Welcome to our blog section for the 2013 season at Omrit!

This summer we have six squares open for excavation at Omrit, and on the blog we’ll be hearing from Williams students in each square about their experiences. I am in a team with Sam O’Donnell ‘15 in square K22, a probe trench to the northeast of the temple complex. Hopefully we will discover something new about a wall running along the north-south axis through the site. Our first few days have consisted mostly of clearing out the top layer of contaminated soil, and this has revealed what appears to be a lot of wall tumble from the initial collapse.

Setting up shade on the first morning of the season

The first week is the most difficult. Opening a new square involves a lot of exhausting preparation- we had to clear shrubbery, set up our tent, measure and string up the boundaries of our balks, and try to level out the depth of our square. New students also must absorb lots of information for the first time—how to take elevations, draw top-plans of the squares, record and catalog archaeological data, and wash pottery—all while recovering from jet lag and adjusting to our work schedule (ah, the cherished 4:30am wake-up knock on the door!). They are also experiencing for the first time the refreshing smell of the kibbutz cows, the chorus of peacocks in the morning at the site, and the swarms of gnats that fly straight for our ears. We all look like quite the fashionable group when we’re out working at Omrit. Drastic steps (and brightly-colored bandanas) are sometimes necessary to protect ourselves from the sun and the bugs!

Sam O’Donnell ’15 modeling standard Omrit attire

Those of us who are returning have missed these scents and sounds and bug bites… Okay maybe not so much. The gnats, though, will hopefully be only a temporary nuisance!

Elvira Miceli ’13 shooting an elevation for her square

Our intense mornings are usually balanced out by relaxing afternoons, when students can catch up on much-needed sleep or cool off at the swimming pool. Eventually I will make a return trip to the kibbutz sculpture garden as well. Yesterday we were rewarded with falafel for lunch, and I have to admit that I’ve been waiting eagerly for eleven months to eat that falafel again. It really is great to be back!

So pleasant was the after-dinner lull two Fridays ago, my insides warmed by fragrant tea, that the beginning of the Muslim call to prayer over Jerusalem almost startled me. The same hauntingly beautiful cries had accompanied the team’s exit from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher that afternoon, at a high point of our day trip to the Old City. Only now, however, did they set my mind in motion. As I admired the dusky Temple Mount from our rooftop restaurant, they made me aware of the rhythm of Jerusalem’s daily life, a rhythm shaped and yet not fully shared by the pilgrims and other visitors who for centuries have flooded this place. How exciting it’d be to live in such a concentrate of history, I couldn’t help imagining.

But perhaps, I sighed to myself, the thrill of the old would soon fade into indifference. I thought of the kibbutz that’s hosting us for the dig season, where one resident uses a column capital from nearby Omrit as a lawn table. Then again, how correctly was I judging the attitude of those who’ve long lived among ancient remains? And should these inhabitants even be expected to treat those remains as if they were museum property? In a country like Israel, the very idea of which has radically different meanings to different groups, the remote past seems after all as much a living subject as the recent one, a subject to grapple with and rewrite more than timidly guard.

The feeling in such a country toward the remnants of antiquity would thus transcend the scale between apathy and enthusiasm, I dared conclude. Those remnants would be no more and no less than part of the fabric of existence there, akin to the language and cuisine. The spoliation I saw at Kibbutz Kfar Szold could itself be viewed, then, as part of a tradition that originated (at latest) in the Byzantine repurposing of Roman stone. I realized that while my reflection had begun on the surface of life in Jerusalem, my travel experience, if terribly limited, had maybe allowed me a glimpse of something deeper. Realizing also that this couldn’t be more than a glimpse for now, I rose from the dinner table with a tourist’s typical, melancholy yearning to leave a piece of herself behind.

From left to right, Amy, Khanh, Lydia, Elvira, and Cathy in front of Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

On the temple podium at Omrit, a Corinthian capital virtually identical to the one I saw at Kfar Szold.

An example of ancient spoliation at Omrit: stones from the Roman temple used to build a structure further east, possibly a Byzantine church.

