inception of use of this total station, we are now entering the 21st century. Hopefully, by next season, all find-location measuring (and related issues) will be done with similar instruments.

One of the very nice things about this particular instrument is that it runs on a Windows Mobile platform and has a very “user-friendly” interface – with a MS Windows like screen.

We plan to start using the total station in Area A (and if needed, in other areas) and when we receive more instruments, use in other areas as well. Without a doubt, this is an important improvement in our field methods.

Aren

Today was another great day at the tel.  other than the large group of volunteers, and numerous visitors, we had a couple of interesting finds.  But Ill go square by square.  as we approach the end of the season, we are slowly starting to close things down.  In Chris and Mindy’s square – they finished most of the cleaning.  tomorrow we will draw the section showing the destruction layer that they excavated, and that will be it for Square V6 this season.

In Tim and Alex’s square they are also working towards closing things up and were lowering the upper step down to the level of the lower step, when Tim discovered a beautiful arrowhead.  Stylistically, it seems it may be Israelite, although a better definition will be possible once we’ve cleaned it.  Way to go TIM!

In Ido, Sandy and Tirtza’s square they continued working to uncover an interesting wall, which may relate to the fortification wall.  In Debi’s square they removed a lot of dirt, uncovering part of a stone basin along the way.

In Amit’s square, Mor and Merav helped him clean up some more in preparing for the final stages of the season.  one of the main focuses of work revolved around the silo or pit already mentioned in earlier posts.  the pit has yielded much pottery, which at first glance gives an interesting glimpse into the site’s past.  the pottery still needs to be analysed, but at first glance seems that it may be 7th century or Persian.  If Persian, this is a common phenomenon to find Persian pits lying around sites.

However, if it is 7th Century, than this could be another clue to identifying the site.  this is because Tel Burna is one of the main candidates for ancient Libnah.  Libnah is an important Levitical city, on the border with Philistia, and near Eter.  A later post will present more on the subject, but – in relation to the pit – one of the mentions of Libnah in the Bible refers to Hamutal, who was from Libnah and married King Josiah in the 7th Century.

Until now we have been uncertain if we have 7th Century, but if this pit does date to this period, then it will be the first clue as to whether there is a settlement at the site in the latter days of the Judean kingdom.

And here are a couple of shots of Itzick goofing around – just to show you what happens after too many hours in the sun

Today, I had a chance to visit the Tel Burna excavations (directed by Itzik Shai and Joe Uziel) once again, on a guided tour that I gave to a big Bar-Ilan University donor (who I’ve been asked not to name…), to Burna and to Safi (the latter only very briefly).
At Burna, they are continuing to find really interesting stuff, including additional parts of the very impressive Iron Age fortifications, and a very nicely preserved Iron Age structure – perhaps of domestic character. In addition, they have various nice finds.
The view from Burna towards Safi is quite impressive and one really get the feeling that Tel Burna (perhaps Livnah) was an important border town/fort, overlooking the western approaches to the Judahite kingdom. Standing on the top of Tel Burna and looking east, and vice-a-versa looking from Safi east towards Burna, one gets a very nice feeling about the shifting border zone between Judah and Philitia during the Iron Age.

In addition, the weather was great – I can only hope that perhaps this will continue in the following weeks (but I doubt it…).

Aren

Each week, daily excavation and survey work takes a short hiatus on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. While weekends are certainly meant to be restful, they are also full of excursions, activities, and family-style meals at local Greek ‘tavernas.’

For the first Sunday excursion on June 22nd, members of the project hiked from the Lower Sanctuary hippodrome to the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai. The temple is about three hours away on foot, and was perhaps associated to our own mountain-top altar in ritual and/or orientation, is about three hours away on foot. Upon arrival, Robin Rhodes spoke about the Doric temple and its importance in the development of the Greek architectural aesthetic. Dr. Rhodes is a professor of Greek architecture at Notre Dame University, and is currently working at Corinth to stitch photography and digital models into a 3D walkthrough of the ancient city.

From Bassai, the group loaded into vans and drove to Kalo Nero (pictured above, which means ‘Good Water’ in Greek) for lunch and a couple hours of relaxation on the beach.

The next Sunday, the group had the chance to “get to know the neighborhood” with a trip to the ancient site of Lykosoura (which was unfortunately closed), the ancient city of Trapezous (where you can still see the foundations of an orthogonally planned city, pictured below) and the theater and agora areas of Ancient Megalopolis. These sites, along with the Temple of Apollo at Bassai and others, are all encompassed in the proposed Parrhasian Heritage Park. After the local tour, the group headed to the Kalamata beach.

Today, we opened week two with a bang.  In Chris and Mindy’s square, more smashed vessels turned up:

The silo or pit in Amit’s square became much clearer.

In Ido’s square, we found an additional wall that may be connected to the fortification system – lets wait and see.

Today's installment of "Getting to Know You" features Robyn, a Ph.D. student in the Classics Department at the University of North Carolina. When I asked Robyn what she wanted to be when she was little she looked a little sheepish and confessed that she always wanted to be an archaeologist. There were obvious signs she told me. First, she was always digging in her back yard when she was a child. And, whenever she played with Barbie dolls she dressed them up as characters in Greek mythology!

Here on the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon Robyn is a Square Supervisor in Grid 47. That means she oversees the day to day excavation of a 10 x 10 meter area within the grid. Robyn's favorite part of the job is the people. She loves meeting new people and teaching them about archaeology. Her least favorite part of the job are the spiders and lack of coffee.

Favorite Tool: WHS trowel
Least Favorite Discovery: A never ending pottery pit she excavated last year
Favorite treat while in Israel: Ice Aroma (basically a mix between a coffee slushie and a coffee milkshake)

Despite a short train strike yesterday, it seems that the students from the first session were able to make it to Rome and most should now be at the airport awaiting their flights. Rangar and his wife Jen and daughter Poppy are safely on their way to Perugia and thence to Florence, and Sarah is down at a conference at the Villa Vergiliana in Cuma...which leaves me in Massa, trying to keep up with the blog!

We had a terrific first session. Some interesting finds, lots of topsoil removed to expose more (and more!) walls, good food and new friendships. Here's our "official" end-of-session group photo at the right. (Clicking on it will bring up a larger size.)

