An all-girl team

It’s a first for Jolanta Mlynarczyk (yoh LAHN tah milli NAR chik) and Mariusz Burdajewicz (MAR ee oosh buhr DIE ah vich). “We will have,” says Yolanta, “all girls.”

Five members of the six-woman Polish team visited the dig at Megiddo on Saturday. On Sunday, the first day of the Israeli work week, all six will be be back digging at Hippos.

The male students on the Polish archaeologists’ team have left, their families worrying about missile attacks. The last male student left Thursday. All the American students have left as well.

Our Polish neighbors are just 100 meters* west of us. Everyone at the dig calls our site “the American church” and the Polish site “the Polish church.”

We visit each other, see each other at meals and sometimes shoot pool together at the pub in the evening. We Americans speak almost no Polish, but most of the Poles speak English well.

Are you ready for the names? Here are the Polish women in the photo above, from left:

o Emilia Jastrzebska (em EEL ya yast SHEMB ska).

o Julia Gorecka (YOU lya gor ETCH ka).

o Joanna Stankiewicz (yo AH nah STAHN kah witz).

o Anna Knapek (Ah nah kah NAH pek).

o Kate Goieblowska (GOW ah BLAU ska).


PUZZLING SQUARE

Yolanta and Mariusz have their all-women team at work on a puzzling square. They are digging her church’s north portico (PORT ik oh).

A portico is a roof supported by columns. It is a kind of porch or covered walk. It must have felt good to duck under the shade of the portico to get out of the hot sun in the ancient city.

The odd thing about the north portico is that is is on two levels. Yolanta thinks she knows why. The church was built atop a Greek temple. The temple stood on a temenos (TEM en oss), or platform.

The church builders put their portico atop the temenos — and then dropped the portico walk down to the lower level. The difference in height is about a meter.


BIG DISCOVERY?

That leaves room for a possible big discovery late in the dig. The unexplored area is close to Julia Burdajewicz’s “plaster disaster” wine vats (June 18 Archive, “Young Archaeologists: Julia and Emilia.”)

Julia, the sixth member of the Polish team, is the daughter of Yolanta and Mariusz. She taped together the parts of the broken funnel in the first picture.

With only five days left in the dig, Yolanta worries about what they’ll find at the deep end of the portico.

“If we are unfortunate,” she sighs, “we are going to discover 20 or 50 broken wine glasses, which I wouldn’t like because I have too much pottery. I prefer a bowl of gold or silver.”

This picture shows Yolanta with just some of broken pottery she wants to look at. Broken pottery tells us much about a site — but you have to look at a lot of it.


KIND OF A TREASURE

At the west end of the north portico, her diggers have already found a kind of treasure — coins, a bronze buckle, pins and the metal handle of a sickle with some bits of wood still attached. This photo shows Julia with one of the coins.

It was almost all within one square meter. “Maybe it fell from an overhead gallery,” says Yolanta. The coins are Umayyad (ooh MY add) — they come from the Muslim period.

The metal finds includes a metal disk just right to fit on the end of a modern can of soup. “It looks like the lid of a can,” says Julia, “but it’s ancient.”

It’s important to look carefully. Hippos is an ancient city. But the Israeli army dug some trash pits on Hippos within the last 40 years.


ALL WOMEN

What will it be like digging with nearly all women? “I think it will be better,” says Yolanta. “They are working very, very well. The only problem is moving the blocks.”

The Polish church is famous for its huge stone blocks that need to be moved out of the diggers’ way.

Yolanta will ask Mariusz and Arthur Segal, our dig leader, for help. Or she may call in the tractor. I offered help from the American team as well.

Julia, however, isn’t so sure the women will need help. “We’ll manage,” she says — as though the blocks will be no big deal. — Marc Hequet

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MOVING ROCKS

At the American church, both men and women help move big rocks.

For the really big rocks, we like to bring in Darryl Schmidt. The retired St. Paul, Minn., police officer has training as a weight lifter.

We also call in Irene Abrams, a truck driver and retired Marine. Even Linda Miller, the smallest team member, helps with big rocks.

