Quick Update

13 07 2011

I am between touring around with my parents and sister, and beginning my survey work on Friday so there has been no time for blogging.  Just wanted to stop by and give a quick update.

My parents and sister flew in for 8 days and we spent the time touring all over Jordan, from Jerash and Umm Qais in the north to Petra, Wadi Rum, and Aqaba in the south and everywhere in between.  We all had a great time, saw a lot of great sites, ate a lot of delicious food, and were all quite exhausted by the end.

Of course, the next day I had to give a presentation at the Second Annual Regional Archaeology Conference in Madaba.  The point of the conference is for all the different digs that are in the field during the summer to get together and share what they have been working on.  Even though I didn’t dig at Jalul this season, everyone from the team left Jordan about a month ago, so gave an overview on phase 1 of excavations at Jalul (the first 10 seasons) with a focus on what was excavated this season.  Other digs that gave talks included:  Wadi Zarqa Ma’in, Tall Madaba, Tall al ‘Umayri, Tall Hisban, Wadi Thamad Project, and Dhiban.

This morning I went to the Department of Antiquities and picked up my project permit.  It was very exciting to have in my hands.  I was amused to note that I am apparently Dr. Owen Chesnut on the permit, hopefully in a year en shallah.  Friday I begin working by setting up a new benchmark and control points on the summit of Tall Safut and then Saturday and Sunday I am walking the site with the GPS to create a new topographic map and outlining any walls.


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Lead Codices Redux

27 06 2011

A couple weeks ago I received a text from one of my Jordanian friends “I was wondering if you would be interested in looking at a really old Bible looking book my uncle came across.”  I was intrigued and told him I would be happy to take a look.  He emailed me a picture and I recognized the object immediately:

The tablets in this picture look remarkably similar to the “lead codices” made public a few months ago.  Those tablets are largely considered by the scholarly world to be forgeries.  However there is still some debate being carried out on their authenticity.  So, despite my first assumption that these were fake as well, I thought it prudent to do some investigating.  I was invited over to the home of the uncle who lets say “dabbles” in antiquities.  I went hoping to look at the tablets, take pictures, and attempt to find out more information about their origin.  My friend took me to his uncle’s house and we had a very nice visit with good food and homemade wine (which was quite tasty).

Unfortunately the tablets were no longer there.  The person who was trying to sell them (9 tablets for 85,000 JD!) had taken them back to show to another potential customer.  Apparently this customer was not willing to give two of the tablets back and had somehow been shot in the leg and was now in jail.  Now I might have some of the details in that previous sentence wrong, but the uncle was speaking a combination of English and Arabic (and the more wine and scotch we had the worse his English got).  I think the meeting went quite well and before we were ready to leave the uncle admitted he had a disc with pictures of all of the tablets.  But with a twinkle in his eye he said those were for next time.  As we were driving back to Amman my friend apologized and said he would try to get the pictures for me, but also said that his uncle really liked me and would tell me more about the man trying to sell them next time.

Hopefully I will have more to say on this subject in the near future.  And hopefully I will have a complete set of pictures of the tablets as well.

If anyone has insights as to the inscription on the tablet pictured above please let me know.


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Dissertation Weekly #10

18 06 2011

The past two weeks have been void of writing.  The time has been spent scanning and drawing pottery full time.  I’m afraid the remainder of my time here might take that form.  However there are still plenty of sentences to pick from, so here we go.

The recording system used by the Tell Safut Project differed from its first five seasons to its last five seasons.

During its first five seasons a simple recording form was used, which was a variation of the forms created for the Tell Heshbon excavations carried out by Andrews University in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  This form included basic information such as “progress of excavation” and “locus description” allowing for narrative recording.  There was also a second sheet for “associated pottery.” During the second five seasons the Tell Safut Project used a version of the Madaba Plains Project recording notebook designed by Larry Herr.  Unlike the old forms, these new forms contained many detailed prompts for filling out data.  Unfortunately if the person filling out the information isn’t properly trained or properly supervised errors occur and details are left out.  These things happened repeatedly in the excavation notebooks.