High- and low-lights of the session include finding a second burial (mostly destroyed before we got to it), a few wonderfully preserved coins, France and Italy falling out of the World Cup (and USA and Portugal making it!), the annual party at the Massa Martana circolo (with the usual karaoke performances), our first dig volunteers, Pam and Gordon Mettam (on whom more later), terrific weather with only one rain day, and trips to Ponte Fonnaia, the catacombs, Carsulae, Perugia, Todi, Rome and elsewhere.

Some other photos, in no particular order:

Thursday we closed off the first week with a bang!.

First of all, the weather was beautiful - nice and cool.

Amit’s friends Yehudah and Yossi came to visit and brought with them many treats including cookies and watermelon.

Aren Maeir ad Louise Hitchcock came for a visit and were quite impressed with what we found so far.

And on their way out they caught a glimpse of a whole smashed vessel that Chris and Mindy had discovered.  They were very familiar with this type of vessel, since they have the same vessels at Tell es-Safi/Gath!

Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to some of the team – thanks to David Mescheloff and Eitan for all their hard work!

Yehudah and the watermelon.

Mindy cleaning off the Iron Age II krater

Chris sweeping acrobatically…

The pieces of the whole krater,

And Ido looking good after a great first week!

Hope next week is just as great!

Well, it has been a while since I last posted. I have been in Polis since last weekend and a stable internet connection has been difficult to find. Anyway, quite a few members of PKAP have been here doing ground-penetrating radar, some GPS, and looking at pottery. I will be finishing up here on Wednesday evening and will be back in Larnaka on Thursday. I still have to do a few chores to finish up the PKAP season, such as putting items in storage for next year and cleaning things up. It has been a long and strange season. We have had more issues than ever before - minor issues, but still problems that made things run much less smoothly than we usually do. It will be interesting to see how things shake out over the off season as we determine the success of the season. For my part, we caught up on the pottery processing...well, we are almost caught up, so to me it was a very successful season.

RSM 

1. Adje Both, expert in Aztec and Mesoamerican musical instruments, spent a day looking at our flutes and such. He recorded the sounds of the whole examples. He and I then went to Morelos to look at the material from my excavations there. When he gets back to Germany, he will write up a blog entry on the Calixtlahuaca material, with a link to his recording. These musical instruments are special - we can play them today, and hear the same sounds that the ancient inhabitants of the site heard.
   
2. We are slogging through burned daub again, getting ready to throw out the stuff we don't need and save the informative pieces.
3. Julie is measuring attributes on surface ceramics.
4. Angela and I are working on the seriation. Stay tuned, this will be hot news when we are done.
5. I gave a lecture today, a featured speech at an annual convention of Mexican archaeology students (at the archaeology facility of the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México in Tenancingo). Several of the UAEM students worked with us during our excavations. And several visiting students from the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potisí had taken classes with Peter Kroefges, who worked at Calixtlahuaca in 2006.
   

Today, Louise Hitchcock and I visited Joe Uziel and Itzik Shai’s excavations at Tel Burna. As I mentioned before, they just started the excavation this week and already, they have absolutely fantastic finds! They have uncovered some of the most impressive Iron Age fortifications that I have seen in a long time, along with various other structures. Not only are the fortifications truly awesome, the are very clearly seen, as are many other features on the upper and lower parts of the tell – right near surface with very little, if any, laters layers or features covering them. In addition, it appears that the Iron Age II is the dominant period on the site.

Here is a view of Tel Burna looking west. Notice the excavations on the top of the site (on the upper tell) and the lower tell beneath.

Here is a view of the fantastic corner of the fortification in the upper city, with Joe, Itzik and I looking at it (photo taken by Louise)

Without any exageration, I believe that this project has the potential to become one of the most important Iron Age (“biblical period”) excavations in Israel in the coming years, and it is one of the few large scale excavations of what appears to be a full-blown Judahite site. I think that future seasons of the excavations should produce material of astounding importance.

In fact, if someone was contemplating joining a fresh project, with great directors, great Iron Age (mainly Judahite) finds, and the prospect of a long-term development, I would suggest Tel Burna as the current prime candidate. If anyone out there is looking to join a project, whether as a volunteer, or even better, on an institutional level, I highly recommend thinking about the Tel Burna excavations in the coming years.

Not that Tell es-Safi/Gath is not great – but other important excavations have to be “pushed” as well. And this is definitely a site of central importance – worthy of being “pushed”.

Way to go Itzik and Joe, and all the Burna team!!

Aren

As the season continues, and the finds keep rolling, we would like to remind all of you that in order to keep this project going – we need your help. that help comes in many forms. for some, the contribution is in the field, helping excavate. however no less important is the financial support that is essential for running a dig. If you are interested in helping support our project, please see the link on the side bar, or click here.

Yesterday, I received a complimentary copy (courtesy of the author – thanks David!) of David Ben-Shlomo’s new book on Philistine iconography. I already mentioned the publication of this book in a previous post, but have now finally had a chance to start looking at the book.

This, without doubt is an important study, one which will be extremely important for anyone studying both the Philistines and ancient near eastern art and iconography.

Following a general introduction of the issues at hand, David provides a truly impressive survey of the relevant published (and in many cased unpublished) evidence relating to this topic. While clearly, every excavation season provides new examples to add to the corpus that David assembles, David had provided us with an indispensible tool (and fine analysis) of the relevant materials.

Way to go David!

Aren

Today the weather was much nicer, making it much more pleasant to dig.  We had quite a few friends who hadn’t been at the dig yet join us, including Itzick’s family – David, Ilana and Julio – Tirtza, and Alex Zukerman, and old friend and colleague from Tell es-Safi.  we continued work in all of our squares, but probably the most significant feature discovered today is what seems to be a round silo, with very fine sediment enclosed by field stones.  we will continue to excavate this in the coming days, and see if we can figure out its exact function.

All in all, a very fun day – as you can see by the pictures here (and once again – Amit, Mindy – thanks!)

Julio taking a rest from the hard work,

Here are David and Ilana getting some work done.

Unfortunately, Joel LAmbert, who was with us from the beginning, left us today – thanks for all the help.  we’ll miss you.

here is the silo….

Alex smiling after working on clearing a stone collapse.

Lets keep our fingers crossed for tomorrow!

