Catching up!

Friday we rose before the sun, ate and boarded a bus headed to the site. Who knew we’d travel all this way to sweep and pull weeds? But that describes most of our first day as archeologists. Indiana Jones never mentioned this. Field M, marked out beforehand with rebar and heavy string, required steady attention with brooms, dust pans, and the occasional trowel to remove stubborn grass. Graeme and Rebecca, along with the field M team, swept loose dirt and debris blown in since last season (2008), collected it in quffas (pronounced goofas) – wide, shallow buckets made of old tire rubber, and carried it all to the sift stations set up for each square. Before housekeeping, we drove long pipes into sift heaps created near the edge of the mound last season and hung mesh sifts (I feel tempted to call them sieves, however, this term is not used) from nylon rope. Anita, an Australian student attending Canadian University College, taught me two clever knots in the process.

Once the contents of a quffa is dumped onto the mesh tray, it’s given a vigorous shake sending a cloud of fine dust into the breeze, generally away from the sifter, but even with favorable winds a share blows back into the face etc. (This makes for muddy nose blowing later.) What rubble remains is searched for bits of pottery, bone or chert (rock used as tools). These are placed in the potter bucket (bearing a label with pertinent information for accurate data) or bone bag and cleaned later. Even clean-up produced a few interesting things such as a camel tooth, several pieces of bone, and about half a bucket of pottery pieces.

After what seemed like half the day, I checked my watch – 7:45. The 5:30 start distorts one’s sense of time. Lizzy Brown, field M supervisor, called a water break and told the team that a digging lesson would follow second breakfast. Second breakfast! Local workers busied themselves setting up 10 foot wood poles, ropes and a huge black blanket for the eating tent. Mats made of woven nylon covered the ground. The shelter was up but not all the mats installed when breakfast arrived – a bit later than the usual 9:30. No one minded and we all eagerly devoured the shwarma or falafel sandwiches, hummus, and small local pasteries that tasted like annis. Cold watermelon, slaughtered by Kent Bramlet, featured as dessert.

Intro to Archeological digging followed lunch. A group of us stood by the line Doug Clark drew in the sand. After a demonstration we fell to our knees with pick and trowel and tried our skill outside the marked squares. Everyone passed. After a bit more clean up, Lizzy sat between her square supervisors, Rebecca and Rainbow, and carefully reviewed the paperwork for end of day reporting.

Around noon we returned brooms, dust pans and quffas to the supply tent, collected our pottery pails and personal equipment, and climbed back on our bus, dusty and weary. Back at camp we showered and ate lunch or ate lunch then showered. It was such an exhausting first day that we decided to take a weekend trip to Aqaba for rest and relaxation. Really, we made the trip now because Justin returns to the States after week three and every weekend between now and then is already planned with trips and outings for the group. Graeme was a bit reluctant to leave as he's just getting to know his fellow diggers. But now that we're in Aqaba, he's happy he came along.