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