When Jason announced to my square two weeks ago that we had hit bedrock, I know my face fell. This is all? I thought. We had reached no conclusions about our square, except that it was some kind of space between two  walls, occupied during the Byzantine period. We had no idea what function it served (was it a trash heap? a pottery shop? an alleyway?), how it related to the rest of the site (did the walls directly connect to the walls in the square next to us, excavated in 2010?), or how the artifacts that we had found connected with each other (what on earth does a goat tooth have to do with a bell and a spindle whorl?). We had found a few cool things, but no answers to the questions with which we had begun.

The cliche researcher frustratedly looking for the “big picture” among the details, I had searched for answers and instead found more questions. Over the last two weeks, however, I have had plenty of time to ponder what the site may have gained by opening Square O16. O16 was experimental from the beginning, the first square in a phase that will increasingly focus on the area uphill from the temple. Perhaps, then, it was our square’s job to identify questions rather than come up with answers. What was the relationship between seemingly mundane and secular area in which we were digging and the temple, for example? How connected was the region uphill from the temple to the temple itself, especially in the Byzantine period? Were there any structures uphill from the temple before the Byzantine period? How densely populated was this region during the Byzantine period? We probably will not find out the answers to these for many years, if at all. But they help us understand what our goals will be during the coming years.

“Lydia’s Second Wall”

I was fortunate enough to begin work answering these questions when I was sent to help Greg Stoehr, Omrit’s survey archaeologist, to dig his probe near the north wadi. Perhaps the most exciting feature of this square was the Roman wall on the south side. This wall, which I modestly termed “Lydia’s Second Wall,” seems to have been a significant one, several courses deep, very thick, and constructed of finely cut limestone ashlars. In addition to identifying the north wadi as an important (perhaps holy?) aspect of the site, the wall implies that Omrit was indeed more than just a temple site, not only in Byzantine times but also in Roman.

Once again, however, I found myself with more questions than answers. Poorly constructed Byzantine walls were tacked onto the fine Roman wall on the north side of the trench, forcing me to wonder how the Byzantines interacted with earlier structures around them. Would the south wall have retained its original purpose or significance in the Byzantine period? More generally, what was the role of the aging temple in the life of the Byzantines? How would the Christian Byzantines have felt about the presence of a pagan temple so close to their homes? (Or, how Christian were the Byzantines at this site, if at all?)

Perhaps, after all, archaeology can dig up only more questions. Yet these questions are no less important when unanswerable, and every new question helps us reshape our ideas of the past and identify the most important aspects of the lives of the ancients.

After a tour de force of Jerusalem and a long plane ride, I am finally back in the States, though I am missing Kefar Szold, Omrit, and all my fellow Omritians already. Thank you so much to everyone who helped make my time in Israel so wonderful, and especially to Professor Rubin for bringing us humble undergrads along with him to Omrit.

It’s really difficult to believe that we touched down at Tel Aviv airport three and a half weeks ago, and that yesterday was already our last day in the field. Our experience was fully immersive; we have spent every day breathing, touching, sorting, and absorbing history. Every square has been exciting and also puzzling in its own way. Like Elvira, I’m departing with more questions than answers, more knowledge but less surety, and hopefully, more toned arms than before.

We started digging our square by joining two previous squares that were worked on in the 2010 season. It showed promised because of a large mortared wall and an adjoining one made of Roman spolia. We suspected that it was a Byzantine structure that made use of earlier building material, and that its size might indicate a section of a potentially sizable building.

our square at the start of the season. can you make out the tops of the walls?

As we dug down, it became clear that our walls were indeed part of some significant structure. The east and the south sides were plastered, and the wall extended along the west side of the square. The three sides make up a trapezoidal shape, which along with the plaster, leads us to think that it was used as an interior space. Finds like glass, marble revetment, a coin, brick, tessera, and cement all point to an important building, although we’re very far from being able to guess what it was. What period did this building date from? What was it used for, and who used it? Was it a sacred, commercial, or domestic space? Did it have any relation to the temple nearby? We were scratching our heads when we came across what looked like a large cement floor covering about half of the pit. After working carefully around it and taking out dirt where we could, our most exciting find was fully revealed: a well-preserved pipe covered in cement, which lay beneath a section of cobbled floor in the southeast corner of the pit. Here are the photos from the final day:

if you look closely at the corner, you'll see some of the original floor that lay above the pipe

a clear view of the pipe, still in its original encasing. amy berg is cleaning for the final photo shoot

The orientation of the pipe seems to align with a spring uphill from the temple, and gives hope to the hypothesis of a bath complex nearby. This, however, is just speculation until excavators in future seasons find the answers to all of our wonderings. One of the most salient lessons I’ll take away with me is the that fact that archaeology is hard work and requires a far-reaching perspective. We were only able to accomplish what we did after augmenting the work of countless volunteers and scholars before us, and our work can only be completed and perfected by future archaeologists-to-be. Thanks for reading!

our lovely square: edward, arianna, me, amy, and maggie. it's been a great season!

