Hearths v. Ovens

Today was an exciting day in our square. Scientists from the Weizmann Institute uncovered the hearth pictured in my previous post, in order to take soil samples. There was a Philistine bichrome bell-shaped bowl (aka in the Aegean as a deep bowl) with Mycenaean style spirals lying just above the hearth, which is over half a metre in diameter. In addition, 2 more hearths were found as well as a floor near the hearth. The only way we could tell it was a floor was that there a number of sherds laying flat on it. There is another hearth coming up just next to this hearth, and there may also be a type of oven called a tabun near the new hearth. Why is this important? Hearths are associated with both the Mycenaeans and the Philistines, the Philistines make Mycenaean style pottery, and many archaeologists believe that the Mycenaeans were part of the Sea Peoples contingent that settled in the region known as Philistia. All of this leads to the question - did Canaanites cook in tabuns, while the people making the Mycenaean style pottery use hearths?
Inquiring minds want to know...

A Pottery Lesson

Here our Area Supervisor, Alex Zuckerman and Square Supervisor, Linda Meiberg are teaching Brent and myself how to read and eat Philistine pottery. Meanwhile, Amanda found another bead - she has a few more days to find enough for an entire necklace before she returns home.

A Relaxing Weekend...

We spent the weekend in Jerusalem: I packed, Brent studied, Amanda went site-seeing with Jeff Chadwick and his students, but we all managed to catch up on sleep and find time to have last drinks at the American Colony!

Where Alyattes & Wylattes Make Their Mocha Lattes

It's Day 4 and very eventful at Camp, I mean Tel Safi. On Tuesday we visited the EB site of Tel Yarmuth in the afternoon after digging. Last night, I gave a lecture on the Aegean and its connections to the Philistines to a very attentive audience of students and other volunteers. Today, our team began to uncover an Aegean-style, Philistine hearth. It may be the latest such hearth found in Israel, as it sits 50-70 cm above the 11th c. hearth. Here, the Director, Aren Maeir is posing with the new addition to his site, but who are those people in the background??? Elsewhere in our area, the animal head of a ring kernos was found as well as a tiny animal figurine. In another part of the site, an imitation scarab was found. The area we are working in is where the "Goliath" sherd was found last year. This sherd has two words incised on it, which can be read as Alyattes and Wylattes. These are Indo-European names, read in semitic as Goliath, and although this name is famous, it may have been as common for the Philistines as John Smith.

Camp, Ooops, Tel es Safi/Gath Day 1

Yesterday we arrived at Tel es Safi. We is myself and two students: Brent Davis and Amanda Rose, who just arrived from Greece. The day began with a tour of the site and a lecture on Tel es Safi by the Director, Aren Maeir. This morning began with the ride up to the Tel at 5:30 am. We are working in Area A with Alex Zuckerman and Linda Meiberg. We're stoked because Area A is the Philistine area and we spent today cleaning our square, which has a Philistine hearth: which has parallels at Tel Miqne and with Aegean hearths. Amanda found a really nice bead or clothing applique made out of mother of pearl with two piercings. Tomorrow we are taking down a baulk, which may have more hearths in it. I spent part of the afternoon helping Brent and Amanda clean pottery and teaching them a bit about what you can learn from sherds. It's really great digging with my students. We are staying at the Kibbutz Revadim, which feels more like summer camp than a dig. We have air conditioned rooms and there's a huge swimming pool where I soaked off the afternoon heat. This clearly beats living in a tent. On Wednesday, I'm giving an intro lecture on Aegean archaeology.

Off to the Dig...

My student, Brent, arrived a couple of days ago from Greece and today we are going to Tel es-Safi for the excavations. Brent is going for the full month and I'm going for 10 days, and then back to Melbourne. Here Laura, myself, and Celia are having drinks in the garden of the American Colony Hotel. Celia is currently working at Ashkelon and we usually room together every year at ASOR. I guess I'm still celebrating being finished with my book, Theory 4 Classics, especially since my editor said she really liked it and she hopes to have it published by January 2008!

Finito!

DHL came 2 days ago to pick up the manuscript of my book Theory 4 Classics and whisk it off to Routledge in Oxford. This is in addition to the 36 page article I've written on how architectural influences travel. I've done a little celebrating the past couple days, but I've also finished my final report for the Albright and the University. Tomorrow, I get back to the Philistines and my friend Celia, who I usually room with at ASOR is spending 3 days with me.