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Back in the Dirt

14 06 2011

This past week we rented a car and went down to check out Jalul with the family.  The team there was winding down (they had little over a week left) so it was great to catch up with friends as well as assess the progress that had been made over the previous 4 and a half weeks.

The most exciting development is the excavation of the water system in Field W.  Last season a water channel was excavated dating to the 7th century BCE and running out of the city.  This season a small section of the actual reservoir (or what is assumed to be a reservoir) has been uncovered.  The dean of  Andrews Seminary, Denis Fortin, excavated three distinct surfaces running under the channel and (possibly?) abutting the substantial wall of the reservoir.  The pottery from these surfaces was trending towards the beginning of the Iron Age II, so mainly 9th and 8th centuries BCE.  The reservoir itself is plastered and currently about 4-5 meters deep.

We also got a chance to see the work that Abe and Jeff (two Andrews archaeology grad students) were doing in Field G.  They are uncovering another room of the pillared building that dates to the late Iron Age, including walls and pillars standing 2.5 meters high (so basically full height, which is unusual).  During this time Jack was having a great time digging in the dirt with a trowel and getting pushed around in a wheelbarrow by one of the shabab.  We then went down to the Islamic Village and Jacob (another Andrews archaeology grad student) showed us the Byzantine (?) crypt (?) that is being excavated.  It is very impressive and stands out in the village.  They uncovered a blocked entrance on the outside of the building and chamber on the inside.

We then went back to Madaba, to the Mariam Hotel where the dig team stays and while they were finishing up for the day we had a swim in the Mariam’s lovely pool.  After the swim we enjoyed the buffet lunch with the team and then went to pottery reading so I could take a look at the finds from the previous day and get an idea of the time periods they are dealing with.  During this time Jack was wanting so badly to hold the sherds, but he couldn’t so he was getting frustrated.  Erika Fortin (the dean’s daughter) was washing pottery and this intrigued Jack, so she taught him how to do it with some body sherds that were going to be tossed.  He loved it, and was really good at it.  Between the digging, washing, and love of pottery I think we have a budding archaeologist on our hands!

After pottery reading we took the kids into town and did some shopping in the Madaba Souk.  We went in a number of mosaic shops looking for the best quality and prices.  Madaba is one of the only places where they still make mosaics by hand, and they were more than happy to show us their techniques and let Jack put a few mosaic squares in place.  We also ended up buying two copper jugs, which we had been wanting for a long time.  The prices in Madaba are much cheaper than in Amman or other places in Jordan.  We finished the day by picking up Jacob and Abe and going to Adonis, a new mezzeh-style restaurant.  It is in an old Ottoman period building (that ACOR used to own) that has been renovated.  The place looks great and the food was inexpensive and very tasty.

The next day I got up a 5AM and drove out to Jalul so I could dig for a day.  I have been itching to dig throughout most of the fellowship, but especially now that so many digs are under way.  Zeljko Gregor (professor at Andrews and supervisor of Fields G and W) put me with Abe, who was taking down balks in Field G in order to finish excavating part of a large pillared building dating to the late Iron Age.  As we took down the first balk we discovered what is likely the city wall.  The top courses had been robbed out (likely by the builders of the Islamic Village).  The next balk we took down revealed an ephemeral wall of the Iron II building.  Why is it that walls always seem to hide in balks?  The day was windy so I returned to ACOR happy and extremely dirty.  It was a good day.


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Lebanon Day 4

11 06 2011

Not much to report on this day.  We slept in a little bit and then did some shopping in the Old Souk of Souk Mikael.  It was unclear to me whether this souk is actually old or if it is built to look old.  Nonetheless they have done a good job of making it appear old, with a cobbler, weaver, and other local craftsman intermingled with more touristy shops and authentic Lebanese restaurants.  We purchased a few trinkets for the kids, so they would have something to remember Lebanon, and wandered around the souk.  We left in plenty of time to make it to the Beirut National Museum and still make it to the airport to drop off our rental car in time so we wouldn’t have to pay for an extra day.  But, of course, traffic was bumper to bumper from when we got on the highway through Beirut.  The day before there had been some traffic but this day it was terrible.  What should have taken us 30-40 minutes tops, took 2 hours. Oh, and we got lost.  By the time we figured out where the museum was and made it through all that traffic we decided to head to the airport.  We made it about 20 minutes before the car was due, so its a good idea we skipped the museum.

