July 14th - Weekend reflection

On weekends we do not go to the dig.  The archaeologists take the time to do some work in the room set up as a lab, to reflect and to strategize.  The rest of us sit around and chat, listening to some of the crew who have been on the dig since the 1980s and 1990s tell us what it was like in the old days, before computers and phones made it easy to communicate, and before bottled water provided more security for everyone’s GI tract.  We all applaud one welcome change in the schedule on the weekends – there is no 4.15 am bell and breakfast is at 8, not 4.30.  But the weekends also provide us with the opportunity to join special tours around Jordan to see the amazing sights that this country has to offer tourists.  Dr Clark has a long-standing friend in Amman, Vicky, who operates a tourist agency and who arranges for these special outings for the group.  Today we were in an air-conditioned bus taking in sites along the King’s Highway, and on Sunday we will be in Madaba.  Next weekend will be a trip to Petra.

Dr Clark instructing the group on some facts about the Hisban site

I will report on this weekend’s trips tomorrow, but for now I want to reflect on the first week of digging.  I continue to be surprised and somewhat amused at what seemingly simple and ordinary things will transport an archeologist into a state approaching pure rapture.  They will look at a row of stones, call their colleagues, analyze it, debate it and then one will say with obvious excitement, “I think it is an architectural installation”.  When examining a newly found piece of pottery they will say “this indicator is at the transition from the Late Bronze Age to the Early Iron 1, 1250 BC”, and the captivated onlookers will murmur a collective “wow”.

 At our evening meals the square supervisors are invited to do a show and tell with their best “find” of the day.  The item that earned the most applause this week was a bone about 6 inches long that looked like a piece of non-human distal femur.  What grabbed everyone’s attention was a hole in the bone, and these folks are not even paleontologists.  I have to confess that I have been hoping to discover more interesting and exciting artifacts, perhaps some colored beads, a gold necklace and earrings or a stone with a love letter inscribed on it.   Alas, so far I have been left with an unsettling sense of anticlimax.