Two phases to the ballroom

July 31 – Tuesday

Our attention turned again to the ballroom today.  Almost all of the fallen debris has now been removed but the archeologists have pointed out a vexing problem.  There appears to be two levels for the floor, about 12 inches apart, and they think that the house had two distinct phases.  I photographed the side balk and reproduce that here for you.  It clearly shows the distinct layers of material.  On top is the layer of boulders that formed part of the wall of the Iron Age 2 house that was built over the earlier Iron Age 1 house.  Below the stones is the obvious layer of mud brick that tumbled into the space and then below that, black ash.  On the right side of the photo the balk appears to show two distinct layers of ash.  Although it is not easy to visualize in the photo, the level of the floor on the left side of the photo is higher than that on the right, and you will notice a hole in the center of the floor in this area.  When this hole was explored it revealed a small cavity with another level below it.  The single layer of stones coming towards you at the bottom probably represents  a simple new installation after the earthquake.

The balk on one side of the ballroom

In other areas at Umayri there are clear signs pointing to several earthquakes in the past.  Some of the destruction at other 1200 BC locations appears to be the result of earthquake activity, and if that is the case then our Iron Age 1 House would have been affected and an earthquake could have caused the unusual situation in the ballroom.  Assuming that an earthquake damaged the house initially, it would have been quickly repaired to give a second floor level just above the first one.  The archeologists are therefore calling this a two-phase building, one before and one immediately after an earthquake.  So that has slowed up our clean up at the floor level in this room in our house. 

Besides the floor question our appreciation of the overall room space was impeded by two balks that traversed and divided the room.  We needed to take down those two balks to fully expose the room to provide an easily understood perspective.  As I have explained earlier the balks are laid out by the archeologists on the surface of the ground before they start the initial excavation, and are always aligned by the compass north-south and east-west.  As the excavation proceeds the walls of the buried buildings that become exposed almost never align with the balks, and as the excavation continues the balks are usually taken down to properly reveal the overall architecture of the buildings.   Over the last two days we had almost completely taken down one balk and I have a photo of this balk in the final stages of removal.  There is still some residual mud brick material at the far end, and the bottom ash layer still has to be removed.  You can easily notice the stone wall on the right disappearing into the balk.  It is part of the Iron Age 1 house structure.

The side balk almost completely taken down.

As we go about our work, digging and scraping away, our field supervisor, Stephanie, keeps a close eye on everything and frequently calls the senior archeologists over to consult and interpret what we are exposing.  It truly is a fascinating process.  For more background about the site and the project in general there is an informative web site that you might like to check.  Google – madabaplainsproject and click on Umayri.  There is a good bit of background information you can read.  At the Umayri page click on News, then Jordan update.  In the first line of Jordan update click on weekly reports to get an update on what is happening now in the 2012 season.  Doug Clark has asked some of us to write impressions of the dig and I forwarded him my description of the Balk Walk – he has said that he will include it in the next edition.   

Two interesting Finds

July 30 – Monday

We have one more week of digging at Umaryi and then the last day or so will be clean-up and preparing the various sites for final photographs.  There has been good progress on the Iron Age 1 house that has been the focus of my team, but last Friday and today we have been working on the removal of a balk that traversed one of its rooms.  A balk is one meter wide and about 2 meters deep so it contains a great deal of dirt, mud brick and other rubble.  It is not surprising therefore that we have filled, carried and sifted over 800 guffahs in the last two days of work.  The conservative weight of a guffah filled with dirt would be at least 20 pounds, so that means 100 guffahs amount to about one ton.  At a rough estimate we shifted 8 tons of dirt and that does not take into account the dozens of large bounders that weigh anywhere up to 200 pounds.

The Balk Walk

There was only a minor amount of pottery in the balk and nothing of real interest, but as several other members of the team were cleaning out the floor of the ballroom two very interesting objects were found.  One is a completely intact oil lamp that had some features that intrigued the archeologists.  By the Greek period, lamps were being made in a mold with a rather small opening at the top and usually with some decoration.  This lamp was plain and was made by hand without any decoration and had a rather large opening at the top.  These features would place it before the Greek era, in the Iron Age 2 period. 

The Iron Age 2 lamp

Another very interesting find was the broken handle of a pottery jar, notable because it showed a distinct seal towards the top of the handle.  The experts who can interpret these seals immediately recognized the seal as Egyptian from the time of Ramesses 4, and was further evidence of the trade which must have occurred along this route from Egypt through to Damascus and Mesopotamia 

  Pottery jar handle with an Egyptian seal

Visit to Petra

July 21 - Visit to Petra

July 29 - I have finally been able to out together a few reactions to our visit to Petra last weekend.

