Look out! Octopus!

7:53pm: Ashkelon, day 23
Official post is up. It's a short one, because I'm stupifyingly tired.

( Uriel's continued adventures at the zoo )

9:18pm: Ashkelon, day 22.
Official post is up, and it's a long one.

At the level where I'm at, an awfully large portion of my job is basically secretarial work -- I make notes, and get information which I put into a computer, and so on. Then there's administrative stuff, and sort of routine decision making. "Do we dig this pit the normal way we dig pits?" and so on. Add in an occasional bout of heavy manual labor, a bit of memorization of pottery types and forms, and then there's the part that involves thinking. I like that part best, though I'll admit to fondness for the memorization as well.

Which isn't to say that I'm going to be able to think my way into finding a function, or even a clear description of the stone installation. But I'm going to get as much evidence as it's willing to give me, and see what I can make of it.

And, for those of you wondering where we went on Uriel's birthday, it was ( . . . )

7:25pm: Ashkelon, day 21
Official post is up.

This is, more or less, the last full week of excavation. There's another week with volunteers, and then a staff week after that, but those weeks are for wrapping everything up, not really for digging, so it seems as though everything that we're going to dig is going to be dug in the next few days. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be there on Thursday, as it's a fast day, and heavy manual labor in the sun without water seems like a less than great idea. So, big push over the next three days. Assuming that everything goes like it should. Which it probably won't.

In other news, Uriel is now three. Expect to see more information on this subject in the coming week. Information like ( this! )

8:59pm: Ashkelon, day 20
Official post is up, for them what wants an official post.

I was going to do a long post about stratigraphy and stratigraphic problems today. But instead, I played gemcraft. Now I'm tired, so I'm going to go to sleep. I'd say "maybe tomorrow," but tomorrow is a trip to the zoo in honor of Uriel's birthday, so I'll say "maybe not tomorrow," instead.

But let's see what Uriel ( thinks )

8:47pm: Ashkelon, day 19
Offical post is up, and kind of a long one this time.

Something I didn't mention about taking pictures is that while there are reasons to keep the framing of pictures as clear as possible, it's also the case that in science, there's a sort of pressure to take the individual agency of the scientist out of formal reports. It's always "the mice were injected with" rather that "I injected some stuff into some mice." And there's something similar going on here -- when you take pictures of something, you try and get rid of footprints and buckets and such, to make it look more like the feature was excavated by the passionless hand of science, rather than by some volunteers on their summer break.

And there is a value to that, as well. For people who are serious about doing research, it doesn't much matter. But it's one of those shibboleths that kooks have a very hard time getting past. I can think of a couple of eccentrics in the field who cannot take a picture of a feature they've excavated without them in the frame, standing next to it. I'm not saying the kook filter is worth the effort required, but it does serve a function.

Also, to clarify a bit about the hired workers. Israel's old age pension isn't exactly munificent, but it does have one, and it's generally enough that old people can have a place to live and food to eat without having to do any work at all. So these guys (one of whom is, apparently, 86) are working because they choose to work, rather than because they need the money to survive. Which is impressive, considering how many people under 86 would prefer not to spend eight hours a day engaged in heavy physical labor during the summer.

And, as is generally the case, there is a ( picture of Uriel )

8:18pm: Ashkelon, day 18
Once again, there is an offical post. And, thanks to the loan of my father-in-law's camera, there is an official post with a picture. It'll probably take me a while to get used to that camera, and I'm not going to take it on site when we're working, but at least there's something. When I was looking through my notes, they were considerably less helpful than my collection of pictures in making it clear what I did on any given day, and I could get reasonable information about the color of the fills that way. I mean, to the extent that I can get reasonable information about the color of fills. OCHRE gives me lots of options, but I have trouble distinguishing between "gray-white" and "white gray" and so on. There are some options that I'm given that I'm pretty sure I haven't encountered -- "bright blue", "turquoise" and "opalescent" spring to mind, but beyond that, my instinct to is call layers of fill "kinda dirt colored, I guess," which isn't generally an option.