Italy's third national channel came to the site last week to do a piece on us. See if you can figure out which part is staged. :-)

Today we had our first Tel Tour. It started in Grid 38 where Josh detailed the latest events. In Square 85 Johnathon and his volunteers have waded through Byzantine and Roman period drains on their way to the Persian period and, happily, what appears to be the first well preserved 8th century BCE floor ever found at Ashkelon. That is certainly a big discovery!

One of the goals of Square 85 is to keep moving towards the level of the gray sandbags you can see in this picture and the one below. Last year they uncovered a very important building dating to the Iron 1 period which extends into Square 85. Stay tuned for Johnathon's progress throughout the season as he gets closer and closer to uncovering the remainder of this important building.

Further down in the grid in Dana's square they are dealing with fill layers from the LB 1 period and a house with a courtyard from the LB 2. (LB = Late Bronze Age. The approximate dates for LB 1 are 1550 - 1400 roughly and for LB 2 1400 -1200.)

As mentioned previously, Grid 38 is the longest continually excavated grid on site but much of it is coming to the end of its long winding journey. Dana's may very well complete the excavation of his area this summer after which point Johnathon's square and the quest for the remainder of the Iron 1 building under the sandbags will be the focus of work.

From Grid 38 it was on to Grid 51 and happily I have pictures! Up first, Kate, who you met in our first "Getting to Know You" segment. Here she is explaining her very interesting grid which is newly expanded this season. With the new expansion Kate and her team of supervisors find themselves dealing with a wide range of time periods. They have everything from Islamic and Crusader through the Persian period. All in all some very interesting stratigraphy.

I have a few more details and, I hope, perhaps even a description of the grid from Kate herself who tells me she also has some great pictures to share.

They are very hard to see but if you look at the ground to the right of the volunteer with the red backpack can see some ceramic tiles which come from a Byzantine period villa.

In this picture Kathleen is standing inside a large drain which proved to be much bigger than expected. They also found some great things while excavating it which I hope to have more information on soon!

Under the shade cloth is where the earliest material in Grid 51 comes from. It is here that they hope to come down on the first occupation levels after the 604 BCE destruction of the city.

I realize this is a bit skimpy but pottery washing is fast approaching and I must head off. I promise to have more than just pictures of Grid 51 soon!

Enjoy the dirt!

Today, with the heat wave still going strong, the winds on the site went wild and made digging very difficult.  this was quite upsetting since we had our biggest team out there today.  in the end we managed for most of the day, but closed up an hour early….

however, we didn’t waste time, and headed back to the Kibbutz for pottery washing and reading.  one of our team – Yael, who came for the day – found a sherd with parts of two letters (possibly one being a Yud).  We hope this is thee first of many, and thank Yael for her attentiveness.  Here are some shots for the day.  there is also a short movie on Mindy’s blog, to give you the feeling of what it was like in the wind today.

Seth and Anthony getting a bit dirty,

Debi telling Ari about the pottery he washed.

Happy campers washing pottery.

A slew of workers in Amit’s square

one of the younger members of today’s team.

Itzick and Joe reading pottery.

Itzick explains about our work and some background on the site.

Mindy and Seth trying to hold up the tent.

Another young member of today’s team.

The letters written in ink on the sherd.

Thanks to Yoram, Mindy and Amit for the pictures

As in past years, we're finding a good number of coins again this year, exclusively Roman bronze issues so far. Coins are always fun to find, but yesterday we came upon a pair of coins in a "good" stratum, that is, a stratum of soil that lies below the plough zone and which we can place in relationship to other layers and structures on the site (like a wall or floor, or another stratum of soil). This means a lot more to archaeologists than how well preserved the coins are, because it allows us to use the coins to say something about the history of the site, instead of only admiring them for how nice they look (which is also enjoyable).

What was interesting about these two coins is not only that they were found close to one another (about 20 cm apart), but also that they date to approximately the same time (AD 230s and 240s) and that the later one is in remarkably good condition, so little worn that it could not have been in active circulation for very long.

It's a sestertius of Phillip "the Arab," emperor of Rome in the 240s, who was lucky enough to celebrate the 1000th birthday of the city (21 April 248). Here's an image, which is not as sharp as it might be, but which still shows amazing detail in the hair and eyes. You can perhaps read the inscription, which runs from about 7 o'clock, around over his head clockwise: "IMP M IUL PHILIPPUS AUG."

The rain finally caught up to us today.
After a very wet winter and spring, we were doing pretty well in Umbria, even as north Italy was getting pounded with heavy rains and flooding. That ended this weekend, as the rains hit on and off, finally settling on "on" most of this morning, with the result that we took a break from digging.
After the sun made a brief appearance this afternoon, I planned a quick trip down the Via Flaminia to visit Carsulae and get an update from Prof. Jane Whitehead on their first day of excavation. Carsulae is a little south of us (about 20 minutes by car) and somewhat up in the mountains, so the weather is a bit different...and we managed to find some rain there.
Bottom line: I got to run my first forced-march across an archaeological site in inclement weather. Nothing like the infamous Centro Attack on Pompeii, led by Prof. Paul Harvey in Spring '86, but I do what I can. We ended up damper and slightly worse for wear, but wiser for our experience of the "Pompeii of Umbria."
The forecast for the rest of the week is better, with no rain and highs only in the mid-80s.

Today we had our second day of excavations.  some new aspects were added to our work – Shovel pits, and pottery washing.

Pottery washing, a standard activity at excavations, took place after the field work, back at Kibbutz Beit Nir, who have been very kind in helping us in every which way they can!  the idea behind pottery washing is to clean the sherds found the day before (after having soaked for 24 hours), and then set them out to dry so that we can look at the the next day and gather information about the different features we are excavating.

In addition, today we excavated our first shovel pit (or test pit).  this is a type of survey method, where you dig a small hole (1 meter wide and 20 cm deep), sift all the dirt, and collect the pottery.  this is considered to be more reliable than just picking up sherds on the surface (like we did in 2009).  this fits in with our goals of improving survey methods used, which will enable future projects to gather more information through survey, a method less destructive than excavation (as you know archaeologists love to dig destruction, but we also destroy as we dig).

here are some shots from today:

here are Seth, Anthony and Mor working on the shovel pit,

and sifting the dirt from the test pit.

Amit explains to the crew the principles of taking the height of finds using the dumpy level

Eitan washing pottery,

and the pottery drying on the table (the closest pieces are large fragments of Iron Age II bowls found near the fortification wall).