Petra is a remote, ancient and dead city that holds such great archeological treasures that it has been declared one of the Seven Wonders of the World.  It is located in Southern Jordan in a valley that is completely surrounded by craggy sandstone mountains, and its only access is via a narrow cleft in the mountains called the Siq.  This dramatic gorge was initially created by an earthquake that split the mountain and formed a channel that flash floods subsequently eroded.  The Siq follows a meandering path that continues for 1200 meters (0.7 miles) through pink and yellow sandstone cliffs until it opens up into the Petra valley.  The sides of the Siq almost touch in places, at times being only 2 meters apart, and which soar 200 meters (600 feet) from the floor to the mountain top above.  Provision of fresh water for the inhabitants of Petra was a challenge, but they showed incredible ingenuity in insuring a reliable and generous supply.  Several small springs inside the valley were not adequate, and were therefore supplemented by water from a spring outside the city that flowed down an aqueduct that had been carved by carving into the side wall of the Siq, and which is still clearly visible.

A simple house in the Neolithic village of Beidha near Petra from round 7000 BC.  Notice the primitive round walls that are being reconstructed usuing simple mud for mortar.  The wooden poles held up a thatched roof.

Petra is very old.  There are signs of a Neolithic settlement in Petra, at a site called Beidha that has been reliably dated from the stone tools found and from carbon dating to around 7000 BC.  Much later the area was occupied by the Edomites, people who were descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob and who are mentioned in the Bible.  It is not clear when and how the Edomite settlement declined but Petra was eventually inhabited by a different people, the Nabataeans, a few centuries BC.  It was the Nabataeans who performed all of the carving of the mountains within the city, and it was their subsequent influence from the Greeks and Romans that prompted the classic designs of the structures so visible today.  The settlement became Christian during the Byzantine period, but that ended in the seventh century and Petra became silent except for a limited and isolated occupation by some nomadic people.  The city remained unknown to the west until it was rediscovered by a Swiss explorer in 1812, 1200 years after it had been abandoned.

Entering Petra after traversing the Siq - first view of the Treasury

As the visitor to Petra reaches the last few yards of the Siq he/she is treated to the dramatic sight of an indescribable building, the Treasury, featured in all the travel books and magazines.  This structure was carved out of the rock on the mountain-face in the first century BC.  The sensational facade is quite beautiful, designed and executed in the classic style of Greek architecture.  It appears like an inset into the vertical wall of the sandstone cliff and is clearly the most remarkable monument remaining in Petra.  Behind the striking facade is a large interior space that was carved right into the mountain and served as a tomb for a Nabataean King.

 The Treasury

From the Treasury the valley floor expands out and reveals numerous archeological gems – facades carved into the rock face, a Roman theater that originally could seat 7000 people, and many openings in the cliffs that were tombs, some decorated with highly elaborate carvings and obviously meant for Royalty.  Further down the valley are the elaborate remains of a Roman city with a colonnaded street paved with marble or limestone still quite visible today.  The street is flanked by ruins of a large market, many public buildings and a Great Temple.  Across a bridge and up a hill are the remains of a three Byzantine churches which we explored.  Some colorful mosaics that were laid on the floor of the original church are still clearly visible.

I decided to join several other hardy folks (foolhardy?) on a hike up to the High Place where the Nabataeans had created a dramatic site for religious ceremonies.  I didn’t count the number of steps up the mountain and although somebody mentioned that there were 650 it felt to me that that figure must be a serious under-count.   Right at the top of the climb, in a large flat terrace there were two tall obelisks, not raised cut stone, but upright monuments that had been left standing after the Nabataeans had chiseled away the top 15 meters of so of the mountain.  They are standing 30 meters apart and are aligned exactly east and west.  Right at the top of the mountain is a small rectangular court surrounded by cut stone benches.  It was in the court that the Nabataeans practiced some form of ritualistic worship that included animal sacrifices on an altar.  It is impossible to view the altar, the space and the extensive rock carving without asking about the religious fervor that drove those people to create these incredible features. 

The High Place showing the courtyard with an altar off to the right 

We marveled at the spectacular view from the top of the mountain and then proceeded to a different set of steps as an alternative route down the mountain.   After lunch our group decided to tackle a visit to another special place, the monastery, which however was also high on different mountain top.  I settled on a donkey ride for part of the way, and hiked the rest.  The extra effort involved in this hike was worth it.  Right at the top is another huge carved monument called the monastery that has a facade that is rather similar to the classic design of the Treasury, not as elaborate, but quite a bit larger. 

The day was hot, very hot, and the heavy physical exertion of the long walk through the valley and the two mountain hikes placed an unusual demand on the body systems designed to maintain my fluid balance.  The fluid loss from perspiration was profuse and I drank 4 and ½ liters of water during the day to try and maintain my blood volume in a reasonable state.  When I eventually returned to the hotel I was astonished to hear from Kent Bramlett our chief archeologist – he had drunk 6 and ½ liters of water during his hikes!    

But words cannot do justice to visual images at Petra.  If you cannot see this incredible place in person I recommend a stunning book called simply – Petra – by Jane Taylor that is filled with wonderful photographs and an extensive descriptive text. 

The camera boom

July 27 – Friday

It is now Saturday morning and because we have no organized tour this weekend I have the opportunity to catch up on some writing.  Many of the students and staff have taken off on their own self-guided tours of sites in Jordan, the favorites being Wadi Rum in the southern desert or Aqaba, the beach resort on the Red Sea and Jordan’s only access to the ocean.  It will be hot for them – I heard that last week in Aqaba the temperature was 50 deg C, or over 120 deg F.  It is reasonably pleasant here in Amman so I am happy just staying put and working on my computer.

