Dig It!

Boom! Half the team leaves

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 20:06:00 +0000

Boom! Boom! We heard the explosions roll over the lake about lunchtime Saturday.

Six missiles fell on Tiberias (tih BEER ee oss), a small city we can see about 15 kilometers* across the Sea of Galilee.

In Tiberias, the explosions hurt three people and damaged some buildings.

“That’s too close,” muttered Mark Schuler, our dig leader.

Five hours later, our team’s students were on a bus going to Jerusalem.

They will stay there three nights, we hope out of range of any missiles. And then they will go to the airport in Tel Aviv to fly home. For them, the dig is over.

Nine dig volunteers decided to stay. We think the place we are staying, Kibbutz En Gev (kih BOOTS en GEV ), is safe.

MORE MISSILES

What’s the fighting about? It’s a long story. A group called Hezbollah (Hez boe LAH) thinks that Israel has taken land unfairly.

Since July 12, Hezbollah has fired hundreds of missiles into Israel from Lebanon (LEB ah non), the country north of Israel. Israel is fighting back with bombing in Lebanon.

We think Hezbollah shoots rockets at cities, not at small communities like En Gev where we are staying. “Now it will be quiet, I hope,” said Shlomi, a grandfather riding his bicycle at En Gev Saturday.

At 6 p.m. Saturday, however, booms came across the lake again as more missiles hit Tiberias. A few more people were hurt.

By 8 p.m., our student diggers were in Jerusalem. It’s lonely without them. But tomorrow morning we’ll go back up the hill and keep digging.

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JESSICA’S EGG

One of the students who has gone to Jerusalem is Jessica Meyer.

Jessica was brushing soil out of a mysterious clutch of pots July 13 when she saw something she could scarcely believe.

It was at the very bottom of a big bowl under some potsherds. Jessica lifted two broken pieces of pottery — and there it was.

“Glenn,” she said, “I have an eggshell.”

Glenn Borchers, working nearby, wasn’t sure he heard her right. “An eggshell?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Jessica. “An eggshell.”

She carefully pulled the broken white shell from where it had rested for nearly 13 centuries.

Jessica nested it gently between two dust masks to protect it. Now it’s in our lab.

We may send it to an expert for testing. Perhaps a test will tell us exactly how old it is. That would give us a date on the living area where Jessica was digging.

The type of pots Jessica found are called Ummayad (ooh MY add). That means a Muslim family was living right across the street from our church.

Someone in that family put an egg in a big bowl one day. And there it stayed until Jessica found it.

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BYZANTINE BIFFY

Today was a sad, scary day as the dig ended early for our 11 students who left for Jerusalem because of the attack on Tiberias.

We hope we can have some fun and laugh again soon, as we often do at the dig.

A few days ago, for example, Darryl Schmidt saw Linda Miller sitting on a stone structure as she cleared dirt from a wall.

The structure was three stones standing on edge and arranged in a square shape. We didn’t know what it was — but Darryl named it our “Byzantine biffy.”

The church we are digging is from the Byzantine (BIZ ann teen) period. That is the time in history when the Roman Empire’s capital was at Constantinople (con stan tin oh puhl) in what now is Turkey.

“Biffy,” of course, is a slang word for toilet.

Later that day, in the same square, Linda found a coin.

Finding coins is important. We can usually tell how old a coin is, and finding it where someone dropped it helps us get an idea how old a building is.

The coin, about the size of a dime, was covered with tarnish and impossible to read. We will ask an expert to clean it and tell us more about it.

Darryl, meanwhile, came to a quick conclusion. The retired St. Paul, Minn., police officer, says his Byzantine biffy — must have been a pay toilet. — Marc Hequet

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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?

Kibbutz (kih BOOTS) is a certain kind of community in Israel where people own property together as a group.

Potsherds (POT sherds). Broken pieces of pottery — bowls, cooking pots and other vessels that people used. Pottery is made from clay and lasts a long time. We can learn a lot even from its broken pieces.

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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE

Vikings were beginning to build their fast “long ships” in 700 CE as the Muslim family was living across the street from our church. The Vikings, who lived in what now is Norway, sailed their long ships to raid the coasts of Europe. They eventually used the ships to cross the Atlantic Ocean to North America.

In North America a people we call Mississippian (MISS iss IPP ee an) built cities and earth mounds in the Mississippi River valley. Our name for their biggest city is Cahokia, in present-day Illinois. Nearly 40,000 people lived there. The world’s biggest earth mound is there — 30 meters high, its base bigger than base of the Great Pyramid of Egypt.

Kanem (KAHN em), a small kingdom near lake Chad in central Africa, about 700 CE began to grow into an empire that lasted until the 1800s. Kanem covered parts of what now are the nations of Cameroon, Chad, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan.

An all-girl team

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 19:12:00 +0000

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

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:22:00 +0000

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.

Big picture

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 17:44:00 +0000

I found Sarah McCullough on the roof of a building at Hippos. Soldiers built this building about 40 years ago.

Sarah is a student at New York University. She was helping Brian Cannon, our dig architect, to shoot levels.