Again, thanks to Mindy and Amit for the photos.

Today, Louise Hithcock and I had the opportunity to visit Ami Mazar’s excavations at Tel Rehov, in the Beth Shean Valley. The excavations, which have been going on since 1997 (and this is the 10th season), have uncovered rich remains from various periods, in particular from the Iron Age. Just last week, an article on the Anatolian origin of the bees from the unique apiary from the site was published in the prestigious journal PNAS (with evidence that “stinging bees” arrived from Turkey not only in modern times…;-)).

Ami and his staff showed us around the site and the VERY impressive finds, including a very impressive LB public building, and the very dense stratigraphic evidence of the Iron I through Iron IIA that they are excavating.

And by the way – I noticed two things: 1) It is definitely hotter at Rehov than at Safi; 2) Our breakfasts at Safi are MUCH better…

Aren

Today, Itzik, Joe and the Tel Burna team had their first day of excavations. After having spent the week surveying, cleaning bushes, and marking squares, today the officially started to excavate.

They have started uncovering the very impressive fortifications on site – and it looks like this will be a very important, and interesting Iron Age site.

Who knows – perhaps the’ll be able to determine whether this is the fact biblical Libnah.

Best of luck with the rest of the season!!!!

Aren

Today was the day!!!! We were 14 people making history at Tel Burna, as we began the first excavation ever at the site!

We started the day putting up the shades:

We then split up into four squares, which we set up in order to create a section along the eastern slope.  And we couldn’t of asked for a better first day…..

We managed to move plenty of dirt….

and along the way, we managed to catch the outer face of the fortifications,

and we found some nice pottery along the way (mostly from the Iron Age), including this piece of an oil lamp

with some hard work, we got a lot done and hope that the good times continue.

Thanks to Mindy and Amit for the pictures!

I am most tardy with a blog entry so without further ado here is the answer to the most recent "What? Where? When?"

This is a dog burial that dates to the Persian period, approximately 538 - 322 BCE. Between 1985 and 1992 over 1200 dog finds were recorded during the excavation of Ashkelon. Typically single dogs were found in shallow, unlined pits dug into large fill layers. Sometimes they were found dug into narrow streets. The burials were at many different heights suggesting, perhaps, that the burial of the dogs happened sporadically. There is no evidence that the dogs were either killed or diseased. And there is no evidence, such as skewed limbs or other types of distortions, that the dogs were just thrown into the pits. Rather, the dogs were generally buried on their sides with their tails carefully arranged to curl toward their feet.

What can we say about the dogs? Both male and female dogs were buried. They ranged in age from just a few days to extreme old age. There never was any evidence that one type of dog was selected over others although puppies did make up the largest percentage of burials. What about the breed? One of no particular ancestry. Parallels for this outside of Ashkelon are few and far between. If you want to learn more you can read the work of Dr. Brian Hesse and Dr. Paula Wapnish who have studied and written about Ashkelon's dog burials.

We will have another "Getting to Know You" this week. Stay tuned. I also hope to have a guest write a paragraph or two about Grid 51. We will have photos too... Fingers crossed. I know they have been dealing with a big drain which means that things have undoubtedly been interesting of late.

On the recording front. Another way we record information is to take photos of objects, architecture and, of course, stratigraphic relationships amongst other things. So here, for instance Ryan is cleaning a large piece of stone so that we could photograph it before doing any further work.

And it is a good thing we decided to take the picture. Last Friday we decided to expand the area of Grid 47, where I work in the theatre, in order to better expose the entirety of the building. So today we had a little extra help and the results couldn't be more impressive -- or messy, truth be told. We'll be cleaning up for a while but that's okay. We'll also have a much better understanding of the building.

So what exactly did we do? Well, stay tuned for pictures from tomorrow's work.

Wednesday is our first tell tour so we should be able to get the scoop on the other grids.

And for today a return to "Who? What? When?"

Until next time, the dirt is ready. Get digging!

The museum team from the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project finished packing up the museum on Friday and is heading off to Polis on the western part of the island to check out the work of the Princeton Polis Expedition.  They have not only substantial quantities of Late Antique pottery for Scott, but a pair of Early Christian basilicas (for me) and some Roman and Byzantine wall painting (for Sarah). 

Packing up at the end of the season provides a useful perspective on the quantity of material that we have processed and analyzed during the year, and need to synthesize in the off season.  The stacked creates filled with artifacts represent order from the chaos of real fieldwork and provide the basis for both the chronological and functional analysis of both our survey area and our various soundings.

In general, this was a successful season, although the various small projects, student volunteers, site visits, issues with the British base, and bizarre archaeo-political controversies conspired to give it a bit of a disjointed feeling. 

And the real success of the season will only be evident this off season as the various members of the team continue to work to write up the results of our 7+ seasons of fieldwork.

 

There might be a bit of radio silence from the blog over the next week, as we might not have the same degree of internet connective in Polis.  But I'll be back blogging by the end of the week.  Don't you worry.

Today, I received a copy of the excellent paper that was just published in the prestigious journal “Science“, by my good friend Ezra Marcus (see here a small clip with Ezra talking about his research on maritime archaeology) and his collaborators.

The paper is:
Bronk Ramsey, C., Dee, M. W., Rowland, J. M., Higham, T. F. G., Harris, S. A., Brock, F., Quiles, A., Wild, E. M., Marcus, E. S., and Shortland, A. J. 2010. Radiocarbon-Based Chronology for Dynastic Egypt. Science 328: 1554–57.

For those of you who have access, here is a link where the paper can be found.

The paper, which presents the first detailed 14C dating for the historical time frame in Egypt covering the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom, is an extremely important piece of research, which clearly will be one of the central foundations for the discussion of Egyptian chronology (and that of other regions in the ancient world) for years to come.

And for those of you will be on our team this summer, note that Ezra will be giving a lecture for the team this season!

Congrads to Ezra and co.!!!

Aren

On Thursday we completed our first week of work. the day was filled with various activities, including more cleaning of the thorns, setting up our grid of squares with J (the team’s surveyor/architect/draftsman), and marking the squares for Sunday when we will begin working int he squares. here are some shots of what we were doing:

Here is Shawn helping J mark the grid, using the reflector of the Total Station.

Here is J taking readings for the grid with his Total Station

Here are Joel, Joel and Shawn marking the squares.