 I missed working on the blog yesterday afternoon and evening because I was visiting a physician colleague, Jane Kawar who had spent a brief period working with me at Loma Linda a few years ago.  Jane invited me to her home for a meal with her family.  Jane is from a Palestinian Christian family that came to Jordan as refugees in the upheaval when Israel was created in 1946, and she is now a successful member of the medical staff of a large rehabilitation center at The King Hussein Medical Center.  She had said on the phone that she would prepare a simple and light meal but that turned out to be a blithesome understatement.  When we arrived at her home the table was already set, and her daughter Laura and a sister immediately brought out platter after platter of food until the table groaned with the weight and I groaned at the sight. 

The hospitality of Jordanians is legendary and Jane obviously wanted to preserve this noble tradition.  After piling my plate twice with scrumptious Arabic food my unsparing host sat us down on easy chairs around a large coffee table loaded with large platters of fruit – figs, pears, cherries, grapes, peaches and melon.  After working our way through that out came the dessert – a large chocolate-hazelnut mousse cake plus a Ramadan special, some katayefs, little pastries with either cheese or walnuts inside, all soaked in sugary syrup.  It was a memorable evening.  One of Jane’s sons, Fadi, is in the third year of a six-year medical school program at a university in Amman, and we had a good time chatting about his future career plans.

I know that I am in for another feast tonight.  Dr Al-Worikat who is the medical director of the Rehabilitation Center at the King Hussein Medical Center, and Jane’s boss, has invited me to his home to join him for breakfast – he is a devout Muslim and having fasted all day during Ramadan, Muslims traditionally lay out a huge feast when they break their fast after sundown.  I have decided to skip lunch as a strategy to ensure that I will be an agreeable guest around his table tonight.  Dr Al Worikat is a general in the Royal Armed Services of Jordan, and he has arranged for his private car and a driver to call for me this evening.

At the dig I have continued to be impressed with the great attention paid to record-keeping by all of the supervisors.  They record the GPS coordinates of the key items in each square, and where and what is found and at what depth.  Everything is photographed and the photographs are supplemented by detailed drawings of the walls, the balks and any other notable architectural elements.  But a couple of days ago Dr Clark introduced us to a new device to assist in achieving accuracy in their records All of the precise readings of depth are taken with a GPS through measurements read with the equipment held vertical.  So to maintain an accurate measure of what is happening all over the field they need overhead, birds eye photographs.  To accomplish that, the archeologists have purchased a huge telescoping aluminum boom that can scan over the whole field.  A camera is attached to the end of the boom and that takes multiple photographs with the shutter triggered electronically as the boom carries it is d over the field.

Dr Clark loading the camera onto the end of the boom 

The boom is fixed to a large tripod and a team of men operate it by holding the end down and swiveling it across the field. 

Visa renewal

July 26 – Thursday

I ran into a problem today, a relatively minor one but which required some hours to resolve.  Doug Clark announced last evening that he was taking a small group of folks to the police station to get an extension on their visas.  Every visitor that arrives at the Amman airport pays $20 Jordanian ($28 US) for a visa that is valid for one month only.   Doug and  few of the supervisors arrived in Jordan quite a bit earlier than the rest of the archaeological team and by now they needed visa renewals.  Of course I did not read the stamped note in my passport from the immigration official as I left the airport, but I am already 6 days over the one month time limit.  So I went along to the police station with the group and I was singled out for finger-printing (all 5 fingers on both hands) and asked to pay a fine before I was able to receive the new stamp in my passport with its permission to stay in the country.  For most of the others getting the extension was mostly a formality.  Don’t we all love bureaucracy!

So while that was happening my team back at Umayri was working away doing their best to remove as much of that mud brick debris from the ballroom as they could.  I worked with them from dawn until I had to leave after the second breakfast and by then we had made some good progress.  It will be more of the same tomorrow.

I thought that I should share with you a brief note about the potty arrangements at the excavation site.  There is no running water of course, so it would be improper to refer to it as a bathroom, a WC, toilet or even a loo.  In the Australian outback we would refer to a structure like ours as a dunny.  Before the archaeology team arrives at Umayri someone, presumably the Bedouin workers, digs a deep hole in the ground a little away from our dig site and covers it with a rectangular box that has a strategically placed foramen magnum in the center.  This box is then enclosed in a small, upright nylon tent about 3 feet square that is firmly staked to the ground.  It is favored with a zippered opening at the front for individual access.  It is not a pretty sight, and especially now after the zipper has broken leaving the nylon door flapping in the breeze, but it is still functional.  Everyone holds the fervent hope that they will be spared some terrible illness that would require frequent trips down the hill.  Some try to avoid it completely and restrict their fluid intake, preferring the risk of passing out from dehydration over the risk of fainting at the sight and smell of the dunny.  I will spare you a photograph of the thing.