My Scariest Middle East Experience...

I attended the gay pride parade today in Jerusalem. Some people here wondered why I bothered. I went out of respect for many friends and also to show my support for tolerance and universal human rights. I was also curious to see how it would play out. It was a very moving experience - all the more so because I felt like I was risking my life going there. It was definitely the scariest experience I've had in 20 years of working in the the middle east. All was well however, thanks to the 9000 cops there were for the 5000 marchers. It was interesting. Whereas gay parades in big US cities and in Australia are more like celebrations - there was some of that - but there was also the atmosphere of campagning for human rights with people carrying pictures of Gandhi, King, and Mandela. Amnesty International and the Communist Party also got in on the action. It made me think of what the 1960's must have been all about. The police sealed off a very large perimeter, using buses to block the streets. The marchers were surrounded by police in riot gear. There were also plainclothesmen and police all in black on motorcycles. The march passed the historic King David Hotel where Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice have stayed. My biggest fear was that someone planted a bomb somewhere, but it was fine. I recovered with a trip to the American Colony for drinks :-).

Trude Dothan, Asthma & Revising Syllabi

Last night I went to Trude's house for shabbat dinner. Trude is Trude Dothan, the Grande Dame of Philistine archaeology. I've been a semi-regular guest there throughout the past year. Trude is always up for enjoying an ouzo or an arak and tells great stories about her long career in archaeology and her many excavations. The photo shows Trude holding court in the Albright garden earlier in the year. Afterward I met up with some friends in the garden bar of the at the American Colony Hotel, but by that time, I switched to Perrier. One of the friends, Beatrice, I met some 14 years ago while still a student when I helped lead a group from the Albright around Crete. The garden bar is lovely and feels more like Hawaii than east Jerusalem. It's been very windy the last few days and it was cold enough that we enjoyed our drinks wrapped in blankets. The wind has also created a lot of dust and pollen, which has been irritating my asthma, so I'm using my inhaler a lot. Problems in the Gaza strip resulted in a number of road blocks and check points yesterday, the day of Friday prayers, but things stayed quiet. I was indoors working all day, but heard about this from others. Today I lost 3 hours to re-arranging the lecture schedule on the syllabus of one of my classes. The syllabus for my seminar is already online.

i-Chat, Do you?

I just found out my best friend, Bob Anderson, has a new mac book and just signed up for i-chat. I have i-chat too, but no one to chat with until now. Bob was online tonight at the same time as me and we were able to have some face time. It's the first time I've actually seen him since November. Bob was the man of honor at my wedding. It was great being able to have a face to face conversation with him and very easy. If any of you other friends have it, let me know your i-chat e-mail and we can talk. Even though the photo I took on the computer screen looks a bit blurred, it was actually quite clear.

Winding Down

My time here is starting to wind down. I finally finished my book manuscript for Routledge. It was a long haul. I still have to type up the bibliography, write an introduction, and make corrections, but I'm still planning to send it off by the end of the month.
It's hard to believe that I'll be home soon, especially since I have a lot of things I still want to do before I leave.
Last week I gave a lecture at Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv. You can read about it on Aren Maeir's blog.

Catching Up With Friends in Nicosia

Today, Andrew and I went to the Museum to see the exhibit celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Swedish Cyprus Expedition. I took him for lunch at Demos and then went there again to see my friends: I had dinner with Angelos, Niki, and Red Check (photo). I'll post some pictures on my blog over the weekend. The next day, I returned to Jerusalem. The photos show Demos Taverna, Me and Demos.

Nicosia: The Mother Hash

I arrived in Cyprus two days ago for a short working break, to renew my tourist visa, and catch up with friends. I’m staying at the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute, where I spent nearly a year when I had my Fulbright. Since my favorite taverna is closed on Sunday’s, I went up the street to TGI Fridays and had Nachos with American style chedder (yellow, not white like in Oz) and a margarita. Funny to go to Cyprus for American food.

On Monday I enjoyed a mystery novel and a cappuccino at the Starbucks on Ledra St, walked around the old city and took photos, then went to my favorite Taverna, the St George, owned by our friend Demos. We ate there nearly every night and I picked olives at his farm in Zygi 7 years ago.