And here is one more agricultural installation – picture courtesy of Shawn French (thanks Shawn!)

Later in the day, we were told that our license was finalized and we could begin on Sunday as planned! I went out to celebrate with 45000 other people, including my wife, cousins and Elton John.

All in all, it was quite a productive first week of work, and we hope that next week will continue on this path.

As another field season comes to a close, it is useful to reflect back on some of our mistakes over the past few years.  I am pleased to say that no mistakes were so significant that archaeological information was lost.  On the other hand, most of these mistakes brought a certain amount of inconvenience to our seasons and set us back in time, energy, and sometimes other resources.

1. Not applying for a single, big grant. Over the past eight seasons, PKAP has been fortunate to be funded by a series of small to mid-sized grants.  The support of numerous organizations not only made our initial fieldwork possible, but also made it possible for us to take advantage of opportunities (like excavation and more robust remote sensing campaigns) that were not present at the project's onset, bring in collaborators from around the world, and to introduce over 50 students to field archaeology and the island of Cyprus. The downside of relying on small to mid-sized grants is that each fall became a frantic scramble for resources to fund the next season. Each spring, as we waited on the grants, became an exercise in speculative accounting as we produce multiple budgets and plans based on the possible level of funding provided by our outstanding grant applications.  Fortunately, we always received enough support to pursue our most optimistic plans, but the wait (particularly over the last few years as "changes" in the global economy made it difficult to predict funding levels) was excruciating.  Next time we conduct a multi-year archaeological project in the Mediterranean, we will make it contingent upon receiving a multi-year grant.

2. Messing with the Cypriot Bronze Age. While I am not a liberty to go into details about this mistake, I have learned that the Cypriot Bronze Age is not fun nor is it necessarily an open field for inquiry.  It seems best for specialists in Late Antiquity working on a largely historical site, to steer very clear of the Late Bronze Age and other messy pre-historic periods in Cyprus.

3. Identifying an Early Christian basilica on Vigla from resistivity results.  After conducting a substantial campaign of electrical resistivity survey in 2007, we concluded that an Early Christian basilica stood atop the coastal height of Vigla. In fact, our scrutiny of the architecture directed the location of our trenches in 2008.  It only took a few days of excavating to discover that the remains on Vigla were not associated with an Early Christian church, and moreover, were not monumental.  Now it appears that we have a Classical to Hellenistic fortified settlement on the height.  (For more on this, see here and here)

4. Flying PKAP Airship One on a windy day.

5. Conducting a study season without a registrar. At one point this year, I looked over the numerous scholars and students working on PKAP material and could see no order to the chaos.  In past years, our registrar has brought order to chaos and allowed for the smooth movement of material through processing and study.  This year, we proceeded without a registrar - a feat only attempted once before - and the results were terrifying.  Well-labeled (fortunately) artifacts everywhere, forms everywhere, well-labeled (phew!) pottery bags everywhere, scholars and specialists everywhere, and me frantically trying to keep up with various questions and requests on my lap top while attempting to analyze the data.  Fortunately, a long, hot, day in the museum last

There are some honorable mentions to this list: working on Cyprus in late July and August for one year, working on a site in the British Sovereign Area (paperwork on top of paperwork!), waiting for five years before discovering how useful a camp manager was to the project, and leaving too little time each season to wrap up all the odds and ends in a calm and collected way. 

Despite these mistakes, we are pleased with the results of our 8 years of relatively intensive field work and study.  We don't lose artifacts, we haven't lost a student (and have had remarkably few "problem" students), and we are well on our way to produce a monograph length study of our work. So, if I am lucky enough to embark on another project like PKAP, I can only hope that it turns out as well.

I have been appreciative of the support expressed over the PKAP Airship 1 mishap, and concerned over the amount of humor people seem to draw from our .....willingness to push the boundaries. That sounds good. Anyway, the PKAP airship will be flying again on Friday or Saturday, so who knows what might happen. Several people have written me concerned that I am neglecting my potato chip flavor research - au contraire, mi amigo. So, latest research now includes:

• Caramelized Onion and Balsamic Vinegar -- ******* (7)
• Tzatziki -- * (1)
• Mexican Peppers and Cream -- ******** (8)
• Oven Roasted Chicken with Lemon and Thyme -- **** (4)

Former flavors:

• Argentinean Steak -- ***** (5)
• Barbecue -- ******** (8)
• Cheese and Onion -- *** (3)
• English Cheese on Toast -- ***** (6)
• Greek Salsa -- **** (4)
• Mediterranean Herb -- ****** (6)
• Prawn Cocktail -- ********** (10)
• Salt and Vinegar -- ******* (7)
• Brazilian Mango and Chile -- **** (4)
• Thai Sweet Chile -- ** (2)
• Oregano -- ******** (8)
• Quavers with Cheese -- ******* (7)

RSM

I just posted an article on our 2006 season, the surface survey:

Smith, Michael E., Juliana Novic, Angela Huster and Peter C. Kroefges (2009) Reconocimiento Superficial y Mapeo en Calixtlahuaca. Expresión Antropológica 36:39-55.

Also, there is a link to this at the right, under "Links".

I plan to put this and other papers onto our project website, but I am having trouble editing the html here in Mexico (I don't have my regular editing program, and the one I downloaded is difficult to work with). This is one reason why blogs and wikis, etc., are easier than traditional websites.

We've had some recent papers at meetings.

Huster, Angela (2008) Scraping and Spinning: Maguey Fiber Production at Calixtlahuaca, Mexico. Paper presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting, Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver.

Novic, Juliana (2008) Reaching the City Limits: Identifying Settlement Boundaries at Calixtlahuaca, Toluca, Mexico. Paper presented at the 2008 Annual Meeting, Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver.

And there are a couple of papers accepted for publication and now in press:

Smith, Michael E. (2010) Las ciudades prehispánicas: su traza y su dinámica social. In Nueva Historia General del Estado de México, tomo 2, periodo postclásico (IN PRESS), edited by Rosaura Hernández Rodríguez and Raymundo César Martníez García. El Colegio Mexiquense, Toluca.

Tomaszewski, Brian M. and Michael E. Smith (n.d.) Politics, Territory, and Historical Change in Postclassic Matlatzinco (Toluca Valley, central Mexico). Journal of Historical Geography (accepted for publication).