Ramadan

July 25 - Wednesday                                                                                        

 The assignment for our team today was simply to continue to excavate the ballroom in the Iron Age 1 house, and we worked steadily at it all day.  By the time we stopped for the day our diggers, including me, had probably removed over half of the debris that had initially filled the room.  We were still in the deep mud brick layer, and not close to the bottom.  We should reach the floor in the next two or three days where we hope we will find some more interesting artifacts.  There were not too many artifacts in the layer of brick we removed today, but we did find many pieces of pottery.  In addition one member of our team found an intact oil lamp which I will photograph in the next day or so after it has been logged in and recorded.  One other item was also found – an intact small conical-shaped piece of pottery that had been used as a weight for a weaving loom. 

Textiles such as rugs, blankets, clothes and tents were woven on looms from the wool of sheep, goats and camels, but it is rare to find any of these items intact because the wool degrades over time and disappears.  However we know that weaving was an extremely important activity for people living in these ancient civilizations because it provided tents for shelter, clothes, bags for carrying things and many other articles. It has been estimated by the experts that for a family or a village the weaving of textiles filled about 50% of all working activity.

 We have had to adjust to Ramadan, the holy month in the 12 month Islamic yearly calendar.  It is the ninth month of the Islamic year, and begins, as all months do, with the first sighting of the new crescent moon in the west.  The Islamic calendar is based on 12 lunar months, each 29 or 30 days which makes the Islamic year 10 or 11 days shorter than the Gregorian calendar year we use in the west.  The Islamic calendar is used for keeping track of religious holidays and of Ramadan, but otherwise the western calendar is used here for regular daily Iife.  The shorter year means that the Islamic months drift about 10 or 11 days earlier each year compared to the Gregorian calendar.  Next year for example, Ramadan would be expected to start around July 10, while this year it started on July 20. 

During Ramadan Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, and do not take any water, fluids of food.  There are exceptions for the elderly, for children and for those who are sick.  But the Bedouin workers who assist us at the dig have to carry on as best they can without food or fluids for the whole day.  They pace themselves and take rests to prevent too much fluid loss from perspiration and that leaves the rest of us to work quite a bit harder, including doing more of the carrying – boulders and guffahs.  I went for a short walk this evening with several of our group to have some ice-cream at a store nearby, and right after sundown the roads, normally congested with speeding traffic, were suddenly deserted.  Everyone, it seemed had gone home on cue to be ready to feast and drink beginning at sundown with their family and friends.

I read in the local Jordanian English newspaper that there is sometimes some uncertainty about just when Ramadan begins.  A very senior cleric in each country makes a declaration in advance about the start day, because the new moon is not seen on the same day in every country.  This year Ramadan started in Jordan last Friday, but in several other countries it started on Saturday.  Besides having an impact on our work, Ramadan has affected us in other ways.  The family that prepares our second breakfast and brings it to the dig at 9.15 every morning has stopped delivering the food during Ramadan.  So our kitchen is making up sandwiches for us to take with us to the dig and Kent Bramlett goes out and buys the three watermelons that we could not do without at breakfast.

We have a large herd of goats and sheep that graze on the weeds and dried thistles on the Tall and here is one of the shepherd boys with a baby goat.

We are halfway through the 2012 season’s dig.  A few of the people who joined the dig at Umayri signed up for only half the season, and today was the last day for those leaving at the mid-point.  So today we all gathered at the central location on the dig for the official group photograph, and I also had a group shot of the team working in our field.  

Our team

 

A new Balk

July 24 – Tuesday

Our senior archaeologists are urging us on to complete our primary goal - the excavation of the Iron Age 1 house.  We begin work each morning before dawn, as you can see in the photograph that I shot this morning after the crew had started digging.  The sun is just peeping over the horizon at the left of the photo.  The workers are all in the ballroom and they are going strong.  By the end of work today at lunch time they had dug up, then filled and sifted over 400 guffahs of excavated material in addition to removing dozens of boulders.  So we are making progress, but there is still about 5 feet of debris, mud bricks, rubble and rocks still to be removed before we are done.

Here is our crew beginning work on excavating the ballroom before dawn.  The workers in the team on the right are in the ballroom digging and those on the left are waiting to carry the filled guffahs to the sieves.  The ladder gives us access to the adjacent room in which I worked.  The photo was taken while I was standing on top of the balk that appears in the photo below.  The walls that we took down early in the dig would have blocked the view into the ballroom from this angle.  The Bedouin tent in the background is our welcome retreat for sandwiches and watermelon when we pause for our second breakfast at 9.30 am. 

While the main crew was clearing out the ballroom I worked with a buddy in completing the excavation of a corner of an adjacent side room.  We did complete our assignment just before lunch and here is a photograph of what we left in place - the balk.  The photo is taken from inside our small space and the camera is aimed right at the side of the balk that we had to leave in place.  The balk had to be trimmed vertically so that the successive layers of deposition could be interpreted.  In this case it is quite easy to see what has happened.  Right on top of the balk are 2 guffahs, rubber containers into which we shovel and then carry the excavated material to the sifters working the sieves.  There is a small layer of dirt on top of the balk, but just below the surface is a deep layer of tumbled and broken mud bricks, some of which can easily be seen relatively intact.  Towards the bottom the bricks have been compacted into a relatively solid mass.  Right at the bottom, not visible in this photo, is a layer of clay and ash that covered the floor. 