We try to be smart about lifting rocks, using our leg muscles instead of our backs. We often use a cargo net. We roll the rock onto the net and then three, four or even five people can lift it.

We’ve never weighed a rock, but I remember some of the heaviest: In 2004 we moved half a dozen basalt corbels — stones that once supported a stone ledge.


DO THE MATH

Basalt, a stone formed from volcanic eruptions, weighs 3.3 grams* per cubic centimeter.

The corbels we moved were 80 x 35 x 25 centimeters.

Can you do the math?

What did those corbels weigh?

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Marc Hequet writes about Concordia University’s excavation at Hippos and other digs as well. Students, teachers and families are welcome to make use of the material as part of a curriculum. Contact Marc with questions via mhequet@sprintmail.com

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WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

Sickle. A C-shaped knife blade attached to a handle for cutting grain.

Ummayad (ooh MY add). The time just before the great earthquake of 748 CE when Muslims controlled the area of Hippos.

Portico (PORT ik oh). A walkway with a roof held up by columns.

Temenos (TEM en oss). A platform for a Greek temple.

Basalt (buh SALT). Rock formed from lava that came out of volcanoes.

Corbels (KOR buhls). Building stones that held up a ledge.

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*To change from meters to feet and from grams to pounds can use this site from the state of Washington: www.wsdot.wa.gov/Metrics/factors.htm

** CE means “common era.” It’s the same as A.D., which means “in the year of our Lord.”

Houses, eggshells — and bombs

You have been asking good questions about the dig here at Hippos!

More questions are welcome. You can ask a question by e-mail. Click on Ask a Question on the right. We’ll do our best to answer.

Darryl Schmidt (left) is back from helping get our students on flights home. Rhoda Schuler took the lead in that complicated effort.

Darryl and Glenn Borchert worked July 19 on getting the heavy sarcophagus back into the tomb where it came from. They got everything ready. The tractor lifted the sarcophagus back in. We want the sarcophagus hidden so no one tries to steal it.


DIGGING IN A HOUSE?

Here are answers to your questions:

Did you just realize recently that you were digging in a house? Could the church have had a kitchen? What other things have you found that make you think the bowl and egg were in a house?

We never know what we’re going to find as we begin to dig. We can always guess — but finding out for sure takes a while.

We save what we find as we dig — pottery, bones, pieces of glass, nails. Then we look carefully at it later.

A home has a certain kind of pottery used to prepare food. When we find such pottery and a lot of animal bones, we think it is from a domestic area — a place where people lived.

I like digging in domestic areas. I think about the people who lived near our church — talking, laughing, hurrying down the street into the cool buildings to get out of the hot sun.

Did our church have a kitchen? We’re not sure. If people lived at the church, it probably had a kitchen. A square I dug earlier appeared to be a domestic area on the north side of the church — but people may have lived there after the church was closed.

Was Jessica’s egg a chicken egg?

We think so. The egg shells are just about the size of the eggs in your refrigerator, and they’re white. In fact we have found more egg shells since Jessica flew home.

Chickens and people go way back. People were keeping chickens in China by 1400 BCE*. Our church dates to about 600 CE*, or 2,000 years later.

In the 1500s CE, explorers kept chickens on board their ships to eat the eggs and the chickens. In the 1600s CE, English settlers brought chickens to North America.

Why do you think it was a Muslim house where Jessica found the egg shell?

We think a Muslim family lived there because the pottery is from what we call the Ummayad period. That is a time when Islam, the religion of the Muslims, was very new and its followers had moved into Hippos.

Of course, we can’t be sure. I have a Japanese teapot, but that doesn’t make me Japanese. Jessica’s eggshell could have belonged to a Christian or Jewish family using Ummayad pottery.

Still, it’s important to notice the difference. At the time of the eggshell, whoever was using the kitchen, the culture of this area was Muslim.

Was the booming from the bombs loud? Was anyone killed?

We still hear booms, some far away, some close. The booms July 15 from Tiberias just 15 kilometers** away were as loud as fireworks on the Fourth of July. I don’t think I like fireworks any more.