What does that mean?

Sarah looks at a bubble in a tube on the stick so she knows when she is holding it exactly straight up and down.

Brian, far away down the old Roman road, looks at a target on the stick through a telescope.

Brian’s telescope shows exactly how high up Sarah’s target is. He knows exactly the height of the stick she is holding. And so he can tell exactly the level at the bottom of the stick.

That lets Brian figure out the elevation of different places on the site.

Elevations tell us how parts of the city work together. For example, if two floors in different squares look the same and have about the same elevation, they may be part of the same building or even the same room.

It’s important to know the elevation of various places along the road. We want a complete map of the city.

Brian and Sarah worked together to look at the big picture. That reminds us: It’s a good time for us to look at the big picture too.

The dig is over. On Friday, we fly home.

DIRT FRENZY

Our dig ended at precisely 11 a.m. Israel time on July 26. We spent one more day cleaning up, but not digging.

But our digging ended with a dirt frenzy. Mark Schuler, our dig leader, wanted to get to the floor of our mysterious building in Screwball Square.

We made it. Now we have a better idea of what the building was. Of course we’re not positive yet. Mark’s current hypothesis is that it is living quarters for nuns. But stay tuned. A hypothesis can change depending on what we find next season.

This season, we found a coin and a gold belt buckle. And we made progress toward understanding the people who lived here.

NIKA THE DOG COMES HOME

Michael Eisenberg’s dog Nika ran away, frightened by the missile strikes in Haifa. But the story has a happy ending.

Nika, a black, 20-kilogram* German-Labrador mix, had a microchip implant. The electronic chip placed under her skin tells a veterinarian who owns her.

When missiles exploded in Haifa, poor Nika was frightened and ran away.

Some people found her and brought her to a vet. The vet was able to read the name of Michael and his family on the chip implanted under Nika’s skin.

So Nika now is back — “frightened,” says Michael, “but home.”

STRANGE FEELING

It is a strange feeling to prepare to leave. We can still hear the missiles exploding in the distance almost every day. We have gotten used to it.

In fact, Joanna Stankiewicz of the Polish team doesn’t like it that she has gotten used to the explosions. She can’t understand why people want to hurt one another.

Joanna, who is from Poland, is staying in Israel until the end of September. We hope she will be safe.

We Americans and most of the other Poles are going home to safety.

Our friends from Israel are going home too — but not to safety. Someone asked Michael if his family was safe and well.

“They are not safe,” Michael said. “But they are well.”

We hope they will be safe soon. We hope that the missiles will stop falling and people will work things out. We hope when we come back to dig in 2007, the Holy Land will be a safe place for everyone. — 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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*To change from kilograms to pounds 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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WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Elevation (el eh VAY shun). How high something is.

Young archaeologists:
Julia and Emilia

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 20:39:00 +0000

Julia Burdajewicz (boor DIE ah vitch) is in a vat — kind of a giant bathtub more than two meters* deep. She calls it her “plaster disaster.”

The vat is empty. But 1,400 years ago it was filled with — grape juice.

If you let grape juice sit long enough, it turns into wine through a process called fermentation (fur meant AY shun).

Julia, age 21, is studying to be a conservationist, someone who tries to preserve what archaeologists find. She is working at an impossible job — trying to preserve the plaster that covers the inside of the vat.

The student from the city of Warsaw in Poland is sitting on steps leading to the bottom of the vat, part of a church in the ancient city of Hippos. People at the church made wine, probably to sell. “This was a pool for collecting grape juice to make the wine,” says Julia. “It has a special waterproof plaster. Three layers.”

Her tool kit includes dental picks, forceps and glue. On this day close to the end of the season in July 2005, she is applying bottle after bottle of glue to the plaster.

FILLED WITH DIRT

Over the centuries, the vat filled with dirt. Now that archaeologists have dug it up, the plaster will fall apart unless it gets protection from wind, rain and heat.

Julia has been coming to excavations with her family since she was a little girl. Now she wishes for more time. The dig is coming to an end and it’s almost time for her to leave.

“I like to do everything the best I can and I don’t have time for it,” Julia says sadly. “I know I’m leaving some pieces, some places, that should be conserved and protected. This is the worst thing for me.

“Look at it,” she says, worrying about the plaster. “It may fall before next year. That’s why I think there should be a month after the excavation only for conservators. If I could sit here and work for another year in silence I would be very happy. Right now I’m so stressed.”

In fact, she’s not even thinking about an obvious mystery. If we are sitting in a tub of grape juice — why is there no purple stain on the wall?

Julia shrugs. “Maybe they had here white wine,” she says — wine made from green grapes that would leave less of a stain.

‘AMAZING THING’

When she was 14 years old, Emilia Jastrzebska (em EEL ya yast SHEMB ska) was walking along an old Roman road that passed some ruins in Libya, a country in north Africa where she lived with her family.

“It’s an amazing thing,” thought Emilia, “that I’m walking on the same road that some ancient Romans were walking.”