We had an incredibly busy four days, packed full of sites and new experiences.  I was itching to get up to Baalbek and Anjar in the Beqa’ah Valley, but we decided against it because of general safety concerns.  Angela reminded me that this was just our first time to Lebanon and not our only time.  And despite getting lost and getting in an accident it was a really fun trip.


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Dissertation Weekly #9

10 06 2011

This week I am returning to my Late Bronze Chapter.  This past week I have been busy scanning pottery and spent a couple of days at Jalul (blog post soon), so there has been no writing.  I think I can manage a few more sentences over the coming weeks from the chapters I have already written, but the well might run dry at some point as I focus on scanning 115 crates of pottery.

Both of these elevations are between 50 and 60 cms higher than the level of floor B4.19 (924.73) or the plaster (B4.21) located on top of it found in the northeast corner (924.85).[1]

[1] Although there is a question as to the accuracy of these elevations because in 1983 it is recorded that locus 25, a small ashy layer in the northeast corner of the square, abuts the foundation of walls 7 and 8 and its elevation is 923.95 (however in the weekly summary locus 21, this plaster surface (locus 25) on top of locus 19 is described as being “below the level of the walls” Ditchfield 1983).  The relation of the floor level 19 is never indicated (the north balk and east balk section drawings seem to show locus 19 as being below the foundation level of walls 7 and 8) and it is likely that if this elevation is correct these walls were later and cut into this LB floor layer.

Apologies for the information drop, but I wanted to highlight one of the largest problems with going through old excavations: accuracy.  Here I am discussing a Late Bronze floor level in B4.  This level is more or less in the middle of the square and is surrounded by walls.  My assumption was that the walls dated to the Iron Age II and were not associated with the Late Bronze floor, but I had to check.  The sentence is stating that in 2001 the bottom of these walls were measured at a higher level than the floor, making the walls later.  However, the footnote is explaining how when these loci were originally excavated in 1983 there was a discrepancy within the same notebook regarding the relationship of part of the LB level to the walls.  Just reading that footnote makes my head hurt, and I wrote it.


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Lebanon Day 3

10 06 2011

On this day we were heading south to check out Sidon and Tyre, as well as various sites around them.  The day started off poorly and continued on that downward trend.  As we were turning to get back on the highway south we were pulled over by two police officers.  They indicated through limited English and Arabic that I had gone the wrong way through a one-way intersection.  Now this was the most convoluted intersection ever almost like a figure eight with crisscrossing directions.  The police indicated that I could give them $40 and they would get rid of the picture.  I assume they meant that there was a camera filming the intersection, but I saw no camera anywhere.  I told them to write me a ticket and they took my license and registration.  They continued to try to get me to pay $40, which I thought was a bit ridiculous.  It was clear they wanted a bribe and that probably 100′s of cars went through that intersection any way they wanted throughout the day.  The police officers brought me out of the car and tried to get me to give them money.  I told them I only had Lebanese pounds and so they wanted to see my wallet.  I showed it to them and I had more than enough to bribe them, so they insisted on some pounds.  However I insisted that money was for the remainder of our trip and I would not be giving them any of it.  So, they gave me back my license and registration and let me go.

We then got lost in Beirut (typical), but made it out okay and were close to Sidon when we got in an accident.  There was a large Phoenician temple (Temple of Eshamoun) that we wanted to see on the other side of the road.  I was trying to read a broken sign and saw at the last minute that we were supposed to turn, so I put on my blinker, looked in my rearview and went for it.  As we were turning into the median to go back the other way a SUV nailed us on the drivers side door.  We slid further into the median area and came to a stop.  The car was undrivable, so between filling out insurance information (twice, for a police inspector and some kind of insurance inspector) and waiting for a new car we lost a good 2.5-3 hours.  Oh, and did I mention it was my birthday?