Two weeks ago, when our digging began in earnest, I and four other team members were assigned to an area northeast of the temple complex, an area sure to disclose something about Omrit’s broader pattern of occupation. Though Omrit was in continuous use at least from the second century BCE through the thirteenth century CE, the nature and geographic extent of this use demand further study. Past excavations north of the complex in have uncovered evidence of Byzantine industrial activity, of a Roman colonnade, and of a Roman bathhouse, all suggesting a nearby settlement for the site’s maintenance.

I’ve not quite accepted that our group reached bedrock Thursday. On the one hand, helping to dig our two-by-four meter patch to its end has made me feel satisfyingly, scientifically thorough in my work. On the other, so many pieces of the area’s history remain missing that I wish the ground had yielded more information—or, I should write, more information that is immediately readable. My frustration has reminded me that thoroughness in archaeology is a fraught notion, as it’s rarely feasible to sift every bit of a site’s dirt. I’ve also been reminded, however, that the thoroughness archaeology can achieve depends no more on systematic field labor than on the careful synthesis of whatever data the ground gives up, necessarily a slow process.

Elliot cleaning the bedrock on our area's north side.

Jason and Lydia inspecting our area from the north, with the rest of the excavations in the background.

We revealed the foundations of two east-west-oriented walls in our area, one at the patch’s north end and the other at the south. Between these walls, where we concentrated our digging efforts, we discovered not only fragments of marble facing, of painted wall plaster, of fieldstone floor mosaic, of patinated glass, and of animal bone, but also hundreds of pottery sherds that grew in size as we approached bottom. And near that bottom, well over a meter from the surface, we uncovered three bronze coins, several iron nails, an iron dagger, a small iron bell, a cache of what seem to be fossilized seeds, and two bead-like obsidian pieces, possibly spindle whorls. The remains came to light amid layers of the same rough basalt and limestone blocks out of which the walls are built.

From our material finds and from the area’s stratigraphy, or deposition history, we can so far draw a mere two conclusions with confidence: that the walls are Byzantine and that they eventually fell on a compacted surface between them. An expert dated most of our pottery to the fourth or fifth century, but thanks to the durability of ancient clayware, there’s no guarantee that our examples were used or deposited when they were produced. So when exactly and why did the walls go up and collapse? When exactly and how was the space between them used? How is our area related to the rest of the site? Answering these fundamental questions will require much more work, if not more excavation. Our coins, for instance, must undergo months of cleaning before they can even be read.

We in the trench have of course seized the opportunity to spin our own tales about the little world we’ve unearthed. One of the pleasures of our group’s long days in the field is our conversation, made to the steady rhythm of clanging picks and trowels. As Lydia asks astute questions, Elliot spouts witticisms, Caroline shares her archaeologically experienced perspective, and our leader Jason offers insightful summations before exhorting us to dig quickly, that conversation often addresses the ground at our feet. What if this space was simply a waste disposal between buildings, we’ve imagined? What if it was a storage room, one buried in the terrible earthquake that struck the Galilee in the eighth century? What if some sensitive animal became a hero in the collapse, sacrificing its life to save a woman wearing inexpensive but chic jewelry that she lost in the drama? After all, if the evidence can’t refute it…

Our fully excavated area from the northeast.

My classmates have done an excellent job describing our initial reactions upon arriving in Israel and some of our experiences working at Omrit and visiting other sites. I would like to go into some detail on another topic that I knew nothing about before arriving here—the history of the kibbutz where we are staying. When we first arrived at the kibbutz I felt regrettably ignorant of many aspects of Israel’s modern history, but the location of Kefar Szold, our kibbutz, provoked reflection on this region’s recent past. Kefar Szold is situated near the Golan Heights, an area that Israel annexed from Syria in the 1967 war, and the border between Israel and Lebanon is visible from Omrit. I have found that one of the challenges of doing archaeology in Israel for me is balancing my understanding of the classical significance of Omrit with my goal of obtaining a better grasp on Israel’s more recent history.