The new balk after we had excavated our space.  The strings are carefully aligned with the sides of the original 5 meter square.  Some of the tumbled mud bricks are clearly visible and are reasonably intact.  The balk is about 6 feet high.

 

The layer that now lies at the bottom of the space was originally the roof, but when the roof beams burned during destruction of the house, they collapsed to the floor and then the walls of mud brick toppled over on top of the burning roof.  When our excavation of this space began 4 days ago, the whole room had been completely filled with debris.  We began digging right at the surface, level with the guffahs, and dug out all of the rubble and mud bricks right down to the floor.  If we had measured the weight of the material that we had dug out of that space in 4 days it would have been multiple tons, and every ounce had to be dug, scraped and lifted to the surface.  How about that as a great way to spend a relaxing summer vacation!!  When we had finished our work we were able to simply confirm what the archaeologists already knew about what hd happened when the house was destroyed.

Tomorrow everyone gets to work together on excavating the ballroom.  No new interesting artifacts have been found other than hundreds of pieces of pottery all dating to the Iron Age 1 era plus bags and bags of lithics – pieces of flint that had been broken off and chipped into a variety of shapes for use as hand tools.  The term Neolithic, or stone age, refers to the time preceding the Bronze Age when the only tools people used were made out of stone.

Pottery

July 23 - Monday

This morning was a typical day at the dig.  The bus had us at the site at 5.15 am and after a quick sweep of our field and after Jillian had taken the official photographs to record our progress, we set to work.  We definitely need to excavate much more debris and fill from the rooms in our Iron Age 1 house, and that was our focus today.  I worked with a buddy in a small corner of a room adjacent to the ballroom, all in the Iron Age 1 house.  Others worked in the ballroom.  This was the third day that my buddy and I had spent excavating this small space, and by the time we left today we had almost finished.  I had a photo taken for the record.  You can see our equipment at my feet – a guffah holding some dirt, my pick and trowel, and off to the side the ladder that lets us access our space.  We are not yet quite at the floor level but have cleared out all of the mud bricks that had filled the space and are down to some clay and ash, which is what we expected at the bottom.  In the process we have removed a huge amount of mud bricks, rocks and dirt, enough to fill hundreds of guffahs.

When we started excavating this space 3 days ago the surface was at the level of the balk on the right

Today was a good day for pottery enthusiasts.  There were a few odd pieces in our area, but a single collection of large pieces was found by a digger close by.   Some of the individual pieces of pottery were at least 12 inches or more across, and all together they appeared to be the remnants of a large storage jar.  The pieces were all carefully retrieved and kept together for cleaning and analysis.  They will be taken back to the lab at La Sierra University for further study, and will probably be assigned to some student who is a whizz at jigsaw puzzles to attempt to reassemble the jar.

 But most of the pottery found is in small pieces and it takes an expert to analyze each piece to determine its age and function.  Usually there needs to be some feature on the piece to allow full identification, such as a rim, a base, a handle or spout.  None of the pottery is glazed – glazing did not appear until much later in the Byzantine era, but occasionally pieces were painted and that can be extremely helpful to the expert trying to identify the piece.  The term “indicator” is used for any object that has a feature that allows some analysis and identification.  For pottery the term used to describe these special indicator features is a “diagnostic”. 

 A very careful record is kept of every location where a find is made.  Each item retrieved by a sifter is placed in a labeled bucket by each sieve, and at the end of the day all those buckets are collected and brought back to our base so that that each piece of pottery can be washed to clean off the dirt.  After drying they are all laid out on a long row of tables, bucket by bucket, for the pottery guru to inspect, analyze and diagnose.  Careful records are kept by each square and field supervisor about what was found in each location. 

One day's worth of pottery shards laid out for inspection and diagnosis

Our Chief Archaeologist Kent Bramlett inspecting the pottery while the supervisors record

Visiting Petra

July 22

It is Sunday evening and we have just arrived back on a weekend trip to Petra.  There is much to report, but it will have to wait because I am too exhausted to do anything but collapse.  The crowds were thin at Petra because the summer heat keeps most sensible travelers away, making this the off season for tourists.  But our archeological team only has this time available to see the incredible sights at Petra, and the opportunity was too important to miss.  A bus collected us on Friday afternoon after we had finished our dig, and drove us to Petra and the Guest House Hotel right at the entrance to the site.  Exploring the site is demanding, especially if one hikes up to the high places up in the mountains, as I did.  More about that later, but just to report one  interesting item of personal physiology – from the time I walked through the gate into Petra on Saturday morning until I walked out at the end of the day, having hiked long distances horizontally and vertically, in the heat, I had drunk 4 and ½ liters of water.

 I now have to rest up for the 4.15 bell tomorrow morning and get myself in gear for a new week at the dig.                         