Today I was working with a volunteer and a hired worker, which went reasonably well. I have a very limited amount of authority when it comes to directing the hired workers, for a couple of reasons -- one is that neither of us are native Hebrew speakers, but that's the closest we come to having a common language, so it takes a bit of work to be understood. The other is that they're all considerably older than I am. I'm not sure why the bulk of our hired workers are Ethiopian immigrants over the age of 70, but they certainly are. For the most part, they can do the work required -- they aren't fast, but they work steadily, which is more or less as good as fast. But there's an authority gap there -- if they disagree with my ideas about how to dig, it takes a certain amount of work to get them to take me seriously. With the guy I had today, I could tell him where to dig, but even though I wanted him to work with the pick, I couldn't manage to convince him to actually work with the pick. So, he used hand tools. It got the work done, eventually. Tomorrow, my plan is to keep him on tasks that require hand tools.

Once again, I'm going to the archives for an Uriel picture. Here's one from the ( winter )

8:45pm: Ashkelon, days 16 and 17
So, there is an official post up. And I am zonked out of my skull.

So I'll just cut straight to the ( picture of Uriel )

7:08pm: Ashkelon, day 14
The official post is up, for all your official post needs.

Cleaning up after the digger was something that needed to be done -- it would have been at least a week's work for that square to tackle on their own, and it allowed us to catch up with reading and washing pottery. But it was something of a speedbump -- I haven't gotten as much done this week as I would have liked. Ah, well. We've got one more day to catch up, and then comes the halfway point. One of the two volunteers that I've got working for me is going to leave, and I think they may switch out the other one, and replace her with a married couple. I am going to go with "cautiously optimistic" as far as this development goes; the two people I currently have are great, so it's hard to imagine that I'm going to be trading up. But new people are good too. Also, they're probably less tired than people who've been here for three weeks already.

In Uriel news, he posted a poem today. By the words and spelling, you may well deduce that this is an original composition, with a limited amount of parental aid. He's a clever fellow, that Uriel.

Also, ( a picture )

8:56pm: Ashkelon, day 13
Well the official post went up more or less when it was supposed to. So I'm not sure why this is going to be as late as it is. I did have a bit of homework to catch up on, now that I'm taking another approach as far as the next week or so goes.

Oh, and my camera has started acting up again. The same thing that happened with the previous one -- turn it on, and the lens extends, and then retracts. If you grab it before it retracts, it'll take a picture or two. But it does seem that our life-style suits us for a more robust sort of camera than a Kodak M863. Possibly something cheaper, with less functionality.

( Uriel does not seem terribly upset by this development. )

7:37pm: Ashkelon, day 12
Well, I got the official post up today, despite being excessively tired. My goodness but digging and carrying takes a lot out of me. But, I seem to be alive, and more or less in one piece, so we'll call that a victory.

Tomorrow, it's back to the robber trench, if all goes according to plan. with maybe a bit of cleaning off the edge of the plaster feature. I had hoped to finish the week with everything on the same level, but if that's not going to happen, I might just want to go down through the robber trench until it's done. The weakness with that idea is that I'm not sure Garstang's wall is strong enough to stand unsupported, and I'm afraid that taking bits out of the middle might weaken the rest, which is already bellying outward a little. Decisions, decisions.

There was an email I got earlier, related to the pottery we've been processing, that had relatively little information in it. As a result, Gmail came up with a peculiar selection of ads: Used Skid-Steers, Bucket Elevators and Genuine Ostrich Handbags. I guess I can see the use of some of those in an archaeological dig, but I'm really unclear about the handbags.

For your Uriel related needs, here's another slightly old, slightly smudged picture (water on the lens, this time, I think). But, on the other hand,( he's in a tree )

7:12pm: Ashkelon, day 10
A somewhat later than average official post is up.

I wasn't terribly pleased to discover that I'd be engaging in heavy manual labor rather than supervising my square tomorrow. But there is a up side: I don't have to carry my computer back and forth tomorrow morning. It's about a ten minute walk, maybe fifteen if I'm taking it slow, and while the bag is scarcely noticeable in the morning, it seems to weigh a considerable amount more in the afternoon. Probably because it's full of all the data that I put into it over the course of a working day.

