Digging.

OH. MY. GOODNESS. If I had ever really thought about archeology, I never would have said, "Well, that's tough manual labor." I stand corrected, those words have come out of my mouth at many points today after I was the manual labor on grid 51 today. Took the opportunity, in my childless state, to get up at 4:30am and work on the dig until 1pm.  Read again, 8 hours of pick axing and throwing dirt into buckets, and then transporting buckets up a hill to a wheelbarrow only to then push the wheelbarrow through sand to empty it. All of this in intense heat. And all for the skilled archeologists to do their work.

A brief informational.... Dr. Dan Master is the Associate Professor of Archeology at Wheaton College. His children will be in my care this summer. He co leads this Ashkelon Dig with a Harvard professor and the dig has a number of qualified staff (many grad students) and a plethora of volunteers, mostly from Harvard and Wheaton. The dig is very prestigious in the archeology world, especially as it is the only non-Israeli dig in Israel. In the time I've been here, I've been able to make friends with the group and was encouraged to join today. So, I followed Nicole to grid 51 not knowing what to expect. I was inundated with information and learned much about the whys, hows, and whats of archeology. Basically, our grid is digging up streets, pottery, bones, etc from the Hellenistic to Roman periods. It's actually fascinating to discover artifacts from this long ago, brush them off and realize that you've just found history, a clue to piecing together the historical puzzle of your grid. By 9am though, I was exhausted. Breakfast ensued and then we were back at it. I can't imagine doing that all day everyday. Hurry Jeffrey and Lucy!

Grid 51