A view of the border between Israel and Lebanon (taken at Omrit)

Greta, our host during our stay at Kefar Szold, gave us a walking tour of the kibbutz and recounted her memories of its earlier days. Kefar Szold was founded in 1942. It was organized on a socialist model in which the community remained largely self-contained. The members of the kibbutz received regular stipends, with each person collecting the same amount of money regardless of the work he or she performed. The kibbutz provided many products for community use; Greta recalled how members would not even have to purchase their own vehicles because they could borrow the kibbutz cars for their transportation needs.

Greta speaking to us on the tour

For a time in Kefar Szold’s history children were raised communally. They lived in children’s homes and visited their parents during the day. Greta pointed out some of the buildings that had been used as children’s homes while explaining that this practice was eventually terminated. It had not been popular with the adults who had grown up in this system, and as a result many of them chose not to raise their own families on the kibbutz. This led to somewhat of a population crisis for Kefar Szold, though in recent years the number of children being raised on the kibbutz has grown.

It is clear today that the kibbutz has shifted away from its socialist origins, as have many of the other kibbutz communities in the area. They have become interdependent—for example, Kefar Szold specializes in air conditioning and heating systems, so when a neighboring kibbutz needs work done on their air conditioners, Kefar Szold performs the maintenance. Another example of this development is the fact that our laundry is not washed at Kefar Szold but sent to a nearby kibbutz and then returned to Kefar Szold once it has been cleaned.

Kefar Szold’s shift from small-community socialism is also evident in the new stipend system. For those residents of the kibbutz who still are members, the size of the stipend now depends on the type of labor performed. This has allowed some community members to start remodeling projects for their homes. On our walk with Greta we saw signs and fences designating private property as well as personal cars parked in driveways. These indicators of personal property would not have been nearly so prominent in the kibbutz’s early days.

Today the kibbutz is very relaxing. It has beautiful views of the valley, lush vegetation, and an abundance of ice cream (though the rumor is that the kibbutz store stocks up on ice cream for our archaeological season). In a way this removes us from the intensity of the disputes over this region while also allowing us to understand some of the reasons this place has been so contested.

A nice view from the kibbutz

My first full week of work, though certainly intense and tiring, has only increased my fascination with archaeology and ancient history. We began excavating our squares on Monday after the directors divided us into small groups; they placed me with Elvira, my fellow Eph, as well as two other students, with Professor Jason Schlude of Duquesne University as our square supervisor.

Even as the initial exhilaration of discovering a 5th-century piece of marble facing or small glass fragments slowly wears off, I have become increasingly curious about the context of our square as a whole. What bigger mosaic did these tesserae fit into, I wonder? What would the inhabitants of the town at Omrit have felt about this imported fineware pottery fragment, and how did they feel it compared to their local wares? Was this glass vessel, of which we have only a handle, handed down from generation to generation, and how did its meaning to its owner change over time?

"Lydia's Wall," probably a Byzantine structure

Although the first few days of digging consisted primarily of removing “tumble”–the disturbed, loose upper layers of cobbles and soil that cover ancient features of an area–we soon found a Byzantine spoliated wall in the southern part of our square that we have continued to work on uncovering in the past few days. Shortly thereafter, we found a wall almost parallel to it in the northern part of the square. (We named them Lydia’s and Elvira’s Walls, respectively.) We have also uncovered limestone ashlars that seem to have fallen from the top of the wall, probably with human intervention. Today, we began finding more and larger fragments of things such as glass vessels and pottery, indicating that we may soon reach some kind of floor. We hope eventually to find Early Roman occupation in our square, but we are excited for the moment to have discovered this Byzantine structure, whatever it turns out to be. I look forward to further exploring the context of the square in the next few weeks as we into the digging of more delicate areas.

Connor did a wonderful job detailing our daily routines below. From Monday to Saturday, we break down dirt, haul it, sift through it, become encased in it, and in general work very hard physically and intellectually. On Saturday afternoons and Sundays, everyone gets a well-deserved break and travels to other archaeological sites nearby.