This afternoon, a boom was so close it rattled the lab window. We are supposed to stay away from windows, but this window looks out on a wall. So I felt safe.

We stay inside when we hear booms close by. These missiles only hurt you if they land very close by and you have no protection.

Sadly, 15 people in Israel have been killed by missiles in the last few days. No one working on the dig has been hurt by a missile.

Today in Nazareth, about 30 kilometers to the west, two children were killed on the way to visit their uncle. The children were Arabs — like the people who launch the rockets.

Hezbollah has launched hundreds of missiles. The risk of being hurt is very small.

But that doesn’t help the people who are sad about the dead children. The younger was only three years old. His brother was either nine or seven years old. The first newspaper accounts disagree.

Israelis are fighting back by bombing in Lebanon where Hezbollah is launching the missiles. More people have died in the bombing there.

We hope that soon leaders will stop fighting and work things out.

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MOST STUDENTS ARE GONE

The American students in our group now have all returned home. It’s quiet and lonely without them.

Some of the Polish students also left. But Julia and Emilia (Archives, June 18) are still here, along with a few others.

The Israeli students are also still here. They were nervous about the missiles at first. Now, they seem not to mind them so much.

We Americans can leave if we want to. But we still think En Gev is safe place.

We’re getting used to the explosions, and we know there’s little chance of being hurt.

It’s like crossing the street or riding in a car. If you’re careful, if you look both ways, if you wear your seat belt — the risk of being hurt is less.


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DIG LEADER HURT!

On the other hand, people do get hurt. Our dig leader Mark Schuler was injured today — but not by a missile.

Mark slipped as he was climbing out of an empty square. He hurt his ankle. The fall was scary, though — he might have hit his back or even his head.

Our Israeli friend Itomar took Mark to the hospital in Porriya about 20 kilometers* away. Doctors found only a sprained ankle.

Mark will stay in his room on Thursday and rest over the weekend. Our friend Shlomi gave Mark a cane to help him walk. — Marc Hequet

Marc Hequet writes about Concordia University’s excavation at Hippos and other digs as well. Students, teachers and families are welcome to make use of the material as part of a curriculum. Contact Marc with questions via mhequet@sprintmail.com

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* BCE means “before common era.” It’s the same as B.C., which means “before Christ.” CE means “common era, which is the same as A.D. That means anno Domini, or “in the year of our Lord.”

**To change from kilometers to miles and to make other metric conversions, you can use this site from the state of Washington: www.wsdot.wa.gov/Metrics/factors.htm

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CAN YOU DIG IT?

If you, your family and friends were living all by yourselves on an island for a year, which would you rather have — chickens and roosters? Or cows and bulls?
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WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Domestic (doh MESS tik) means a place where people live. (Is your doh MESS tik area — your room — a MESS?)

Culture means the tools, rules, laws, language and other things that people use in their everyday lives. Culture changes over time. When your grandparents were young, they listened to music on a record player or radio, not an iPod. Yet some things about the culture haven’t changed since the time when your grandparents were young: In the United States, we still send children to school. We still vote for our leaders. We still sing the national anthem before baseball games. Archaeologists carefully watch for changes in culture — different pottery, weapons and building styles.

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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE

The Pueblo of the southwestern United States were weaving cotton textiles as the family using Muslim dishes was living across the street from our church about 700 CE.

The world's first newspaper, called Ti-pao, was printed in China from carved wooden blocks about 700 CE.

Shooting hole — or sewer?

Is it a shooting hole? Or a sewer? Or both? Ran Vizen (rahn VEE zen) still hasn’t figured it out.

Ran is a square leader for the Israeli team digging at Hippos. His team is working just inside the Hippos city wall.

There they found something interesting — a hole in the wall 20 centimeters* off the floor

Cities need safety from enemies. But cities also need a way for rainwater to run off so streets don’t flood. Hippos, like all cities, faced both problems.

So — is Ran’s hole in the wall a shooting hole — a hole through which an archer might shoot arrows at enemy soldiers attacking the city?

Or is it a sewer hole, where rain water ran out of the city?