If you need copies of any of these, email the author(s).

The Summer 2010 Field Season began with the arrival of over 40 archaeologists, architects, surveyors and specialists to Mt. Lykaion on June 5th. The group, which will expand to over 60 people through the course of the summer, is a dynamic mix of experienced veterans and fresh faces.

After a three(ish) hour drive from the Athens airport, dinner prepared by cook Sam McBride at the Ano Karyes “dining palace,” and a full night’s rest, Wednesday morning began with an orientation to the site and project. See after the jump for pictures of the group preparing the lab and excavation equipment for use and the initial site tour.

Trench supervisors (from left) Amanda Chain, Clivia Zois, Kathryn McBride, and Emily Graff divy up excavation equipment while others watch on from the porch of the Ano Karyes cultural center — the structure soon to become the project’s laboratory.

Co-director David Gilman Romano introduces the group to the bathhouse on the afternoon site tour Wednesday, June 16th.

Several people have asked me whether there is any significance to the fact that we are starting on the 4th of July.

Well, there is no connection to the US independence day, as well as to the date of the Battle of Hittin in 1187 CE.

On the other hand, perhaps it is connected to the observation of a supernova in 1054 CE…

Actually, it is just the first Sunday in July. Boring…

Aren

Although we are only starting on the 4th of July, we are now in the midst of the accelerated preparations for the dig.

Most of my days in recent weeks has been taken up by various coordinations relating to the dig, whether taking care money issues (payments, receipts, bills, etc.), ordering equipment and services (such as rental cars, buses, R&B), and doing a thousand and one things that have to be done. I would be nice to have a full time office service to take care of this…

In the week prior to the excavation, we have a few planned days, including: a day in which some of the team will be learning how to use a new “Total Station” that we have purchased; and a day on the site when we will remark old excavation squares and mark new squares with the help of Yehuda Shapira, our surveyor. We will also check out the preparations at Kibbutz Revadim that day.

In addition, we have been collecting the various equipment from BIU and from our storage containers, and if needed, are purchasing more.

All told – the various preparations are almost unending – but really – only almost! In the end – they do end…

The season is really about to start and I have a gut feeling that this is going to be a very special season!

Aren

Blogger offers some new design templates, so I am trying one out. In addition to the colors and such, the text frame is now wider.

We are working in the lab at the Colegio Mexiquense now, and should be posting more frequently!

Here is a very low-resolution version of the plan of unit 307, the house that yielded most of the Spaniards with hats.

Let me know if you like or dislike this new format for the blog.

Massa Martana's hard-working "stagista" sent out a few press releases yesterday and today. And we had a visit from the local edition of the national network, RAI. So I'll post these as I get to them.

• Good Morning, Umbria!
• UmbriaLeft

So......after the resounding success of our first flight with the PKAP Airship 1 (a helikite with a camera attached), we decided to fly it again today.Since our first attempt with it went so well, we immediately decided that since we were now expert aviators, we could be........less careful....or perhaps more daring with our attempt. We spent the morning at the museum finishing up our pottery analysis and were unable to get to the site until around 4.  In the afternoon, the winds always pick up due to thermal inversion and today was no different. We immediately noticed that helikite was much more difficult to control and exerted a lot of pull on the lines. It was hard enough to control the line that Bill made use of the gloves I brought to use with the helikite (as usual while I was much mocked for this, they turned out to be very useful). We then walked to helikite down the coastal plain and out into the infilled harbor taking photos at an oblique angle. During this period we noticed that the camera (a Nikon Coolpix P6000) was......moving around much more than on our previous attempt (it was actually gyrating wildly at times). We ended up taking about 600 photos, many of which were unusable - pictures of the helikite, the horizon, the sun, etc. Some turned out quite well and are very interesting.

Once we reached the harbor we turned around and headed back (cue Jaws music). We immediately noticed that since we were walking into the wind, the pull was much stronger on the line and the helikite was much more erratic. We had almost reached our starting point when the helikite suddenly started darting around, much like a fish on a fishing line. When we stopped walking, it turned and suddenly swooped toward the ground, but pulled up before it crashed. Thoughts of a certain tragic historic event crossed my mind.

(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hindenburg_burning.jpg)

The helikite regained its height and so we proceeded. From this point on, everything moved in slow motion. The kite turned and dove at the ground and literally bounced off the ground and back into the air. I asked Bill if he though the camera was still working and he said he doubted it since "...the helikite had spiked the camera into the ground." The helikite immediately bounced off the ground again and this time as it bounced up, the camera was catapulted off the mount and out into space where it spun like a top all the way down until it crashed to the ground. All I could think about was a scene from my favorite Christmas movie - A Christmas Story (For one brief moment I saw all the bolts silhouetted against the lights of the traffic. And then they were gone. Oh, fudge! Only l didn't say ''fudge.'). Anyway, the camera is totally shot and I am wondering if I should return it to Nikon claiming it was clearly defective since it failed to survive a fall from a mere 50 feet.

Preparing for ejection.

The final moment of PKAP's Nikon coolpix P6000. A moment of silence please. So, how many Ph.Ds does it take to safely fly a helikite? Evidently more than 2.

RSM

Today we completed our third day of work in the field.  we have been focusing on cleaning along the northern side of the tell, where the fortification walls are best seen today.  We have been cleaning along the walls, and have extended the exposure of the segment that Aharoni and Amiran had already seen 50 years ago, to reach the northwest corner of the summit, creating a nice segment of wall.  here you can see the team that was on site today (and thanks to them for their hard work) in front of that same segment of wall.

From Left to right: Debi, Shawn, Joel, Joe, Joel and HooGoo (thanks to Amit who took the picture).

Here’s some of the gang having breakfast (You see, sometimes we do rest)

And here is the eastern end of the north side, with the upper wall exposed.

Lets hope for more fun finds!!!

Work continues and everyone seems to be making progress. I went on a field trip to Grid 51 today and saw Dr. Kate's newly expanded empire which is quite impressive. One of the most interesting things I saw in her grid was a floor made of mudbrick tiles! There were a number of other interesting things to see in the grid and I hope to post pictures soon so that everyone back home can see all the exciting material.