That was the moment she decided to become an archaeologist. Now Emilia is a student at the University of Warsaw in Poland, her home country. She has been on five digs in two seasons — three in Israel and two in Poland, her home country.

At Hippos in 2004, after the Polish team found what it thought were tombs, Emilia excitedly went to work helping clear the soil from the rock-lined chambers. But after days of work, the truth was clear — the tombs were empty. No bodies.

BABY SKELETON

Emilia was disappointed. On another team in 2004, however, she found human burials at a site in far northern Israel called Tel Roim (tell roh EEM) West. The site dates to a time called pre-pottery Neolithic — that is, before people were using pottery, more than 5,000 years ago. One of the burials was that of a baby.

Last year after Hippos she dug at another site called Misliya (mis lee AH) Cave, which dates to the middle and lower Paleolithic — older than the Neolithic. Excavators found flint tools and animal bones. In the photo, Emilia, on left, and Julia show hand-axes found at Misliya.

In June 2006, Emilia is digging with a team from the Montana State University at a new site called Tel Zahara in central Israel, near an ancient city called Beth Shean (bait shahn). Excavators hope to find out more about village life from long ago.

Emilia, age 21, likes digging in spite of the hard work and the sweat and dirt. “Something happened here more than a thousand years ago,” she says at Hippos. “I can be part of uncovering it.”

When the digging season is over she returns to her studies at the University of Warsaw in Poland. Which does Emilia like better — studying or digging? “Digging!” she says. “That was an easy question.” — Marc Hequet

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* To change from meters to feet 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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WHAT DOES THAT WORD MEAN?

Here’s a list of words from the story about Julia and Emilia:

Fermentation is a chemical change in which yeast changes sugar into alcohol.

Forceps (FORE sepps) is a tool that surgeons and dentists use to seize and hold. Dentists pull teeth using a forceps.

Plaster is a mixture of crushed limestone, sand and water that hardens as it dries. People have plastered walls and ceilings for thousands of years.

Conservators (con SERVE ah tors) preserve what archaeologists find.

Pottery is made from clay and baked. People have used pottery for thousands of years. Archaeologists find out much about ancient cultures by studying pottery.

Neolithic (nee oh LITH ik) is a period in history when people used stone tools.

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CAN YOU DIG IT?

Take this quiz to find out what you learned about Julia and Emilia:

1. How deep was the vat in which Julia was working?

2. Why does the plaster need protection?

3. How was she trying to save it?

4. How old were the bodies Emilia helped find at Tel Roim?

5. What do excavators hope to find at Tel Zahara?

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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE

Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the planet about the time someone was making wine at the church at Hippos in 600 CE*:

The Olmecs of what now is Mexico carved huge stone heads weighing up to 16,300 kilograms** and standing 2.7 meters high.

Islam (iss LAHM) began as a religion. Its followers, Muslims (MUH slims), believe that in about 610 CE a man named Muhammad (muh HAM mahd) began to receive messages from Allah, or God, in the country that now is Saudi Arabia.

The first windmills were built in the country now called Iran.

Aksum (AHK soom) was a powerful kingdom in East Africa in what now is Eritrea, northern Ethiopia and parts of Sudan and Djibouti.

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The information in "Meanwhile, elsewhere" is from World Book Encyclopedia and other sources.

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* CE means “common era.” It’s the same as AD or “anno Domini,” Latin for “in the year of our Lord.” BCE or before common era is the same as BC or “before Christ.”

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

Screwball Square comes into focus

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 20:17:00 +0000

Have we figured out Screwball Square?

Mark Schuler thinks so. The “aha” moment came toward the end of the day July 25. We had removed the “shepherd’s wall” and dig leader Mark was looking at our square.

He noticed that our straight east-west wall lined up exactly with a kind of “weak place” in the straight north-south wall on the west side of the South Vaulted Chamber.

About a meter* of the east-west wall was missing, but Mark saw the connection anyway.

We started the square, you will recall, puzzling about our “secret passage.”

That passage, it turns out, cut through an inner room of the building next to the South Vaulted Chamber. It went through the missing part of the straight east-west-wall.

Why was the meter of wall missing? Who knows? Maybe someone took it out to build something else.

We spent today taking out a junky wall that curved through the square. Mark thinks this “shepherd’s wall” may have been added late, perhaps even in the Ottoman period.

Monks or nuns?

So the building we have been excavating is connected to the church after all. It has an outer room and a kind of inner room. Was the outer room a place for monks or nuns to eat? Possibly.

And the inner room? It may have been an office for the leader of the monastery, or it may have been a tiny chapel.

The most interesting find of the day was a place in the wall opposite the door of the “office.” Mark spotted a space about 30 centimeters by 50 centimeters surrounded by stone. But we think the spot itself is packed dirt and stones.

It could be an alcove — a kind of inset shelf. We’ll gently scrape away the dirt and stones tomorrow and see what’s in it, if anything.

Next season

This means our secret passageway wasn’t a passageway at all — until late. Maybe a shepherd or farmer used it as a chute to guide sheep or other animals into a pen as Columbus was sailing to the New World.