The Balk Walk

July 20

Today Stephanie assigned our whole team to focus on an initial target of taking down another partial wall.  The task was heavy and demanding because the wall was constructed of many quite heavy boulders, some of which were too heavy to carry and had to be broken up with a sledgehammer.  We all spent the first couple of hours lifting and carrying rocks and debris to the dump, or dirt to Cassandra who was assigned to the sieve.  At times the balks became quite congested with workers coming and going – the person carrying a full guffah always had the right of way.  I have explained previously how the dig site is marked out and excavated.  We work in separate 5 meter squares and between each square there is a one meter walkway left unexcavated to allow workers to have access to individual squares and to the overall site.  These walkways are called “balks”.  As the excavation progresses, the steady traffic on these balks often makes them deteriorate.  Some of the edges begin to loosen and give way, big rocks appear and walking on them becomes increasingly hazardous.  At appropriate stages in the excavation these balks are eventually taken down to fully expose all of the walls and other built structures in the squares.

As we carried our loads this morning we were using a balk whose side had partially collapsed, and then we had to cross another area on top of an exposed wall.  The work required a good sense of balance, careful eyesight and an attentive vestibular system.  It helped to have navigated the balk a few times to determine just where the footing was safe and which rocks were a bit loose and likely to send you sprawling down 6 feet into the square below while carrying a 40 pound boulder.  To an onlooker the line of bodies progressing back and forth across the balk would have offered an intriguing sight.  Individuals would be seen making sudden random athetoid-like waving movements of the arms, interspersed with an occasional ballistic fling.  The upright body would sometimes contort with a sudden sideways lean or forward flexion and there was no regular bipedal rhythm to placement of the feet – timing and step length were irregular and unexpected. 

I considered naming this spectacle at Umayri as the Archaeologist’s Dance, or simply the Balk Dance, but finally settled on calling it the Balk Walk.  I wondered what the reception might be if I were to introduce it to a Hollywood night club.  From what I have seen on the occasional video the Balk Walk seemed to have much in common with what happens on the typical night club dance floor.  But I quickly realized that the chaotic movements of the Balk Walk could never synchronize with the regular pounding beat from the band - the movements of the Balk Walk are so spontaneous, arbitrary, erratic, haphazard, aimless, inconsistent, arrhythmic and un-choreographed that patrons just would not buy it.  They would simply stay with what they had – varying patterns of obscene gyrations as they participate in a rude public display of virtual sex.

                 

July 19 - More digging and more heat

I have had no internet connection for the last three days, and we have no idea when the local server will be up and running.  So I went and purchased a device that plugs into my computer that gives me about 2 GB of access to the internet direct from my computer – I hope that this works well enough to enable me to upload my notes and keep you all in the loop.  The device is called a Dongle, an Australian term made famous by Crocodile Dundee.

Today was just as hot as yesterday, but that did not stop us from making some good progress at the dig.  We are still in the mud brick layer in the ballroom and it may take us several more days to get down to the bottom layers where we hope to find more interesting objects.  I would love to find another spear, especially if it were impaled in a skull.  That will not happen because this is in a house, not on a battlefield.  But I would be happy with a gold necklace.

July 18 – A special “find”

The temperature during the day at Tall Umayri usually reaches around 100 deg, but today it was quite a bit warmer than that, perhaps 108 deg F or 42 deg C. At breakfast break at 9.30 am we ate multiple slices of watermelon, sat down for a rest but found it hard to get up and return to the dig site. We were already weary. But the quest for treasures drove us back to the ballroom, to dig and scrape, to carry the guffahs and to sieve the dirt. However Kent Bramlett took pity on us and called for the bus an hour early. What relief it was to get back to our dormitory at the Amman Training Center and to a cold shower.

 
We are always quite concerned about dehydration in this heat, and to illustrate how dramatic the loss of body water through perspiration can be I will share with you a simple record of my own fluid ins and outs this morning. Intake– water 1.5 liters, 2 full cups of tea and 3 large slices of watermelon – total fluid intake about 2 liters. Urine output – less than 50 ml, not even enough for a serious bathroom break. At lunch I still felt a bit dry and drank several mugs of extra cold drink along with my meal. Everybody has been educated about the need for plenty of water, and fortunately I have not had to resuscitate one digger so far, and surprisingly we have not had to report any deaths from heat stroke.

Today was remarkable because of a special “find” in our Iron Age 1 house, in a room adjacent to the ballroom. This room had been mostly excavated during a previous season’s dig, but some clay and ashes had been left on the floor. Amongst this final layer of debris one of the diggers found a bronze spearhead. It was intact, including the head and the attachment that would have held the wooden shaft. The surface of the metal was encrusted with dirt, but underneath the dirt there was a bright green color, indicating that the metal object included copper. Copper is too soft to be an effective weapon and so the pear must have been made of bronze, an alloy of copper and tin that is much harder.