We have found a number of interesting artifacts in Grid 47 this week from the very large to the very small. For instance, we found a large architectural fragment. We think it might have decorated the of the theatre we are excavating. Ryan is making sure that the marble fragment is labeled so that we know where it came from. Behind him, Mark is entering data into the computer so that everything is recorded properly. We have been finding many pieces of the building as we dig. We have found roof tiles, floor tiles. fresco fragments, mosaic floor fragments and much more. Today we also found a blade or knife made out of iron. The most exciting thing about it was that part of the wooden handle was still preserved which is rather unusual. The knife came from a pit where we found a lot of interesting things including lots of broken pots, a large number of iron nails and lots and lots of bones.

And finally, for the students at Hamilton Elementary. Perry was there when Emily, one of our volunteers, found her fourth oil lamp of the summer! Everyone agrees she is very lucky.

I want to send out a big thank you to the Hamilton students and families who have been following our work here on the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon. I know that the school year is almost over but you can keep following our work until July 16th when the season ends.

Next entry the answer to our last "What? Where? When?" And hopefully, a new staff member for everyone to meet.

Until then, the dirt is plentiful.

Sunday was a big day for the project. Our helikite, nicknamed the "PKAP Airship 1" (all PKAP things - people, gadgets, etc. eventually receive a nickname), made a successful maiden voyage. We took it out to Koutsopetria and set up shop. It was quite an operation and required 2 cars. The hardest part was getting the tank of helium

 

out to the site in our small cars. The rest was downhill after that...sort of. Flying a helikite takes a bit of practice. It had great lift and we had no problem getting it to the right altitude. Making sure it stayed centered over the area we wanted to photograph, however, was a bit more complicated. We eventually were able to get that sorted out and the setup produced some great results. That was a bit of a relief for me, since there have been a lot of jokes made about the helikite and the possible outcomes.

RSM

An afternoon with the newest tool in the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project arsenal, PKAP Airship One, produced a series of spectacular aerial photographs (the adventure of the airship was documented by Dallas Deforest here).

I did some quick, post-processing of the low-altitude aerial photographs, which I document below.  My main interest was transforming the aerial photographs into quick plan views.  I first georeferenced the image (and orthorectified them to compensate for any distortion) using a series of points acquired by GPS. 

I then sketched in the most visible features in the photograph in ArcGIS.  The final image is a drawing, base on the photo, prepared for ground-truthing this afternoon in the field.

 

Robert Deutsch has notified me that another bulla that is about to be published in the second volume on the Kaufman collection (already noted here), may also be connected to the site of Gath.

Robert has been kind enough to write to me that: “there is another fiscal bulla (no. 661) reading: “Belonging to Azar, son of Gitti” (the Gittite)”.

This is the picture of the bulla that Robert has sent me.

UPDATE: Robert has now also kindly supplied a line drawing of the bulla – here it is:

Several questions arise from this:
1) Does “gitti” mean someone from Gath? Or perhaps, could it be a private name of someone not from Gath?
2) Once again, as noted with the two last posts (here and here), this is of interest, but due to the fact that it derives from a collection and its provenance and/or authenticity are not 100% clear, one has to relate to it with caution.

3) But if this is authentic, and it does in fact refer to a “Gittite” (= a person from Gath), that is very interesting.
4) If the latter, we now have to hope to find such objects in the excavation, from a clear context!

Aren

Today was the first day of the 2010 season (and the same day that we reached 4000 hits on the blog – hooray!).

7 of us were out in the field, cleaning, surveying and preparing for the fun to come in the next three weeks.  here are a few shots of the activities today:

Here is the team climbing the tell.

Here is one of the wall sfound on the summit after cleaning.  near the wall is a nice pillar base, and possibly another wall, forming a building ont he summit. 

Here is Debi near on olive press that we discovered.

And finally here is an additional olive press that we found:

And this is just the begining….

The PKAP season is drawing to a close. Our students have left the island (en masse this morning), and I'll be leaving tomorrow for the Korinthia. Today those of us remaining decided that we should make good use of our time. So we flew a kite. 

Yes, PKAP Airship One had its maiden voyage today, and it was successful. I'll let the pics talk: 

PKAP One runs on helium. It's heavy. 

The magic begins. 

PKAP One takes shape. 

The Eyes of PKAP One. Ready for lift off.

Lift off!

Operating a Helikite requires some important equipment: 

Most importantly, every Helikite operator needs special Helikite Gloves. 

PKAP One, aloft the Sad Wings of Destiny 

As much fun as it was to fly a kite on a hot Cypriot summer day, there is actually a purpose to all of this. PKAP One took some good aerial shots of the site. These photos will provide the basis for digital plans of the excavated area. We also took infrared shots with another camera, which should give us some additional information about the site beyond the fence. 

So much for the 2010 PKAP field season.

djd

Luke Mace

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

    After our long day in Nicosia, the entire PKAP team went to the legendary Black Turtle restaurant for a mezze meal and a relaxing evening.  I value this experience because I feel like I was served a very traditional Cypriot style meal.  The wine, the food, and the music were all incredible.  Furthermore, it was great to see everybody loosened up a bit.  I was able to have meaningful conversations with a few people and thoroughly enjoyed the night.  While we were eating, a few locals showed up, and they ended up dancing with some of my fellow students.  This was both entertaining and encouraging to witness.  It reminded me of what is truly valuable in life.  Namely, friendship, community, and love.  The musicians, who played traditional Greek songs, were very skilled and passionate.  The venue encouraged comradeship and conversation around the dinner table.  Additionally, it was a special treat to see David dancing (witnessing one’s Professor dancing is not a necessarily common thing).  As I sat at dinner, I reflected on how sad it is that American culture has seemed to shift away from the long, family-style dinner.  Due to work schedules and various factors, the majority of people seem to eat fast food or take their meals separately.  It is refreshing to be reminded of the value of a simple conversation over dinner.  The message I walked away from the Black Turtle with is to remember to enjoy the simple pleasures in life.  Slow down and admire the view, so to speak.

Installment #2. Took me a few days to get the audio done (but it's my third post today!).

June 10, 2010

            I’m not sure that I will ever be able to look at the ground again without searching for artifacts.  After a long day of fieldwork, I am sitting here with dirt encrusted under my fingernails and visions of tile and pottery running through my mind.  Yesterday we mapped out a 40 x 40 meter unit and did a walking survey over its surface using clickers to keep track of how many pieces of pottery and tiles we found.  Since it rained this morning we needed to complete the survey again.  We found that the rain made the artifacts more visible.  Our count was higher today for both pottery and tile than it was yesterday.  