The tower is where soldiers guarded the city. To the west, soldiers could see ships approaching on the Sea of Galilee far below. They could also see visitors coming over the mountains to the east.


BEST VIEW

Ran, his diggers and other workers have the best view in the whole city from here. This photo shows Brian Cannon from Albuquerque, N.M., our dig architect. Brian makes maps of the dig. He is standing on one of Ran’s walls with the Sea of Galilee in the distance. You can see it’s a loooooong way down.

The wall around Hippos was like a headband on the mountain. The city, atop the mountain, rose above the wall.

People usually build, tear down, build again, tear down again. Ran has found three different city walls: One from the earliest or Hellenistic period, one from the Roman and one from the Byzantine (BIZ ant een). Brian says the Byzantine wall is 1.58 meters thick.


GOOD PLACE FOR A CITY

Hippos is a good place for a city. It must have been hard to attack. On the south, invaders would have to climb a steep slope — and then climb the wall. On the north, the approach is even steeper, almost vertical.

The main road to the city gate from the east had a deep trench cut through it. A bridge must have crossed the trench so that visitors and people who lived in Hippos could come and go.

If an army attacked, the bridge could be burned or knocked down. It is just far enough from the city gate so that catapults couldn’t reach the walls with the rocks they threw.

The wall has fallen down in some places, but Ran and his team have chosen a good spot. “We dug here because this is a perfect place,” says Ran. “The wall was preserved.”


ANOTHER MYSTERY

Ran thought that if the floor were much deeper, his hole would be a shooting hole. An archer could stand up and shoot arrows out it. If the floor were at about the same level as the hole, it would be a sewer hole.

But the floor is 20 centimeters below the hole. That seems too low for an archer to stand and shoot. And how can water run out that hole unless the water is already 20 centimeters deep? “Another mystery,” sighs Ran.
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OUR PUZZLING PASSAGEWAY

Meanwhile, back at the Northeast Church — remember our passageway? It has something to do with rainwater as well, apparently.

You might recall that the passage led around a corner near the church’s South Vaulted Chamber, where people may have gone for healing. (“Secret passageway?,” July 4)

At first we thought the passage actually led into the South Vaulted Chamber. But as we dug deeper and deeper — we found no door.

Now we don’t know what to think: The secret passage runs straight into a wall.


ADDED LATER?

Of course the wall could have been added later. Archaeologists spend all day sorting out walls and trying to decide which wall came first.

We have been digging a square for days now that is just puzzling. If you were to run along the secret passageway and had the power to crash through walls, here is what you might see: digger Jim Appelbaum clearing the way into the street that passes the church.

Or if you came from the other way at another time, walking down the street to our little church, you might see Brian Andrew digging out the second of two mysterious basins.

What were these basins for? “Foot bath,” suggests Jim, who helped to dig them out.

OK, maybe. Or maybe they were for watering animals. Can you imagine a horse or dog or donkey taking a drink here?

In any case, Linda Miller dug deep enough into the one on the right, with the bucket in it, to find a drain. And later Brian found a drain in the other basin as well.

So were these basins were part of the city’s drainage system that let rainwater flow out of the streets? Maybe.

Do you have any ideas about Ran’s hole or our basins? We’d love to hear them: mhequet@sprintmail.com under the subject line: RAN’S HOLE or BASINS. Or click on Ask a Question at the start of this story.

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Marc Hequet writes about Concordia University’s excavation at Hippos and other digs as well. Students, teachers and families are welcome to make use of the material as part of a curriculum. Contact Marc with questions via mhequet@sprintmail.com

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WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

Archers shoot arrows from bows.

Catapults are machines that ancient armies used to throw rocks at city walls.

Vertical means straight up and down.

Byzantine (BIZ ant een) means the empire the came after the Roman empire and lasted from about 330 CE** to 1453 CE.

Hellenistic (HEL ah NIST ik) means from the time of Alexander the Great, who died in tk BCE*, to about 63 BCE when the Romans took over the Holy Land.

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CAN YOU DIG IT?

How many years did the Byzantine Empire last?

How many years has it been since the United States declared its independence?