The bronze spearhead with shaft attachment

The timing of the find was perfect because this morning Dr Larry Gerraty was visiting the dig – he was the original founder of the excavation at Umayri and of the larger Madaba Plains Project. So the archeologists all gathered around the spearhead whooping and wowing in a state of rapture, just like my residents when they are looking at a computer screen in the EMG lab and seeing a highly polyphasic motor unit action potential with a satellite. Only I will have to give it to the archeologists, the bronze spearhead is definitely rarer.

A digger with deadly weapon

July 17 – Excavating the Ballroom

The internet service was down yesterday and still is not available. We have been told that it could be unavailable for a day, a week or for the duration of our stay at the Amman Training Center. So I am typing this up as a document that I will save and load it into the blog whenever I get the chance. It will be a retro upload, but I will make sure that the dates of each entry are clear so that the chronology makes sense.

Today Stephanie directed us to focus exclusively on our primary target, excavating the room in the Iron Age 1 house, which I have started calling the ballroom because of the two stone balls that Audrey found there. Today’s target was to excavate a meter of debris in the room. Half of our team, four of us including me, enthusiastically picked up our picks and trowels and went for it. It was hard going and by breakfast at 9.30, four hours after we had started, we had only managed to remove about 25 cm. Not a good dig rate. I figured that the gophers in my back yard could dig faster than that.

Stephanie explained why we were having difficulty and in the process I learned about the construction of the house. It had been built at the transition from the late Bronze Age to the early Iron Age, around 1200 BC. It had been destroyed of course and filled in with debris, then built upon by several later civilizations. Earlier excavations at Umayri had removed those later structures and now we were down to this older house, removing whatever had filled it when it had been destroyed.

The archaeologists had already discovered what had happened to the house by using stratigraphy – the science of reading the layers or strata in an exposed wall. When they had excavated a balk going across a side room of the house they were able to see and identify the material in each layer of debris, from floor to ceiling. It was relatively easy for them to analyze and determine just how each layer of material had accumulated as the room filled. It was reasonable to conclude that what had happened in one room had happened to the whole house. The strata started at the bottom as a thin layer of hard plaster which was the floor. On top of the floor was a well-defined layer of ash and then a layer of clay, perhaps 6 inches or so thick. A rather deep layer of compacted but disorganized mud bricks sat on top of the clay. Over the mud bricks was a top layer of random rocks, dirt and ill-defined debris.

 
The house originally had 2 levels. The walls on the lower level were about 2 feet thick and constructed of carefully arranged stones that had been rather crudely cut into rectangular shapes 12 to 18 inches or more long. The ceiling was composed of wooden beams. The walls of the second level room on top were constructed of mud brick up to another ceiling of wooden beams. Over the beams were layers of branches and other material that supported a thick top layer of clay that formed the roof and protected the house from the rain. The house had been destroyed by fire, presumably set by an invading enemy. As the beams burned they had fallen to the floor, providing a layer of ash on the floor. Then the roof fell in to give a second layer of clay that was now sitting on top of the ash. Then the walls on the upper level had fallen into the empty room creating a deep layer of disorganized mud brick, and on top of that the whole thing had been filled in with random stones, dirt and rubble.

We were having difficulty excavating that top layer of rubble because that had been compacted down because it formed the floor of the Iron Age 2 house built over the ballroom. We had to deal with many large stones and firmly compacted dry dirt. In some places our picks would hardly make a scratch in the dirt. But we struggled on and by the time our bus arrived to take us back to our base and lunch we had removed about 75 cm. The only interesting “find” in this top layer was a skeleton which appears to be that of a small goat or lamb, although we have only partly exposed it so far. When we resume excavating the ballroom tomorrow we should uncover the rest.

Dr Mutwalli enjoying the dig

July 16 – Joys of Digging

Stephanie our Field Supervisor has done a careful survey of the progress in our field so far and has discussed it with Drs Clark and Bramlett. She then reviewed our goals for this season’s dig, and it became quite clear to all of us that although we have done well so far, we still have an a long way to go before we complete our target – completely excavating and displaying the remaining architecture of the Iron Age 1 House. So the message was – keep on digging. Just after we had started for the day Stephanie helped me remove a large rock on a side wall, and I heard a sudden “Oh”, and she immediately dropped the rock and stepped back. She had disturbed a large scorpion. As we cleared the rock away it stood up and arched its large menacing tail. Most scorpions in Jordan are venomous, including, as my Jordan reference book informed me, this one. The species that we encountered grows to about 10 cm long, and our specimen was at least that size, but its venom is not as serious as another variety of scorpion named in the book as the deathstalker. So we didn’t play with it, but rather let one of our friendly Bedouin workers take good care of it for us.

A nasty looking specimen

Then it was on with the job. The going was quite heavy so we rotated assignments throughout the morning – first digging, then carrying the guffahs with either rock to the dump or dirt to the sieve, and finally a spell looking for “finds” at the sieve. We retrieved the usual load of pottery shards, and I was surprised at the large number of lithics from our site.  A lithic is the term used to describe any stone tool, and what I retrieved were flakes of flint that had been chipped off a larger stone called a chert. People used these sharp pieces of flint from the earliest time right through into the classic ages, and there are records of these flint tools being used in Jordan up to the 19^th century. But I did not discover anything else of interest at today’s dig. But it was quite breezy at the dig site, and although we welcome the breeze when it is so hot working without shelter out in the sun, it does inflict on us a steady dose of flying dust.

