2009

Earlier this season Andrea, our illustrious illustrator, was commenting that she’s been digging for 4 years and hasn’t found anything of great importance. Of course, the fact that Andrea spends lots of her time drawing stuff other people unearth (wall, floors, etc.) may be one reason why she’s been so, shall we say, “unlucky.” Today (Monday) she was drawing the basalt stone floor in square F8, a complicated area with a small room to one side and staircase to nowhere uncovered by Arny’s Army and cleaned by Arny personally just yesterday. F8 is on the southwest side of the site; most of us were working in the nave and on the northeast side. Suddenly Andrea was yelling, “Dr. Schuler, Dr. Schuler, come and look!” “What did you find?” someone yelled back. “It’s writing!” she replied. Here’s what Andrea found:





Here’s Andrea, proudly posing in front of the inscription, which Professor Arthur Segal thinks is a stone in secondary use:





Here’s the first line of the inscription in legible format. It says “Good fortune …”





Check back later for more information! I took a long video of Arthur Segal reading it with Andrea making goofy faces, but getting my movies converted and posted takes a LONG time! Arny claims to have heard Professor Segal translating the inscription to read, “Roman Temple: Three blocks west.”

These are the best of the “small finds” (stuff other than pottery that we carry down off the dig site) from the first 2 weeks. We also found lots of nails, but they’re pretty boring to look at, so I’m skipping those photos! Except for Brennan, who’s a student at Concordia, Ann Arbor, ALL the people with the cool finds from the first two weeks are from Irvine. We’re not sure if we want them back (because they find such good stuff) or if we’re glad their gone so that other people get a chance. Just kidding, guys!


Will found this marble mortar used for grinding. If it’s just a plain old kind of rock, we call such items “grinding bowls.”





So here’s Will’s buddy Eric with part of a grinding bowl he found.





Here’s Brennan with a mysterious item made of metal. We’ll see what Small Finds Coordinator Kristina decides to call this curious item in the 2009 report.





Eagle-eyed Jen made this amazing find the first week. I’ve seen fragments of oil lamps before on the dig site and intact ones in museums, but never a fully intact one that just came out of the ground. Good thing it was Jen digging in this spot and not Darryl with a pick axe!



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Ellie is holding another metal item still to be officially named. It’s a tiny spoon with a long handle that may have been used to measure medicine.



Here’s Jen AGAIN wearing the cross (a metal alloy) that she found in the same square as the oil lamp. The cleaned version can be viewed on the main website as one of the rotating photos at the top of the page.





Ashley is pictured here with the coin she found. It’s one of several uncovered the first two weeks. Coins get sent off to a specialist in Haifa for cleaning and identification, so people will have to read the report next year to find out more about the coins!





It’s Tuesday afternoon here. We had a good day on the dig site: croissants for breakfast; Popsicles with our fruit break, AND A REALLY INTERESTING FIND BY ANDREA. I’ll be working on that post next, so stay tuned!!

Colleen: Hope you made it home safely. See how far we got today on your column!

First off, square “ZZ99” indicates one of the many surprises in the NE church complex. When “the other Dr. Schuler” (that is, the archaeologist, not the blogger) first laid out the grid for the church in 2002, he thought row A1 was as far east and north as he would need to excavate. NOT!
Rachel’s team of Cheeseheads (all hail from Wisconsin) worked and worked and worked in square ZZ99. Here they are on a break, from left to right: Rachel Hedberg (returning volunteer from Seoul, S. Korea); Ellie Bach from Concordia, Irvine; Anna Fink from Concordia, St. Paul; and kneeling in front, Emilie Bach, sister of Ellie.





“Gosh!” you’re probably thinking, “I didn’t know everyone had to wear hardhats to dig.” You’re right. Everyone doesn’t—just the “lucky” women of ZZ99, who had to dig and dig down three, yes, THREE METERS (that’s over 9 feet)! Below are the Bach sisters (they have such great musical talent, one wonders if they’re related to JS himself) smiling UP for the camera.





When they found the top of the door jam on Monday of week 2, it confounded Dr. Archaeology Schuler because the door opened the opposite way he predicted. It took them another two day (a total of nine dig days) to find the threshold at floor level:





I think they missed this spectacular sunrise from Wednesday morning because they were deep in their pit:




Ellie and Emilie and everyone from Irvine (plus Heidi, Colleen, and Tina), we miss you already!

Please excuse the poor quality of this video! It was filmed on the boat ride arranged by Veteran Digger Darryl Schmidt for Thursday night, July 16. For more pictures and commentary about the boat ride, see Andrea and Cameron’s blog and photos.
Jody and Jocelyn Harrison were here as volunteers for the Haifa team. They each came up on alternate days while the other stayed on the kibbutz with the kids. Some days Max and Chloe came up for part of the dig day. The entire family joined us for our Sunday evening worship on July 5 and 12, and Darryl invited them to join the group on the 2 hour boat ride on the Sea of Galilee this past Thursday. It was a great closing activity for the Harrison’s and the Irvine Group, both of whom left this weekend.