Yesterday, we drove up to the nature reserve at Tel Dan, which sits on the very northern Israeli border with Lebanon. It’s the oldest site that we’ve visited so far, and has been settled since the Iron Age. Tel Dan was possibly once a Canaanite settlement and is described in the Bible as the northernmost city of the Kingdom of Israel. Excavations have revealed a citadel possibly containing an altar, a large gate, a flour mill, as well as other walls and ruins from various periods from the Iron Age to the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The Dan River, which gushed and flowed under the winding path in the nature reserve, is the most important tributary to the Jordan River. In an area where water is such a scarce and precious resource, it is not difficult to imagine how sites such as Tel Dan and Banias not only became population centers, but also accumulated religious significance. The vegetation crowding the banks of the water sources include many types of trees, bamboo, ivy, flower bushes, and fruit trees like fig and pomegranate. The water itself is home to a variety of critters. At one point the path took a lovely turn into the shallow pools, where the air was chilled by the pristine water and the overhanging flora.

the rush of the Dan River provides a gust of cool air

water!

a (mostly reconstructed) ancient wall. can you see where the original stones end?

possibly a cushion for the leg of a four-post throne

our reimagining of a sacrificial scene. notice all the different styles of masonry behind us

it's always puzzled me as to why ivy is depicted as having heart-shaped leaves on greek vases until I came across this vine

ivy leaves are a common visual motif associated with dionysus. source

a refreshing spot in the park

this little guy was crossing the road from one stream to another and we had to stop and say hello

The Hula Valley itself used to contain swampy marshland, which was drained decades ago. Now, it is a lush and fertile valley, where orchards such as those owned by our kibbutz produce fruit, cows roam the fields (and sometimes sneak into our site if we leave our gates untended), and wildflowers blanket the hillsides. Thousands of types of migratory birds stop by on their way from Syria to Egypt or vice versa.

we get a lot of visitors to our square in the early morning. this one was grumpy when we woke him up

using our dustbins for the power of good and transporting mr. chameleon to safety

Since my fellow students have already written on some of the emotional and intellectual aspects of this trip, I thought I would focus on the daily life at the dig. While our schedule was a bit irregular for the first few days, we have since settled into a routine.

On a typical weekday, we awake before dawn at 4:30AM, when our energetic field director, Prof. Rubin, knocks on our doors. In my room, my roommates listen to music videos on VH1 or MTV — some of the few English-language channels on our television — while we dress and apply copious amounts of sunscreen. Then, bleary-eyed yet still eager, we stagger into vans at 5:00AM and depart for the dig site.

The sun behind the Trans-Jordan Mountains

The ten-minute drive to Omrit is one of my favorite parts of the day, as the sun rising above the stark Trans-Jordan mountains gradually illuminates the Hula Valley. Since the vans have difficulty on the bumpy road, we hike the last few hundred yards to the site, affording us an excellent view of the sunrise while a nearby cock crows (he’s usually a few minutes late). Along the way, we feast upon peanut butter & jelly prepared the night before.

The members of my square. Back (L-R): Brad (resident cowboy and Sasquatch aficionado), Connor (me), Maddy (rock-smasher extraordinaire). Front (L-R): Khanh (also from Williams and terrifying with a hoe), Amy (fearless square supervisor), Emily (mildly intrepid assistant square supervisor).

Upon reaching the dig site, we divide into three groups: each group includes an experienced supervisor and assistant supervisor and has been assigned a square to excavate.

A photo of my "square" taken today

My group has been ordered to begin excavation in a new region of the site where we hope to find evidence of structures near the temple. Since our square is meant to be exploratory, it actually takes the form of a 2m x 8m rectangle rather than a typical 4×4 square; despite its rectangular dimensions, we still call it a square.

Pasha's Tent

Our first order of business is erecting a shelter over our hole to shelter us as the morning continues. The irregular dimensions of my square necessitate a particularly large shelter we have taken to calling affectionately “Pasha’s Tent.”

Our trusty digging tools, including our favorite pick, 'Svetlana.'

Once our shelter is erected, we collect our tools: pickaxes, hoes, patiches (miniature picks), masonry trowels, and brushes along with buckets, dustpans, and a wheelbarrow to dispose of excavated earth.