Imagine lying face-downacross a city wall 1.58 meters thick, like the Byzantine wall around Hippos, with your toes pointing down on one side of the wall. (Yikes! Check around for scorpions first!) If you lie face-down on the wall that way — are you tall enough to look down the other side?

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*To change from kilometers to miles and to make other metric conversions, you can use this site from the state of Washington: www.wsdot.wa.gov/Metrics/factors.htm

** CE means “common era.” It’s the same as A.D., which means “in the year of our Lord.”

The city wall

Israel is thinking a lot about defense these days. So what else is new?

Take a look at the wall around the ancient city of Hippos. A wall has protected the city since 300 BCE.

We know of only one time that the city was attacked and defeated: the early first century BCE*. We can still see the burn layer from that battle.

This season, some workers are digging inside the wall. They have the best view of anyone — overlooking the Sea of Galilee.

Earlier this year, they found that hitting a stone in one section of the wall produced a poof of dust from another section. They knew something strange was going on.

Before long, they found out what: a tunnel near the wall, about one meter by 60 centimeters**.

That’s too big to be a shooting hole for a soldier with a bow and arrow. It’s too big to be a sewer for waste water. But it’s too small to be a gate.


PISHPOSH?

At first, Ranin Noufi, the square leader, thought it was a pishposh — Hebrew for a kind of escape hatch.

Ancient cities had secret doors. In war, when an enemy surrounded the city, messengers could go out through these secret doors for help. Or soldiers from the city could use the door for a sneak attack.

When her diggers found the opening, Ranin climbed down the wall to look at it.

On July 17, I did too. It’s a little scary. You wouldn’t fall far, but you might roll a long way down the steep hill leading to Hippos. I shot this photo of digger Lyle Schoen of Nebraska peering out from the inside.

Is it an escape hatch? Michael Eisenberg, who is studying the walls of Hippos, doesn’t think so.

This is a bad place for a pishposh. It opens to the main road, now and long ago. Anyone sneaking out would be seen quickly.

And the opening is on the south side of the city, where the slope is steep — but not as steep as on the north side. If an invading army were to attack, it may do so on the south side.

Michael (meek HILE) thinks the opening was a gate through which guards went to posts beyond the wall.

There they could watch for attackers sneaking up, and fight them before retreating through the little door in the main wall.


A KNOCK ON THE HEAD

The square Michael and Ranin are digging is about three meters deep inside the wall. It’s hard to lift out rocks and buckets of dirt.

When digger Ayel Dan (ah YELL dahn) called for a brush to clear dirt, Ranin quickly tossed one in. The light brush hit Ayel right on the head!

He was OK and he wasn’t angry. Everyone laughed.

Laughing was good. People here are sad and worried and nervous about the missile attacks.

We think we’re safe at En Gev. But from atop the mountain, we still hear explosions in the distance. Everyone wishes for a defense as sturdy as this old wall. — Marc Hequet
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* BCE means “before common era.” It’s the same as B.C., which means “before Christ.”

**To change from kilometers to miles and to make other metric conversions, you can use this site from the state of Washington: www.wsdot.wa.gov/Metrics/factors.htm

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Marc Hequet writes about Concordia University’s excavation at Hippos and other digs as well. Students, teachers and families are welcome to make use of the material as part of a curriculum. Contact Marc with questions via mhequet@sprintmail.com


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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE

Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) was one of the greatest generals in history. He conquered the Persian Empire, which included what Alexander thought was nearly the whole world. Alexander's wars spread Greek ideas. His invasion led to people speaking Greek in the Holy Land.

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Arthur's altar

Arthur Segal was worried about his wife and daughter in a bomb shelter in Haifa 50 kilometers* away.

But Arthur, our dig director at Hippos, was also excited about his altar.

In a square three meters deep just 30 meters from our church, Arthur’s diggers had found a Roman altar dating to the third century CE*.

“Highest quality,” he says of the altar. And the altar had been painted. “They hated white,” adds Arthur, an expert on Roman times. Nearby, beautiful carved Corinthian capitals had tumbled. They had to come from a temple. “Amazing!” says Arthur.