We won’t know until we open up another square to the south and see where our building goes. But that will be another season. — Marc Hequet

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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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ER, ABOUT DARRYL

Awk! I’ve been using the wrong last name for Darryl Schmidt, our retired St. Paul, Minn., police officer. I’ve been calling him Darryl Savage.

Somehow I got it in my head that was his name. Maybe it was the day he posed for a photo wielding a hand pick with a wild look in his ice- blue eyes — and holding a bucket over his head. — Marc Hequet

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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE

The Ottoman Empire dominated the Middle East in the 1500s and 1600s CE**. It controlled what now is Turkey and parts of northern Africa, southwest Asia and southeast Europe. The empire began about 1300 and lasted until 1922. We think a shepherd family may have lived at our tumble-down church during the time of the Ottoman Empire.

The Reformation began in 1517 when Martin Luther, a German monk, protested some practices of the Roman Catholic Church.

Hernan De Soto (deh SO toe), a cruel Spanish explorer, sought to enslave Indians, marched with his army through what now are the states of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas. In 1542, De Soto died of fever on the banks of the Mississippi River.

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“Meanwhile, Elsewhere” uses information from World Book Encyclopedia.

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CAN YOU DIG IT?

Who in your family was born when the Ottoman Empire still existed?

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* To change from centimeters to inches 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.”

Good vs. evil?

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 19:50:00 +0000

We visited Megiddo (meh GID oh) on Saturday. It’s one of the most important digs in all the Holy Land.

Some Christians think a final battle of good against evil will be fought at Megiddo.

Megiddo has seen plenty of battles, as recently as World War I. And it may see more.

In this photo, Darryl Schmidt looks into a square under a big tarp that gives shade from the sun. The square is two or three meters deep — deep enough that diggers need a ladder.

Saturday is the sabbath (SAB uhth). People in Israel take the day off. No diggers were working.

ANCIENT CROSSROADS

Megiddo was a crossroads of ancient trade routes. Armies marching from Egypt and from Assyria (ah SEE ree yah) to fight over control of the ancient world met at Megiddo.

Megiddo has a long history. Israelites (IZ ray el ites) conquered the king of Megiddo, says the book of Joshua in the Bible. That would have been around 1100 BCE.

Israel’s King Solomon (SAH lah mahn) ordered his people to rebuild Megiddo’s walls about 950 BCE. The people were angry at being forced to work for the king. People in the northern kingdom set up their own king after Solomon’s death.

In 609 BCE, the head of the southern kingdom, Josiah (jo SYE ah), died in a battle near Megiddo.

Egypt’s Pharaoh Neco (NECK oh) asked Josiah to let the Egyptian army march through Josiah’s kingdom. But Josiah decided to fight.

Egyptian archers shot Josiah. “Take me away, for I am badly wounded,” he told his servants. They took him in a chariot to Jerusalem. When he got to his home in Jerusalem — he was dead.

CITY OF HORSES?

Can you imagine horses feeding and resting here? Archaeologists think this building at Megiddo was a stable.

Megiddo may have been a city of horses. The kingdom of Israel was famous for its chariots (CHAIR ee ots), two- or four-wheeled battle carts drawn by horses.

King Ahab (ah HAB) and his army helped to fight the Assyrians in 853 BCE at Qarqar (kar KAR), 300 kilometers northeast of Hippos.

Later the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III (SHAWL mah knees er) bragged about the battle, listing the kings he fought at Qarqar.

Shalmaneser says that Ahab had 2,000 chariots — more than any of the other kings who fought at Qarqar.

Shalmaneser brags about winning — but he didn’t come back to fight again for years. Historians think that means that Ahab and his chariots helped fight the Assyrian king to a bloody standstill.

ROUND ALTAR

Megiddo was an important city even before the Bible and the Assyrians. Archaeologists have found a round altar (ALL ter) from about 3000 BCE.

An altar is where priests (preests) did sacrifices (SACK rih fye sis). That could mean killing a sheep or other animal and burning it. The priests did this to please a god.

The first photo shows Darryl looking at squares about 50 meters from the altar.

Were these houses where people lived near the altar? Maybe. In cities now, people live near churches and other places of worship.

But usually ancient cities had sacred areas around the altar. If these were houses, maybe they are from a different time.

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CHICKEN RODEO?

Remember Jessica’s chicken egg (July 9 archive, “Boom! Half the team leaves”)?

We said that people and chickens go way back to at least 1400 BCE.

And we asked this: If you were stranded on a desert island, would you rather have cows and bulls or chickens and roosters.

Cows and bulls, responds one family. “You can’t get milk from a chicken,” reason the Kinzers of St. Paul, Minn. “Or have a rodeo with one either — at least not a very exciting rodeo.”

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CAN YOU DIG IT?

Why would people kill and burn an animal to please a god?

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MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE

Democracy was beginning to develop in Greece at about the time King Josiah was killed in battle with the Egyptians at Megiddo in 609 BCE. Democracy means people choosing their own leaders rather than having kings rule.