Today we cleared two 10 x 10 quadrants using a technique called “hoovering.”  This is a technique that involves collecting all the artifacts within a quadrant and counting them to see the correlation between what we counted during the survey and what was actually collected.  We found some interesting pieces of pottery, including a piece with African Red Slip.  We also found numerous pieces of tiles and a few pieces of ancient glass and marble.  I’ve learned that excavation is definitely not the only way to practice archaeology.  Surveying and, specifically, hoovering can give us an idea of what could possibly be lying beneath the soil.  Tomorrow we will continue our research as we hoover through two more quadrants to collect more data. 

 

Thought I'd give it a try. After much fussing with iMovie, here's my first attempt:

The place we're staying at hosts wedding receptions on the weekends and our kitchen overlooks the garden where they party. Today we got a great view of an interesting wedding game, in which the groom dons what appears to be a large banana with a needle attached to its end and the bride a belt of balloons which the groom bursts using his, uh, banana.

While I was off in Perugia on Friday, one of the teams found two Roman coins, one of which was in excellent condition. Although we believe the stratum it was found in is essentially the bottom of the plough zone, and so not very informative for dating any phase of the site, it's always fun to find a nicely preserved coin. The obverse has the profile of Faustina the Younger, the cousin and wife of Marcus Aurelius and mother of Commodus (of Gladiator fame), while the reverse, shown here, has the goddess Juno with her favorite bird, the peacock, to her left. Faustina is called "Augusta" on the coin, a title she was given in AD 161; she died in 175 after a trip to the Roman east with Marcus, so the manufacture of this coin can be fairly narrowly dated. (Ooh, and I took this picture with my nifty new tripod, which lets me do macro shots like this even in low light.)

It is kind of bitter sweet that tomorrow I will be leaving to go back to the United States. I have done so much stuff while I was here that I would love to stay here longer, but our time has run out and so I must say goodbye to Cyprus and everyone here on the project. 

This past week has been probably the best week so far for the project because we have slowly got the permits that we needed to be out in the field and be able to do things to help move along the process.  In the past week I got to help draw walls, help excavate a little to find the outside of the wall, do some field walking, do some hoovering, and a lot of awesome field work.  We were still in the museum too so I also got to do some of the fun stuff there as well.  I also helped the GPR team set up some areas for them to GPR this past week which was pretty cool too.

Throughout this trip I have learned exactly what a true archeologist does in their work. It is not just field work that makes this all work. Without intense museum work the field work would be completely useless because it would not make as much sense.  This material being read in the museum is an essential part of the project, and even though it does get monotonous I have grown to respect the patience, time, and energy that all these great people of this project have put into reading pottery, putting stuff into a database, and much more. 

Now, I will be leaving tomorrow but a small team will still be here, and I hope that they will do a lot more work in moving this along now that they have all the clearances they need. 

I hope that one day I will be able to work in this or another archaeological project again.

Zane Bachert

This week has been a busy one on the ground here in Italy as preparations for the 2010 excavation campaign are in full swing. The list of chores is long - from purchasing supplies, reorganizing the logistics area, cleaning - but each task completed brings us closer to the beginning of what promises to be an exciting season in the field. During the last few days we have been expanding the limits of two of our excavation areas with the careful help of a mechanical digger and a dump truck. By scraping away some topsoil the directors are able to verify the subsurface situation in terms of preserved archaeology and, thus far, the indications of some interesting new features are beginning to emerge. We are looking forward to the arrival of the field staff on 13 June - just more than one week from today!

The place name “Gath” seems to be very popular nowadays. Having just mentioned the about-to-be-published bulla which may mention the king of Gath a few day ago, Prof. Bezalel Porten (HU), has now kindly informed me that he is currently working on the analysis of a Persian Period ostracon from a private collection, one of the scores of Aramaic ostraca that are in private collections, that apparently derive from Kh. el-Kom (most probably biblical Makkedah) in the Judean Shephelah. These ostraca, which many have already been published and many more are being worked on, were all excavated illicitly and reached various collectors in Israel and throughout the world.

Prof. Porten has informed me that the specific ostracon (No. ISAP897 [ISAP = Institute for the Study of Aramaic Ostraca]) has the following on it:
“It’s beautifully and spaciously written.
Line 1: Saadel
Line 2: semolina (n$yp), k(or) 1
Line 3: on 22 of Elul BGT”

What is the meaning and signficance of this:
In theory, this could be interpreted as: the person Saadel, delivered one kor (a measurement) of semolina, on the 22nd of the month of Elul, at Gath.
In principal, there is clear evidence for the Persian period at Gath (see the Persian period at Gath discussed here) so this would fit in with this interpretation.

On the other hand, this should be qualified:
1) This is an unprovenanced find from a collection, which immediately raises “red flags” as to provenance, authenticity, etc.
2) If GT is the name of a place, is this the Gath located at Tell es-Safi? There are other places called Gath in the Land of Israel, although in light of the probable origin of this ostracon (along with other, similar ostraca), from the southern Shephelah, our Gath is the closet site of this name.
3) Does the word GT refer to a place name? Could this refer to a location where there was a olive or wine press? Or even perhaps, GT may have the general meaning of a place where agricultural produce is collected?

Thus, once again, one gets “mixed feelings” from this. It would be very nice if this refers to our Gath, and in principal this is possible. On the other hand, this cannot be clearly proven.

What would be nice would be to find a collection of Aramaic ostraca from Tell es-Saf/Gath… (ok – we’ll add this to our list as well!)

Aren

Over the last four or five years, we've witnessed first hand the work of looters on our site in Cyprus.  Their work with metal detectors has left pockmarked fields in their wake, and this past year they left a 2 m deep hole at the site of Vigla. 

The hole was probably not worth the looters efforts as all it did was expose a 2 m high stretch of fortification wall which I diligently worked with Dimitri Nakassis to document yesterday evening.

This sectional of wall is the best preserved stretch of the wall surrounding the height of Vigla.  Even more useful, it is the only stretch visible (for the moment at least) on the northern side of the height and confirmed our suspicions regarding the course of the wall in this area.  Unfortunately, its excavation by looters prevented us from retrieving any significant chronological data from the hole despite a few pieces of coarse ware scattered about inside the hole.