We decided to skip the temple and just drive into Sidon.  We parked next to the beautiful Sea Castle, built by the Crusaders and ate lunch at a very nice restaurant on the water overlooking the castle.  While a little bit more expensive, it was serene and delicious, just what we needed to recover from our hectic morning.  We checked out the castle, which had a lovely view of the ancient harbor (and lighthouse area) as well as back towards the modern city.  We then drove into the city and tried to find the ancient site, which included a large Crusader castle, Roman city remains, and Phoenician remains.  Unfortunately all of the different areas were completely closed.  All doors and gates were locked behind high fences.  I asked a couple locals about access, and they all seemed to indicate that these areas had been inaccessible for a long time.  As we drove out of town we thought we saw a large tell next to the sea, but upon closer examination it was an enormous garbage dump.

We were going to stop at two Bronze and Iron Age sites, called Tall Brak and Sarepta (or Sarafand).  We were having a hard time finding the first one and it was getting later in the day so we decided to continue on to Tyre.  We were driving down the main highway when, all of a sudden, the road stopped.  Now, this wasn’t like in Israel where there are large concrete barriers, this was just an enormous mound of dirt with trees growing on top.  It was quite surreal, like nature was taking back what originally belonged to it.  We eventually made it down to el-Bass, the Roman and Byzantine area of ancient Tyre.  We took the coastal road and drove through a number of towns where something like the Hezbollah youth were doing fundraisers next to the road.  Tyre was very impressive, with one of the largest hippodromes in the world as well as triumphal arch leading to the decumanus.  There was also the Roman/ Byzantine necropolis and a Byzantine church.  One of the funnier things we saw on the trip was taking place in the hippodrome.  Locals were using it as a track.  Men and women were walking around it, and conservative women in their conservative workout clothes were jogging around it.  The guard had let us drive in and told us to pay on our way out.  When we drove back I got out of the car to pay him and he said not to worry about it.  We saw many examples of Lebanese hospitality and friendliness and this was a great example of it.  I doubt they get very many paying customers each day (all of the locals had seemingly walked through a different gate leading to an apartment complex that wasn’t guarded).  We then checked out the harbor and headed back to our guesthouse, and despite the accident it was a pretty good day.



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DIssertation Weekly #8

4 06 2011

I think next week I will come back to my Late Bronze chapter, but today I wanted to highlight what I accomplished this week: I finished another chapter!  I kind of feel like it is cheating because the chapter is only four pages, but an important four.  The Hellenistic Period at Safut was the subject of the chapter and of the following sentence:

While working through pottery from the late Iron Age, four storage jar rims were identified that did not fit in the corpus of the late Iron Age IIC/Persian Period.

These four storage jar rims ended up dating to the 3rd-2nd centuries BCE.  Now, you might ask “What is so important about four rims?”  Well, previously no Hellenistic presence of any kind had been found at the site.  One of the rims was almost almost complete and consisted of four sherds spread across four different loci.  So it seems unlikely that this was a case of a traveler or two stopping by the site and discarding some broken vessel.

SFT01.C7.401.1(409.22,401.2,405.10)


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Towers of Pottery

2 06 2011

Yesterday was the big day.  Time to take a truck over to the Department of Antiquities warehouse and load up all the Safut pottery and bring it back to ACOR.  One of the staff here arranged for a truck, driven by a Palestinian, with two Egyptian workers for 85 JD.  At first I thought this was a lot, but after the effort we all put in I would say it was well worth it.  I wasn’t aware that there would be other workers so I brought my friends Matt and Justin along to help.  We had to package up 35 whole and restored vessels and 115 crates of pottery.  Somehow we ended up with 135 crates and I was very confused, but after getting all the crates moved here to ACOR I recounted: there were 115 from Safut, 11 from Jerash, and 2 undetermined.  So not only did the workers miscount, but they also gave me some Jerash pottery.  We somehow fit everything onto the truck and made our way slowly over to ACOR with me in the truck and Justin following with the Egyptian workers in a taxi.