Sappho (SAF oh), a Greek poet, lived about 600 BCE. All we have from her work is one complete poem and pieces of others.

The first coins were made in Lydia, now part of the nation of Turkey.

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The information in "Meanwhile, elsewhere" is from World Book Encyclopedia and other sources.

Screwball square

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:47:00 +0000

Our square makes no sense.

In fact it’s two squares. We started in C4 and it made no sense. So we moved over into D4.

And now neither square makes sense.

D4 has an opening onto the street but we’re not sure we see a door. All we have left is a worn-out rock that sort of looks like a door.

Even if it’s a door — the door leads into a room about two meters* square.

That’s not very big. It would make a small walk-in closet. Off a street? Why would there be such a small room with next door to the church?

Our squares have a good wall with a door. And we have a junky wall. Someone built the junky wall right through the door in the good wall.

What about a floor? For a while we wondered if our squares even had a floor. Today we think we finally found a floor — and we think we blew right through the floor while we were looking for it.

Pastor Jim Rogers was probably at just about floor level when he found the piece of marble in this photo. It’s a nice piece. But it tells us little about the building.

We don’t know where the marble came from. All we know is that it fell down. And this is probably about floor level.

MARK JUST SHAKES HIS HEAD

D4 and C4 are immediately south of our little church. They are just to the west of the South Vaulted Chamber.

For a while we thought we had a narrow passageway that led past the South Vaulted Chamber to the street. Now we know the passageway runs smack into a wall.

Every time dig leader Mark Schuler comes over, he just shakes his head. He doesn’t know what’s going on in our square.

It’ s not our fault. We just dig and try to make sense of what we find.

To the people who built these walls over the centuries — it must have made sense.

TEARING DOWN A WALL

Today we pulled out the junky wall. We have been calling it a “shepherd’s wall.” We thought a shepherd family built it as a sheep pen, perhaps after the great earthquake of 748 CE**.

But now we think the junky wall must have been there before the South Vaulted Chamber — the big room with the cistern. Do you remember? It’s the place where people may have gone for healing (“Our Puzzling Passageway,” July 18).

Here’s why we think the junky wall was there before people built the South Vaulted Chamber:

If you want to build a house, or sheep pen, or whatever, and you already have a wall right there — why put up another wall just 80 centimeters away? Why didn’t they just use the wall of the South Vaulted Chamber?

We’re stumped.

BUT WE FOUND THE FLOOR! WE THINK ...

Today I helped pull stones out of a door in our square. It’s the door through which someone built a wall.

I don’t like to take apart a wall. I think about all the work that people did to build it. And I wonder why they built it.

I also think about how strong they must have been as I lift out the heavy rocks. I think about children helping with the smaller rocks.

We only take walls apart after we have shot photos and made notes so we can remember what was there.

And when we take apart walls, we do it because it’s the only way to find out what’s going on in a square.

This time taking apart the wall worked — a little.

At the bottom of the door, I found a hard surface — not stone, but packed dirt, with some plaster in it.

Mark thinks that’s our missing floor.

It’s about 20 centimeters higher than the rest of the square. So we must have dug right through the floor. The floor must have been the crumbly layer — a mixture of packed dirt and plaster.

CUT US SOME SLACK!

Give us a break! Did we blow through the floor because the students left after the bombing? Or when Mark fell and hurt his ankle? Or when he got sick for a couple of days?

Mark is well and back on the dig. On July 23, he suggested we sink a meter-square pit to look for floor.

We didn’t find floor — but we found broken pottery and animal bones.

So somebody was there dropping things even before somebody else put in the floor that we blew through. Argh!

That’s the way archaeology goes — especially Byzantine archaeology. People build and rebuild. Byzantines were great rebuilders.

And they used stones they took from earlier buildings. A fallen door frame may not mean a door was nearby. A column drum may have come from halfway across the city.

Think about where your family lives. Have you remodeled? Have builders torn out a wall? Or put up a new wall?

Take an giant imaginary hedge trimmer and cut off your house about a meter above the foundation.

Take away most of the furniture, clothes, toys — everything you have in the house.

Would you be able to tell how people used that building?

Could you tell which room was the kitchen? The bathroom?

If you want to be an archaeologist, get ready to be mixed up most of the time.

But every now and then, you solve a mystery. And that makes it all worthwhile. — Marc Hequet

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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.”

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

Shooting hole — or sewer?

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 19:29:00 +0000

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

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 13:09:00 +0000

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

________

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

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 12:30:00 +0000

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.

________

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.”
_______

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

________

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.

War and pottery

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:20:00 +0000

What is eerier than an abandoned dig?

When no one else is around, a dig is silent. You can almost see the people who lived there long ago. You can almost hear their voices echo from the stones.

What is even eerier? I’ll tell you what: An abandoned dig where the buckets are still filled with dirt and the tools are still lying around where the diggers dropped them.

I found such a dig July 12 at Tel Kedesh (tel ked ESH), about 70 kilometers north of our dig at Hippos.

