Sunday 1/7/12 Field Notes
FN:
Area(s)-C and A
Square(s)- C-KK21 A-(all over)
Wake: –In Akko
Breakfast
Load Bus to Head back to Hostel
Bus Arrives at Hostel 11:45AM
Lunch at Hostel at 12ish
Bus Departs Hostel to Kh. Q. at 12:30PM
Dig at 1-8pm
At approx 1pm we arrived on site at Kh. Q. to begin the evening dig. I was in area C, as usual. The sun was hot. Water was as important as ever, if not more so. It was beautiful to see the landscape at such opposing times of day. The sun set was absolutely gorgeous, but more about that later.
We began in area C only to be moved to area A for about an hour or so. Most of the square supervisors were unable to get to the site until 2:30pm, so we helped about area A because their volunteers wouldn’t get to the hostel until dinner. In A, we helped move earth, rubble, and floating fill,—AKA rocks.
Then we moved back to our area of C. It was nice to be back in C with everyone. I was back in KK21, working where we left off. We worked hard in order to try removing the Hellenistic Fill which remained. Much earth and many stone where removed. MANY BUCKET/ROCK CHAINS OCCURRED. Little pottery was found until later in the day.
We left some jars and handles “in situ” so to be cleaned more, and photographed over the weekend. We now unearthed and removed them. Once again, while digging it was difficult to find all of the bedrock. We are able to find it in some areas of the squares but not all. I think that perhaps the room that we are in might have been built on natural or manmade slopping bedrock. The bedrock appears to be higher in KK 20 as well as JJ20 & JJ21.
Back to the bedrock areas, however, we are able to find Iron Age pottery here on the bedrock, not only in our square but others as well. This is interesting and raises more questions. As well as maybe goes with my thoughts about the squares and room layout of the new part of AREA C. The vessels appear to be “complete” yet fully broken vessels of variation. Perhaps this calls for a destruction layer. We have not found evidence of a fire, but this does not rule out destruction.
As the evening came, many photographs were taken. We (Kat & I) measured our square(s) as well others in Area C. We did so several times throughout the day because we removed such numerous amounts of earth (both soil/sediment and rocks/rubble). We cleared out two whole pottery buckets as well as another half bucket which had its own locus.
We cleaned the whole Area quickly; once everything was finished we got to the bus and rode home to the hostel for dinner and showers. We did not have pottery washing, I am excited to see what two days of pottery washing buckets looks like after digging tomorrow.
I am exhausted but terribly excited to see what is to come in the next 2 weeks. Tomorrow I top draw.