Unfortunately, the tractor happened to have passed over our square frequently during an earlier phase of the excavation and the first few inches of soil were extremely compact. However, we finally reached softer soil today and have settled into a routine: two people loosen the surface of the square with pickaxes, another two collect loose rocks and soil into buckets, and the last two empty buckets into a wheelbarrow and transport the contents to a designated dump. Patiches, trowels, and brushes are reserved for detail work.

Along the way, we keep a sharp lookout for pottery shards, pieces of glass, and architectural elements. Since Greco-Roman pottery was mass-produced and styles changed over time, fragments of rims and handles — so-called ‘indicative’ pieces — can be used to date the material found in each layer. However, this requires us to keep the surface of our square level, which can be quite a challenge when we encounter large pieces of limestone and basalt, the former often [i]spolia[/i] taken from the temple by later inhabitants of the region and the latter often used in Byzantine construction in the region.

Every hour, we have a short water break and switch positions. Then, at 8:30AM, we pause for “second breakfast,” a meal brought from the kibbutz by one of the volunteers. After that, we continue excavating until 11:30AM, when we begin cleaning our square, trimming our “bulk” – the edge of our square – and storing our tools. We usually depart shortly before noon after six hours of work. Since lunch is at 1:15PM, that leaves us just enough time to clean the pottery fragments collected the previous day.

After lunch, we are free until 4:00PM. People often use this time to nap, swim in the kibbutz pool, wander the grounds, catch up on reading, correspond with friends, or socialize. Personally, I like to spend my afternoons reading when I’m not catching up on sleep.

At 4:00PM, the squares are assigned to various projects around the dig site: enlarging existing squares, surveying the surroundings, and cleaning various excavated objects. The relative quiet of the site in the afternoon is a bit disorienting after the organized chaos of the morning. Finally, we return to the kibbutz around 6:15PM, just in time for a shower before our 7:30PM dinner. After dinner, we often attend lectures by dig members and visitors on topics like Roman-Parthian interactions during the Hasmonean period, ceramics analysis, and graduate school (several graduate students are participating in the dig in addition to professors and undergrads from Williams, Carthage, Macalester, and CUNY Queen’s College). After these lectures, which start around 8:30PM and usually end around 9:30PM or 10:00PM, my roommates and I often retire straight to our room, ready to begin again the next day.

In spite of the early rise and long hours of labor, I have greatly enjoyed the dig so far. After digging through a particularly compact layer of soil, we have found a column drum, a number of Byzantine and 13th century pottery sherds, and what may be the remains of a Byzantine wall. Each day brings with it the excitement of digging deeper, hoping to uncover further structures, and everyone is able to contribute intellectually (some more than others) as well as physically to the process. Plus, we manage to have some fun while on the job…

The temple complex from the northeast.

As majestically as the ruins at Omrit are positioned, I’m no less struck by the colors of the place: the pristine blue above, the pale gold and burnt green of the hills, the purple of the round, thistly wildflowers scattered about the countryside. The photographs I saw of the site before arriving in Israel prepared me for a duller palette, one in line with my stereotype of an archaeological dig. It’s hard to imagine that a landscape capable of Omrit’s springtime beauty could swallow the temple complex once standing here.

The complex from the south, nestled among the hills.

But on Wednesday, the first day of the dig season, our team spent hours clearing newly accumulated earth and rubble from the site’s pavement, which was excavated years ago and has gone untended only since last summer. I was forced to recognize the relentlessness with which even nature at its mildest can upset human labor. In the pavement’s northeast corner we re-uncovered a sizeable inscription, a dedication in Greek by a certain Agrippina to the goddess Echo. Dated to the first century CE, the inscription was roughly carved and presumably filled with bronze lettering that’s now missing.

A view of the countryside just south of the ruins, looking west.

While raising intriguing possibilities for the original functions of the temple complex, the dedication has also made the ancient human presence here palpable to me, more palpable than even the temple podium and stacked column fragments that preside over the site have. These architectural elements seem at moments to be natural features of the landscape. The writing in stone, on the other hand, cannot but testify to the intellect that produced it. When that writing came to light this week for at least the second time in its history, I was reminded that archaeologists are as much keepers as they are finders of the material links to our past, and I felt truly excited for the excavations our team will undertake here this month.