LEAVING IN A HURRY

The Tel Kedesh diggers left in a hurry that day. Someone told them that Hezbollah (hezz boe LAH), a group that wants to fight, was launching missiles into northern Israel.

Hezbollah is angry because it thinks Israel has taken land away from people unfairly. It wants to fight — even though other people want peace.

Israeli Defense Forces responded to the missile attacks with air strikes into Lebanon (LEB ah non), the country to the north of Israel.

CALM LEADERS

I heard explosions as I drove toward Tel Kedesh. I thought it was target practice. But then I saw soldiers guarding the highway.

I went to a place called Ramot Naftali (ram OAT naff tall EE) to find someone who could guide me to Tel Kedesh.

I think her name was Jill. She greeted me and said she was about to drive to the dig.

Jill drove ahead of me in a white van to pick up the Tel Kedesh workers. She was leaving early to get them because of the fighting.

On the way to Tel Kedesh, about three kilometers from Ramot Naftali, soldiers stopped us on the two-lane highway going toward the Lebanese border just five kilometers away.

Jill must have told them about the little grey car following her, the one I was driving. She drove on. The soldiers waved me through.

The Tel Kedesh diggers were waiting for us — tired from a hard day’s work and curious about the explosions. Jill loaded her van and we returned to Ramot Naftali.

There, dig leaders Andrea Berlin (left) and Sharon Herbert calmly went about their business — washing pottery. After all, Sharon and Andrea had been through this before.

PERFECT DIG

Sharon was Andrea’s teacher in 1981 when someone drove a bus to their dig not very far away and said war was going to happen.

Sharon ordered her diggers into the bus and they returned to where they were staying. There they could wait in bomb shelters if they wanted to.

War didn’t happen. But Sharon did what she thought was safest. And the decision to leave the dig early on July 12 was also for the safety of the team.

Half an hour after leaving the dig, Sharon and Andrea sat in the shade scrubbing pottery.

They have dug at Tel Kedesh since 1999 because they want to learn about borders: How did people think about national boundaries 2,300 years ago? Their Tel Kedesh site has a big government building close to such a border.

In fact, Tel Kedesh turned out to be perfect — even though Andrea was looking for something completely different.

Andrea wanted to study ordinary village life. When she and Sharon found a pile of pots and weaving weights, they thought they had the perfect dig.

Wrong! What they found were pots and weaving weights dropped outside the back door of a big government building as it was under attack in 144 BCE.

BORDERS MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

Andrea and Sharon told me all this as they quietly in the shade at Ramot Naftali. They washed pottery and chased flies away. Everyone was safe.

Andrea and Sharon said they had found that sometimes borders matter — but sometimes they don’t. When people work together, says Andrea, borders make little difference.

After a while the explosions had mostly stopped. Andrea said she thought it would be all right for me to go to Tel Kedesh and take some pictures. Her diggers were tired and ready for lunch and a nap.

I drove to Tel Kedesh. A soldier on the highway waved me through. I climbed the windy tell. Two buckets were still full of dirt. Tools lay about.

Sharon and Andrea and their team planned to be back the next day to use those tools and then put them away for the season — and to keep studying what divides people. — Marc Hequet

Saving the big ugly

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:58:00 +0000

It's big, it's ugly and it eats dead animals. Israel and other nations are trying to save the griffon vultures that live near our dig at Hippos and in other places.

Saving the griffon is hard to do because the big bird flies freely from one country to another.

The pale 25-pounder is scary — three feet tall with a wing span of up to nine feet.

But it is no match for pollution, poisoning and shooting. Pesticides, destruction of nesting sites and fewer food sources hurt it as well.

ON VULTURE’S WINGS?

Vultures are probably the “eagles” of the Bible. “Yep, we are borne on vulture’s wings,” says biologist Linda Whittaker of Jerusalem — quoting the book of Exodus.

Linda thinks the writer of the ancient book meant vultures because the griffon in flight is “more impressive than the local eagles,” she says.

Thousands of griffons filled Holy Land skies in 1880. But by 1950 only 1,000 male-female pairs remained — and now there are only about 50 pairs.

If one nation protects the griffon, as Israel has, farmers in another country may still shoot or poison it. Griffons nest from Spain to central Asia. But numbers are dropping all across its nesting range.

The griffon in Israel feeds mainly on dead cattle. But shepherds think it steals lambs and may shoot it. Griffons also suffer from eating the carcasses of a jackals or other animals poisoned by a ranchers.

“With a bird that can cruise from Galilee to Turkey and back in a week,” says Linda, who works for Israel’s Nature and National Parks Protection Authority, “poison is a tough one to control.”

DEAD ANIMALS

Vultures love dead animals. Their fights over carcasses are actually a form of cooperation. It pulls the corpse apart so all the vultures can share.

Griffons nest high on cliffs and hatch one chick at a time. Parents take turns sitting on the nest and feeding the baby. At three months, the baby bird flies a little and finally leaves home month later.

The young vulture may fly a long way. One flew to to Turkey, about 500 kilometers. It stayed away for a year and then returned to Israel

Linda sees hope for the big birds. “Getting farmers to stop setting out poison seems to make a difference,” she says.