In other news, it seems that the people in Grid 51 have been doing a bit of blogging as well. This isn't my area -- I'm in Grid 47 -- but I figured it was worth a mention anyway.

Once again, Uriel wasn't home most of the day; this time, he as off visiting his cousins in Tel Aviv with his grandmother. So, here's an older picture, which shows him in his ( natural state )

5:12pm: Ashkelon, week 2 in review.
Well, the official post is finally up. It's been something of a long day, despite the fact that we only worked in the morning, and there isn't any pottery reading. Mainly, I had to go back and take a second swing at recording the video, which, while it's not what I'd call good, most of what I was aiming at does appear somewhere in the frame. Also, I wrote a paragraph of a new story. This is, more or less, the first fiction I've been able to write since the dig started, so that's progress. It's a bit weird; it feels like the sort of thing that should take me three, maybe four days to write, but even when I have the time, I've been too tired to actually put the words in an order that makes sense, and conveys the ideas that I want to convey. As you may have deduced from my posts.

Naomi and Uriel are in Jerusalem today, so ( here's a picture of Uriel standing in a pot )

8:31pm: Ashkelon, day 10.
There's an official post up, but it's not the week in review yet. I tried to take another video, but I seem to have been aiming the camera a bit above everything I was trying to show, so it's . . . not the most useful bit of video I've ever shot. Tomorrow is a pottery compound day. I'm not a hundred percent sure what we're doing in the pottery compound, but I've been assured that we're going to be doing things there; hopefully, I'll have a chance to get a better video, and a few better pictures after we're done working there. If not, I'll run with the one I've got; it's not great, but it's better than nothing.

I think it's the end of week two where I generally find I most need a second wind; that's certainly true of this year -- my feet hurt, and I'm tired. But all in all, I'm genuinely pleased with the amount of work we've done; I think that we're about 1/3 of the way to our goals for the season, which actually means that we're ahead of the game -- you have to assume that not as much will get done in week one as in other weeks, because all the volunteers don't know what's going on, and the supervisors are probably also going to take a while to figure out what needs to be done, and how to do it. You also have to assume that there isn't that much digging that's going to get done in the last week, as you want to have everything cleaned and polished for the aerial photographs, and readied for the off-season. But as this is a six week dig, we get two weeks in the middle where we should be able to go faster than we have been.

And, as we didn't get any pictures of Uriel today, here's a somewhat ( older one )

8:00pm: Ashkelon, day 8
Today's official post got done a bit late, as I took a nap after lunch. In fact, I should probably be catching up on homework now, rather than doing this post. I regret nothing!

In further annals of "how does that even happen", a bronze minima turned up in pottery reading today. Which is very strange, as you'd expect a coin to have been spotted, and registered separately, rather than put into the pottery bucket. And then, you'd think the guy washing the pottery would have spotted it, rather than leaving it in the sherd they were washing. And you would have thought that I would have spotted it when looking through the sherds, rather than on the table later. But you'd have been wrong.

The best guess at how this would have happened was that it was stuck inside one of the sherds, and only fell out at some point in the sorting process. But that's just a guess. (Also, if you're wondering about this cavalier treatment of valuable artifacts, this sort of thing seems to go for about two dollars on ebay. Something with a better provenance could be worth a few hundred dollars, but this isn't a coin that could be legally sold, so a dollar or two on ebay would be the most a antiquities thief or unscrupulous archaeologist would be able to realize. Probably less, given that its condition was never very good, and does not seem to have been helped by sitting in a bucket of water, and then getting a pass or two with a scrub brush.)

8:20pm: Ashkelon, day 7
Whew!

I'm not sure why I was so much more tired today than I had been, but my goodness, I certainly was. Still, I got a fair amount done, including an official post. It's hard to say if it's fortunate or not, but we haven't been finding much architecture in my square. Which means that we're learning less, archaeologically, but which also means that the square has been relatively simple to dig, thus far.

Which is for the best, as the lower we get, the easier it's going to be to get the shadecloth up over us. For the moment, it involves a certain amount of effort, as well as a pole; another meter, and we won't need that. Shooting levels, on the other hand, seems likely to continue to be a problem, as the droop of the shade cloth is going to continue to get between the stick with the meter marks on it, and the surveying whatsit until such time as everyone is down to a lower level, and we find somewhere lower to set the instrument up. Or we don't, and it'll stay a problem until the end of the season.