The actual process of digging requires a small trowel in the left hand and a light one-handed pick in the right. We were given a lesson by Kent Bramlett on our first day at the dig site on just how to dig effectively but safely, and we had to demonstrate reasonable skill in using both the pick and the trowel. We were instructed to strike with the pick 4 or 5 times, aiming for a depth of no more than 2 cm. Then the loosened dirt should be scraped away with the trowel as you look for buried treasures. When the dirt is so packed that it requires more effort to loosen it we have to be careful not to use too much force with the pick, otherwise we may damage some artifact buried in the soil. It seemed pretty easy, but on the job we found that constant digging and scraping, pulling stones, crouching down, getting up, turning around and lifting the filled guffahs all can take their toll on your back, hands, hips, knees and muscles.

Demonstrating the fine art of digging with a pick and trowel

I was intrigued with what I perceived today was an apparent change in my status in the eyes of our Bedouin workers. Someone must have told them that I am physician, so now when they see me it is “mahaba (Hi!) Dr Mutwalli”.

At 5 pm today the core group of archaeologists will get together in the lab for an hour to start examining each of the important “finds” unearthed so far during the excavation. We all get to watch and listen, and learn. I expect to feel like a medical student during ward rounds on his first day on the wards, trying to figure out just what it is the experts are saying.

July 15 – The Kings's Highway

The King's Highway derives its name from its long history as the trade route from

Egypt north through the upper Sinai Peninsula, through Jordan and to Damascus and Iraq.  It was paved by the Romans all the way from Petra to Damascus.

At lunch time today , Sunday, we all climbed on the bus for a short ride to Madaba where we were taken to an auditorium for a mini-conference.  There are about 7 separate groups of archaeologists currently working at sites in the general area of Madaba, and for the last 3 years Doug Clark has brought all of these groups together for what has now became an annual local archeological conference.  We listened to presentations from the directors of each site and that gave us a good overview of the extent of work being done here on the Madaba Plain.  After the conference we had an opportunity to briefly walk around the central part of the city which is fairly large with a population of 100,000. 

Jordan has a population of a little over 6 million inhabitants of whom 95% are Muslim.  But about 5% are Christian and many of these live in Madaba.  They are Arabs, but are descended from those early Christians.  During the Byzantine era (324-635 AD) the whole population became Christian and Madaba was an important Christian center.  The ruins of 16 Byzantine churches have been found in Madaba and many of these were ornately decorated with elaborately designed mosaic floors.  Some of those mosaic floors can be seen today in reconstructed churches or in preserved archaeological sites, and they are spectacular.  Madaba has been called the Mosaic City.

Part of the mosaic in the floor of the Byzantine church on Mount Nebo

We had a spectacular day yesterday, comfortable because our bus was air-conditioned and informative because we were treated to a local tour guide.  First we stopped in Madaba at St George’s church to view the most famous mosaic of all, a map that depicts all of the sacred sites in the Holy Lands, from Galilee, to the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and all the way into Egypt and the Nile Delta.  It is the oldest map in existence.  From Madaba we drove the few miles south to Mount Nebo, also called Pisgah, a high point to the east of the Jordan River and the Dead Sea.  It was from this point that Moses viewed the Promised Land and where he died.  The view is spectacular, overlooking the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea and across to Jerusalem on the distant hills to the west.  Mount Nebo is only 2,680 feet high but it is one of the highest points overlooking the Jordan valley which is 1400 feet below sea level, a drop of 4000 feet.  There is a large Byzantine church built right at the highest point of the mountain and like those in Madaba, this church had a marvelous mosaic floor.

Mekawir - the palace is on top of the hill overlooking the dead Sea

From Mount Nebo we drove south to Mekawir, an isolated and inaccessible high point overlooking the Dead Sea.  On top of a high hill Alexander the Great built a fortress which was expanded by the Romans.  Then Herod the Great enlarged it and turned it into a palace.  Herod the Great died in 4 BC and the throne passed to Herod Antipas who married his brother’s wife.  John the Baptist didn’t approve of this unlawful marriage, and for his criticism Herod had John imprisoned.  It was at this palace, Mekawir that Herod held a lavish birthday feast and his daughter Salome performed a dance for the guests.  She danced so well that Herod offered to give her anything she wished.  Salome asked her mother what she should request, and her mother, still presumably smarting from John’s criticism, suggested John’s head.  So John was beheaded here at this palace.  It was a difficult and taxing climb to get from the Visitor’s Center to the palace, but I did it along with all those healthy young people.  The other places we visited on this trip were Lahun, an old city about the same age as Umayri, situated on a ridge that overlooked Wadi Mujib, the Grand Canyon of Jordan.  Our last stop was Umm ar-Rasas, another large and well-known Byzantine site that is famous for the best, largest and most-preserved mosaic floor in all of Jordan.

Tomorrow it is back to the dig.