ODDBALL FAMILY

One oddball vulture family included Yehuda and Dashik — both males. They raised three chicks together in a zoo.

Dashik has moved on to Tel Aviv University, where he now has a female mate. Yehuda is still in a Jerusalem zoo — and is still unusual. He has not one but two female mates.

Who could love a vulture — aside from another vulture? Ancient Egyptians worshipped vultures.

And not everybody thinks they’re ugly. Linda calls them “absolutely beautiful.”

What does the world lose if it loses the griffon? Vultures are part of nature’s cleanup crew. The griffon, ever the symbol of death, now faces the end itself.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE DIG ...

Archaeologists work with what they call squares and balks (bawks).

A square is an area marked off by the leader for excavation Sometimes it’s square — exactly the same length on all four sides — but not always.

Diggers remove soil and rocks from their squares a few centimeters at a time. They try to keep the whole square level as they go down.

This helps them see walls, artifacts, bones and other buried things. If a bone is near the top of a square, it is probably recent. If it’s deeper, it’s from long ago.

Archaeologists leave balks between squares. These are walls of dirt that show layers of soil that help you think through what’s going on with the square. For example, if you see a layer of rocks and then a layer of clean soil, you know something happened just there.

Balks are also useful for diggers to walk across as they dig — if you’re careful!

In this picture, we see diggers removing a balk from the street outside our church. North Eastern Church Avenue is open again!

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

Extincton. When the last of a certain kind of animal dies.

Artifacts are tools, weapons and other goods.

Wing span. The distance from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other.

Pesticidesare poisons that kill bugs, weeds and other living things people don’t want around.

Biologists (By OLL uh jists) study living things.

Carcasses (KAR kuhss ess) are the bodies of dead animals.

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CAN YOU DIG IT?

How far is it from the Sea of Galilee to the Turkish border?

If a griffon vulture stretched out its wings in your room — would it fit?

Where demons ruled?

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 22:26:00 +0000

People who study the Bible say the idea of demons came from a place not very far from our dig at Hippos.

Today we call this area the Golan (go LAHN). In the Bible, it’s called Bashan (bah SHAHN).

Long ago, people believed that powerful half-human creatures lived in this plain above our dig at Hippos. Some Bibles call these spirits “giants in the earth.”

One reason people thought giants or demons lived here is because of a huge stone structure just 16 kilometers* from the Sea of Galilee.

The stone pile’s name in Arabic is Rujm al-Hiri (ROO jum all HEE dee). It means “stones of the wildcat.”

Rujm al-Hiri is a rock structure 156 meters across. Long ago, people may have believed that only demons could build such a big rock pile.

GIANT CLOCK?

Archaeologists who have studied Rujm al-Hiri think it is actually a way to measure time.

Only once a year, on the longest day of the year about June 21, the rising sun lights up a certain part of this big circle of rocks.

It may have told people when to plant their crops.

We think that it was people, not demons, who built Rujm al-Hiri — about 3000 BCE**.

Long afterward, an important person was buried in the stone pile. But the body has vanished. So have the things buried with the person.

Archaeologists think grave robbers opened the tomb and stole everything — except a knife one robber dropped while crawling out.

HARD TO FIND

Rujm al-Hiri is hard to find. Our friend Marla Van Meter, a gardener at a nearby community called Kibbutz Afiq (kib BOOTS ah FEEK), showed us the way.

The area is in a firing zone for the Israeli army and is open only on the Sabbath — Saturday, the day when many people in Israel rest from their work.

Marla and her friend Avi drove us to this mysterious site.

You can still enter the ancient burial chamber and look out a kind of window. Hippos team member Rachel Roeske crawled right in.

Israelis call this place Gilgal Rephaim — “giant wheel.” Whoever built it — it certainly was a giant job. — Marc Hequet

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

** BCE means “before common era.” It’s the same as B.C., which means “before Christ.”

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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?

Arabic (AH rah bik) is the language spoken by Arabs, many of whom live in Israel and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Demons. Evil spirits. Long ago, people believed demons caused sickness and other trouble.

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CAN YOU DIG IT?

Could you fit an American football field into a space the size of Rujm al-Hiri?

Are you strong enough to carry a rock that weighs 10 kilograms?

How many 10-kilogram rocks would you have to carry to make a pile of rock that weighs one ton?

Archaeologists think that the rocks at Rujm al-Hiri all together weigh 42,000 tons.

MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE

In about 3000 BCE, Egyptians were using hieroglyphics (hy uhr uh GLIHF iks) — writing in which pictures stand for ideas and sounds.

More gold, a duck —
and our story so far

mhequet@sprintmail.com (Marc Hequet) — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 17:57:00 +0000

In Israel the work week begins on Sunday — and at the dig Sunday was a big day.

Gold in the cistern. We began work on the cistern in the South Vaulted Chamber — and Cameron Heiliger, a student at Concordia University in St. Paul, soon found gold. (Photo by Andrea Chandler)

A cistern is a little like a tiny cave. People used cisterns for a very important reason — to store water for use during the dry season.