A few days ago, I saw a photo of Arthur when he was 10 years old. He looks very unhappy in his shorts and knee socks. But today, 50 years later, he is still excited about archaeology.

He is in charge of a big dig — the entire city of Hippos, a 10-year project.

Arthur speaks Polish, Hebrew and English. He can talk easily to a team from Poland, to his team from Israel and to our American team.


ALTAR BUSTERS

Finding an altar is unusual. Christians usually tore down altars and temples to build churches. Christians didn’t like the old religions that killed and burned animals on altars.

Such sacrifices were to please a god. Sometimes the sacrifice was wheat or flowers. Arthur’s diggers have already found many bones of small animals — which means that sacrifices to this god were animal sacrifices.

In any case, Arthur thinks a temple is near the altar — between it and our little church.

In fact, our dig leader Mark Schuler thinks Christians built our little church right on top of an old temple.

Actually, our little church may have had the same use as the earlier temple — healing. People came to sleep overnight at temples to the god Asclepius (ah SKLEP ee us).


ONCE A TEMPLE?

Was our church once such a temple? Mark is looking for proof that it might have been.

Meanwhile, the dig goes on in spite of the fighting — though the numbers get smaller daily. Now we hear the Polish students will leave, perhaps to go to other digs further south that should be safer.

We don’t know if the dig will end early. But we know that the members of the University of Haifa team are worried about their friends and families who live in that city.

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WHOSE BONES ARE THEY?

How do we find out if bones belong to men or women? And how did we find out that our tiny old woman was old? (“More gold, a duck — and our story so far,” Sunday, July 09, 2006).

Those are good questions from Sofie Kinzer of St. Paul, Minn.

One particular bone tells you a lot about whether the skeleton is a male or female: The pelvis (PELL vis). That’s the bone that connects your legs at the top and helps hold up your tummy from underneath. It’s a little like a platter with a hole in it.

Women tend to have a broader, flatter pelvis than men and a wider opening in the middle. If the woman has a baby the baby can pass right through the wider opening.

You can estimate the age of a person by how worn out the bones and teeth are. Our tiny woman was at least 50 years old and perhaps 60 — which was pretty old in those days.


ALL THAT STUFF?

Sofie also asks: What happens to the stuff after you find it and figure out what it is?

Everything we find here becomes the property of the nation of Israel. Experts on old things decide what should go into a museum, what should be studied more, and what should be stored.

We don’t keep everything. We find a lot of broken pottery, for example. We carefully keep track of where we found it. We bring it down the hill each day. We wash it and sort it.

Yolanta, our pottery expert, looks at the broken pieces. She can tell us how old it is and what type of pot it’s from.

That’s important to know. If we have a lot of kitchen pottery from a square, that means it was a domestic area — someone lived there.

Where Jessica found her eggshell, for example, is an Ummayad (ooh MY add) domestic area from about the eighth century CE**. A Muslim family was living near our church sometime in the 700s CE.

What do we do with all that heavy pottery after Yolanta is done with it? We might keep a few interesting pieces. But most of our pottery goes back up the hill — and we dump it. There is just too much to keep.

Are there any people that don't want you to dig up the church? Sofie asks.

We have a license — special permission — from the state of Israel to dig at Hippos. No one I know has objected.

We all feel better that our tiny old woman and the other bones we found at our church will be reburied someday at another church when the experts’ studies are complete.


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*To change from kilometers to miles and to make other metric conversions, you can use this site from the state of Washington: www.wsdot.wa.gov/Metrics/factors.htm

** CE means “common era.” It’s the same as A.D., which means “in the year of our Lord.”
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Marc Hequet writes about Concordia University’s excavation at Hippos and other digs as well. Students, teachers and families are welcome to make use of the material as part of a curriculum. Contact Marc with questions via mhequet@sprintmail.com

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WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Corinthian capital (Core INTH ee ahn CAP it all). The top part of a stone column with fancy carving.

Sacrifice (SACK rih fice). Animals people killed and burned as gifts to their gods. Sometimes sacrifices were plants or other food, not animals.