We managed to fit everything into my allotted space at ACOR and I now have towers of pottery.


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Lebanon Day 2

1 06 2011

We started day two as early as we could.  I think we made it out around 830 AM and stopped at a patisserie for breakfast.  Lebanese patisseries are fantastic, the French influence definitely has rubbed off.  Ang bought two donuts, a small veggie pizza, and a croissant with almond (paste?) inside.  The croissant was particularly delicious.  Our first stop of the day was Byblos.  We went to the harbor (modern built on ancient) and the archaeological park.  On this day we took over 570 pictures and I think a good percentage were taken at Byblos.  Not only is the area beautiful, the old city is built within the walls of the Crusader city, but the archaeological area is massive.  Visible ruins in the area begin with the Chalcolithic Period and continue through modern times.  There is a large Crusader castle built on an earlier Islamic fort, built on the Middle Bronze rampart and Early Bronze city wall.  There is a Roman theater built next to the Phoenician necropolis and a beautiful 19th century CE house overlooking houses from the Chalcolithic period.

When we got back to the car it wouldn’t start.  I realized that Jack had turned the lights on when playing in the front seat, but after the car was turned off and the keys taken out.  Stupid French car. We found two very nice 20 somethings who were very helpful.  They didn’t have jumper cables, but called around to friends until they found some.  Middle Eastern hospitality at its best.  We stopped on our way out of town and got some sandwiches.  I got Ang and Jack a mixed grill wrap and I got a fried fish wrap, which was amazing.  They put mint in everything in the Middle East and it did wonders to my wrap.

After stopping by Tell Fadous-Kfarabida, an Early Bronze site that I read about in Near Eastern Archaeology, we got to Batroun. It is a small vacation/tourist village with a really cool sea wall excavated out of the kurkar rock by the Phoenicians.  Not much to say about this stop.  We once again got to walk through the old souk part of town, super narrow streets and old buildings.  In this town, houses had an affinity for staircases that emerged out of the side of buildings and led to nowhere, quite amusing.

Before we arrived in Tripoli we stopped at Moussaylha Castle, a fairy tale castle if there ever was one.  Built in the 15th century CE to protect the main pass through this region, it was constructed on top of a rock outcropping.  There was a Bedouin with his sheep nearby and a babbling brook, one just had to tune out the busy highway nearby to imagine you were back 600 year ago.

We then made our way to Tripoli.  Despite getting somewhat turned around we made our way to the Old City.  We wanted to see the Crusader Citadel, which dominates the area, and to try out a sweet shop that our guide book said was the best in Lebanon.  Unfortunately the Citadel was closed (like the Moussaya Castle), but after many twists and turns through the unmarked narrow souk streets we found the sweet shop!  It was quit fantastic, delightful kenafe with a special syrup to pour over top and amazing baklava.  So, after all those twists and turns, we realized that we had no idea where our car was.  We began retracing our steps when we ran into an eccentric Lebanese man dressed in a red tie and red pants with a green plaid vest.  He asked where we were from in a quirky English accent (turns out his wife is Belgian) and informed us he worked for the tourist center in Tripoli and was delighted to see an American family in Tripoli.  He also insisted on accompanying us through the back streets of Old Tripoli until we found our car.  He knew every nook and cranny of those streets and told us all about them, and eventually lead us to our car.  Hurray!  He showed us the way to get back on the highway and then he was gone.  Either disappearing into a back alley or vanishing into the ether.

We decided to try and make it up into the mountains and see the famous Cedars of Lebanon grove before it got dark.  However we spent too much time trying to find our car and underestimated the time it would take to get up into the mountains, so we had to stop and turn around to return to Beirut, but not before seeing a beautiful sunset and some snow capped mountains.


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