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9th January, 2001
We drive up the Jordan Valley, green, fertile paradise for vegetable growers. When we arrive at Pella we’re taken on an overview tour of the dig site which leaves me reeling: tombs, fortress trenches, the towering Tell Husn, and in the valley of the dead stream, Roman ruins, columns, a church, and a theatre. We pass the pottery dump, carefully marked on the map as such for the benefit of future archaeologists; the walls of a mosque; and an Islamic cemetery, where local children are still buried, giving them a direct route to paradise.
Our guide tells us they found two things today with “diagnostic potential”: a small shard with a Greek inscription, and the decorated side of what was probably a cult stand. We learn a crucial distinction: red dirt is ground dirt; brown dirt marks human additions. I become quite expert distinguishing dirt colour once I start troweling.
However, we don’t work on this first day. We cross the valley to Tell Husn, Mound of the Fortress, breaking a lock with a crowbar to do so. A stiff climb, boobytrapped by loose rocks, takes us past chamber tombs carved in the hillside between 64 BC and 400 AD. We walk down worn stairs through a rock door that opens smoothly on a rock hinge. Inside are several niches, some still containing sarcophagi.
On the top of the Tell there are large level stone platform foundations that take us back to 3000 BC, earlier than Egypt’s Great Pyramid. In another area there is a large complex dating from 300-600 AD. The ground floor walls of stone are still there, but the upper storeys of mud brick and timber have gone. There are also traces of huge cisterns, a fortress, a grain depository, stables and a beautifully reconscructed Byzantine wall. We share the top of the Tell with a shepherd and his flock, and a Bedouin camp fenced with thorn bush. Although we didn’t see them, there are rich Bronze Age tombs on the slopes of Tell Husn, one of which had the skeleton of a servant at the door, legs bound by a huge bronze shackle: the other earlier one yielded over 2 000 objects ranging from gold earrings and copper bracelets to pottery and alabaster vessels.
At midday, the sense of ancient peace is disturbed by the roar of Israeli planes making a very loud statement overhead.
When we descend Tell Husn we look around the Roman Ruins in Wadi Jirm. The odeon is paved with red and white stones. With the arrival of Islam, missing paving was replaced by pieces of altar screen, sometimes made into a careful pattern, sometimes just a torn corner. A mosaic floor has been backfilled to preserve it.
Earthquakes feature in the history of this site. Once, two people were carrying lamps. The material of their clothes fused with their skin leaving traces of silk, undoing theories that these were the dwellings of poor people. Skeletons were also found with gold coins stitched into their clothing. There were signs of houses subdivided, as if times had got tougher, families larger.
When we return to the dig house we watch in the yard while the morning’s haul of pottery is sorted – handles, rims, bases, designs. Inside the pottery is divided into type by the dig director. The day’s finds are basketed according to material – flint, groundstone, ceramics, shell, and metal – ready to be assessed and catalogued and then redirected for cleaning, drawing, or photography.
Today I walked on 1000 years of human habitation and a million years of human activity. Information came in a deluge, and my chaotic notes reflect this. I’m not sure I’ve got any of it right.
Every time I see ancient pottery shards at my local museum I want to hold it in my hand. There is some wonderful jewellery as well. I might have to volunteer there when I retire!
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Volunteering is a great way to get the good oil. I have a friend volunteering as a guide on Barranguba Island just off the coast: she gets to live on the island for 5 days soon, and will overnight there once she’s trained. You’d be a great museum guide because you have such an interest in all things made. What’s the period of your local museum, and are the treasures local too?
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A friend volunteers as a visitor guide, I’d love it, talking to people all day! Here’s RAM website,https://www.rammuseum.org.uk/ it’s a wonderful place and I’ve been going there all my life, it was even my mitching place from school. Barranguba sounds so exotic 🙂
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Son of Mother Gulaga!
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Just had a look at the site. I love the “Tours and trails” section. What a great idea. I suspect you learnt more there than in the classroom!
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Oh, what a marvellous, enriching experience, Meg! Some very deep future nostalgias here. Thanks for sharing
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I was so lucky to be able to do this. It wasn’t cheap, but it was something I’d always been interested in.
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Good for you, we should seize the chance to have enriching experiences 😊
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So many astonishing slices through time here – skin fused silk being one of them. I’m not sure it matters if the chronological details are correct. The time travelling shines through.
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It was certainly time travel, not unlike current geological time travelling, although on a more manageable scale.
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Chaotic notes or not, your words are a delight to read.
but what is that about breaking a lock with a crowbar in order to cross the valley?
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Thank you. I read through reams of stuff I’d collected to get this roughly right. See! I can’t help myself!
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No, you are definitely a lost cause. St Jude is the patron saint of lost causes in case you were wondering.
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I think the lock was intended for marauders not respectable archaeologists, and they couldn’t find the man with the key. Now please don’t ask why we were carrying a crowbar!
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Can’t help myself, why ???
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No idea – maybe to break the lock!!!
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What an amazing experience, Meg. I’ve always been amazed at archaeologists’ patience and attention to detail. I enjoy learning about the clues they use to piece together the lives of the people they study, like the colors of dirt you described.
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There were so many specialists associated with the dig: a vet for animal bones, a glass specialist, a human bones specialist, just off the top of my head. I sometimes felt thay were laying too much theory on a very small item, but I didn’t have their knowledge base to work with. It was an amazing experience: I’m realising this more fully reliving it.
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I would be hopeless on a dig, Meg, because I have a horror of skeletons (stupid, or what!) but it’s quite incredible how far we can go back in time with the resources of today. If we could just stop bickering over territory! Ancient peace sounds very noble. We’ve not really come far, have we? 🙂 🙂 It must have been a fascinating time in your life. No wine tonight but I wish you a relaxing Friday evening, liberally accompanied by hugs.
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This dig was very busy avoiding skeletons. There was one corner of the site they were very curious about, but they had to leave it alone because it abutted a cemetery. I’m wondering what ancient peace you’re thinking of. I don’t think there’s ever been much, unfortunately.thank you for Friday night wishes and hugs, J was ecstatic because he finally bought a frig to hook into his off-the-grid system.it was so exhausting he slept till 11.30 on Saturday, which gave us an afternoon of very low tide delights. May you week be ecstatic too – but presumable for other reasons!
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I’m wracking my brains to think what a frig might be because it sounds rude to me. 🙂 🙂 When a certain slumbering person gets up I may try to tempt him to a Dickensian Christmas market not too far away. It’ll work so long as there’s chocolate cake. 🙂
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Refrigerator. Should it be fridge?
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Ha! A light pops on in my brain 🙂 🙂
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J’s “off the grid” fridge reminds me of old Jack chasing around for old fridges to turn into kerosene fridges, perhaps an older version of “off the grid”?
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Jack was the original for off-the-grid. J’s now got his mind engaged with hot water – he’s boiling buckets at the moment.
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