Entering a cistern requires hard hats, flashlights and a rope ladder.

Near this cistern we found a magic gold amulet last season. People wore the amulet to cure stomach ache. But the piece of gold Cameron found was part of a belt, not a necklace.

Was the cistern a kind of wishing well? Did people throw valuable things into it?

Or did the gold belt piece fall in by accident?

We don’t know.

What we do know is that before Cameron found the gold — he found a big spider!

Mosaic bird. Nancy Endicott found a beautiful bird in the mosaic (mo ZAY ik) on the floor of the church. The bird looks like a duck.

Nancy and the other mosaic workers have been carefully scratching centuries of hardened dust off the mosaic. They are looking for pictures and designs.

Church mosaics from the time of our church, about 500 CE*, often showed animals on the floor and lower parts of a church. Pictures of saints were higher up. A picture of Jesus was highest of all.

Nancy’s duck is the first image of an animal we have found in the little church we are excavating. The only other images we have are three crosses in the mosaic and a painting of a hand from inside the tomb under the altar.

OUR STORY SO FAR

Your questions about the dig are welcome!

Gaye Jensen of St. Louis Park, Minn., asks this:

If people were buried under the altar of the church, does it mean they were priests? Were they hidden under the altar so no one could find them and harm their remains?

'CHECK BACK IN 20 MINUTES'

Good questions!

Here’s a long answer:

Archaeologists are scientists. Scientists make hypotheses (high PAH thuh sees).

A hypothesis is a clear statement that you can prove to be right or wrong.

At the dig, our hypotheses change all the time: “Here’s my hypothesis,” we say. “Check back in 20 minutes. We may have found something new by then that will change it.”

For now, our hypothesis is that our little church was built to shelter the tomb of a beloved old woman whose sarcophagus we found in 2002.

Her sarcophagus is near the altar in the southeast corner of the church, just next to the South Vaulted Chamber.

We opened her tomb in 2003. The bones inside, we learned later, were those of a tiny woman. She was 50-60 years old and had osteoporosis (os tee oh puh ROH sis). That’s a bone disease.

We don't know her name — but the church 50 meters** to the west of our little church has an inscription honoring someone named Antona.

Could the woman in our church be Antona? Maybe. We can't be sure.

BONE SQUARE

Her sarcophagus was opened long after her death. Someone moved her bones into a kind of square at the head end of the sarcophagus.

Exactly above the square of bones, in the lid of the sarcophagus, is a hole just big enough to fit a pencil.

People believed these bones had power to heal. Maybe people wanted to touch the bones with with a stick or wire to try to capture their power.

The bone movers forgot a few toe bones. We found them in the dust at the foot end of the sarcophagus.

Even after two of the three doors to the church were walled up with stones, people still visited the tomb of this woman.

The one church door that stayed open open leads to her sarcophagus. The mosaic floor between door and sarcophagus is all worn out. Other mosaic in the church is in better shape.

Why were the doors walled up? We don't know.

Invaders may have threatened the city of Hippos and our little church. Someone built a stone wall around the tiny old woman’s sarcophagus. The wall may have been built quickly. It’s crooked.

The doorjamb in this wall’s only doorway is odd. The door opened by sliding up — if it opened at all.

So it seems that people wanted to protect her — perhaps against harm from Sassanids (SASS ah nids) or Muslims (MUSS lims). Both invaded the Holy Land in the seventh century CE.

MORE BURIALS

Back to our hypothesis: Some time after the tiny old woman was buried in the church, three other people were buried there too — different tomb, same church.

These three share a coffin under the altar, the one from which we lifted their heavy sarcophagus on July 4. (See Raising a sarcophagus, Wednesday, July 05).

These three may have been members of a family that gave money to rebuild the church after some earthquake damage before the big earthquake of 748 CE.

We see clues about rebuilding of the church's north side, with stronger building as if to protect against more damage.

So there’s our hypothesis. Of course it may change.

The latest twist is that we now have found more bones in the altar tomb. And the altar tomb’s floor has a hollow sound when we knock on it. What’s down there?

So check with us again — in about 20 minutes. Here’s a picture of Glenn Borchers climbing into the tomb for more investigation, with Dr. Jay Anders helping.

CE AND BCE?

Here’s another reader question:Why do you document dates as CE and BCE?

We use Common Era (CE) and Before Common Era (BCE) to be respectful to our Jewish hosts in Israel and to our Israeli team members at Hippos.

Most members of the international team digging at Hippos are not Christian. So we use a dating system that doesn't refer to Christ. BCE is the same as B.C., which means “before Christ.” CE is the same as A.D., which is from Latin for "in the year of our Lord."

But our dating system we use has the same starting point as the one based on the birth of Jesus — the year 1. Actually, however, Bible experts now think Jesus was born a little before that.

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WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

Cisterns (SIS turns). People dig cisterns to store water.

Mosaic (moe ZAY ik) is a floor, wall and ceiling covering made with 1-centimeter cubes of stone to create designs and pictures.

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

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