On Tuesday, I did some work in the library and bought books at Moufflon. I also went to run with our mother hash - the Nicosia Horrible Hash House Harriers. The turnout for the Hash was small, but I still enjoyed it. Heidi and Paul who threw that big party at Abu Faisel last year on New Years have moved to Perth, so maybe we will see them at the Interhash. Afterward, I met up with Andrew McCarthy, who co-chairs my ASOR session. It was nice to hear more about what he does outside of the hectic atmosphere of the ASOR meeting

The Albright, the Fulbright, and the Not-So-Bright

Last Saturday's Shwarma fest marked the end of this year's academic program at the Albright Institute, the first member of the American Schools of Oriental Research consortium. The end of the year is also marked by photographing the all of the fellows for the Albright Institute Newsletter. Here I'm featured with the prominent Biblical scholar Anson Rainey who was the Annual Professor prior to my arrival and with the Barton Fellow, Matthew Suriano - we asked to be photographed together as he is a current UCLA student and I'm a past one. Matt is also giving a paper in my ASOR session this year!

Tel es-Safi/Gath Day 5

Today was the final day of the pre-season at Tel es-Safi and we're all pretty happy cause we helped get Jeff's trench (you can see during and after shots) all nice and clean for the season in July. Our group photo shows Itzak, me, Rotem, Jeff (the Area F supervisor), and Julie. That evening we went to a bar b q at Deb's house for some great steaks - cooked on an Aussie bar b q!

Lachish, Beth Shemesh, and Duncan MacKenzie

On Wednesday, I took a break from the week of digging to go on the last Albright field trip to the sites of Lachish and Beth Shemesh. Most people are interested in Lachish because of a preserved Assyrian siege ramp on the other side of the Tel, but my interest is in the Canaanite temples, which have been dismantled since the time of their excavation. One photo shows our group ascending toward the Iron Age gate. There wasn't much to see at Beth Shemesh, but this trench around the fortification wall was excavated by Duncan MacKenzie who worked with Evans at Knossos on Crete, and that makes it historically interesting.

Tel es-Safi/Gath Day 3

One photo shows Julie, Rotem, and the view at the start of our day. The other photo shows a Palestinian boy with his two pet hawks. I won't be digging tomorrow because there is a fellows trip to Lachish and Beth Shemesh. I'll be back at Safi for the final day on Thurs before the regular season. Taking down the baulks will make room for the hordes of volunteers that will be joining us at the site (including 2 of my students!) in July.

Tel es-Safi/Gath Day 2

This photo is during a break in the work. Julie on the right and Deb on the left are both members of the staff at Tel es Safi. Deb is also giving a paper in my session at the American Schools of Oriental Research meeting this November in San Diego. We continued taking down the baulks after removing a stone feature.

Pre-Season at Tel es-Safi/Gath Day 1

I’ve finished 18 of 29 chapters of the book I’m working on and this week I’m taking a little break. For 5 days this week, I’m participating in a 5 day, pre-season excavation at Tel es-Safi-Gath led by the director, Prof. Aren Maeir of Bar Ilan, members of his team, and Jeff Chadwick of BYU. Today was my first day digging and we had a great time! We are working in Jeff’s area, Area F at the top of the tel. In the foreground of this photo from my earlier visit to the site, is a pierced stone used as part of a bone tool workshop from the early Iron Age and behind it is a rounded tower from the Crusader Period. I woke up with a sore throat this morning and was worried that I would end up wimping out, but the day just seemed to fly by. We are cleaning this area and taking down a couple of the baulks between excavation units in preparation for the July excavation season. The top photo shows us at the beginning and all of those piles of sandbags were taken down. I’ve got two students coming here and I think they’re going to have a great time!

For We Are Jolly Good Fellows!

I had a low key birthday celebration a today - aka Drinko de Mayo. I spent most of the day working and am halfway through my book. My husband surprised me by sending a dozen roses (while pretending to forget it was my birthday) and after dinner, a bunch of us (Matt, Karen, Yours Truly, Anne, Ed [and Ben taking the photo!] went to the American Colony Hotel - a very old hotel where a lot of embassy and media types go - and had cosmopolitans.