What else? Oh, a piece of pottery came up today, from the Crusader period, which I think has a fleur-de-lys decoration; we don't have the whole thing, so I'm not sure about that, but it's what I think.

And now, let's take a look at what ( Uriel's been up to )

10:35am: Ashkelon, week in review
Today I slept until six, which is about two hours later than any other day this week, and which was entirely refreshing. And, given a day without digging, I put together a very long blog post.

Next week, I'll try to get some pictures of people actually working, but while people are working, I always have other things on my mind than taking pictures. Also, I'm hoping that I won't have to scramble quite so hard to keep up with the computer work required, but I'm not sure how realistic a hope that is; now that we're getting into clean contexts, I'm going to have to start taking levels for every bucket of pottery, and so on. Ah, well. One week down, five weeks to go. Then I'll be able to wake up as late as six every day of the week!

Here's a slightly older picture of ( Uriel )

9:40pm: Ashkelon, Day 5
Another day, another official post. I'm hoping that there's going to be more blogging tomorrow, but as it took three unsuccessful tries before I could spell "that", I'm probably about done for tonight.

And here's your daily allowance of ( Uriel )

8:12pm: Ashkelon, Day 4
Another day, another official blog post.

For the moment, I think that I've got OCHRE mostly under control, but that's something that can go at any moment, and leave me alone and weeping amidst a pile of data. And that's the thing about being in charge of a square. There's so much information coming in, from so many different sources, that I really have to work to stay on top of it. It's possible that I'll be in a better position after the weekend, as I'll be able to both catch up on things that I've let slide, and do some preparatory work on material for next week, but if we find something complicated, it'll be a rush to catch up again.

In somewhat related terms, pottery is starting to back up again. The hours in the pottery compound were increased from last year, but it's clearly not enough. As time goes on, the stuff will be washed faster, and we'll read faster, but there are going to be thousands of sherds coming out of our area, and there are limits to how quickly that can be processed. I forsee days spent on pottery, rather than digging, and I'm honestly fine with that. I like them both, but I think I like pottery more than excavating.

And let's see what's ( up with Uriel )

8:23pm: Ashkelon, Day 3
This was a sort of a red queen's day -- running as fast as I could in order to stay in place. As a result, there wasn't a post on the official blog. There were two posts on the official blog. With pictures and drawing and everything.

Once I'm done writing this up, I'm going to try to implement a cunning scheme. Hopefully, I'll be able to log on to OCHRE, and make up some tags for tomorrow, before the day actually starts. If I can do that, I'll get a jump on things, and spend less time trying to work a computer out in the dirt, and more time staring at a patch of earth, thinking hard.

And no, I haven't forgotten the ( picture of Uriel )

7:41pm: Ashkelon, Day 2
Well, another day of digging is over, and thus, there's a new official post up.

What it doesn't mention is my continued, if somewhat reduced, incompetence with the recording system. Or that there was an introductory pottery washing session this afternoon, which involved a certain amount of swapping scurrilous stories about senior people in the field. Which is probably for the best. I will say that it's nice to hang out with the group we have this year; there are some friends from last year, as well as new people, and while it's very rare for me to actually dislike people I meet at archaeological digs, this bunch seems more likable than average.

And, as is generally the case, there is a ( picture of Uriel )

7:44pm: Ashkelon, Day 1
Well, today was the first day of the regular season, and as you might suspect, there is a post up on the official blog. What that post doesn't mention is the tzuris I had getting my computer on the network, and then creating the right sort of information within OCHRE, once I was connected. But I did it, in the end. I'm actually a bit more used to the sort of excavation that uses little notebooks, and those four color pens to keep track of information, but I'll concede that this system is probably better, in the long run -- the data is much more portable, even if it is a lot more difficult to record.

There weren't any particular finds of note, but we did fill up two buckets of pottery. I actually did have my camera along, but didn't take that many pictures, as it seemed to fill up suspiciously quickly. Naomi knows more about this machine, but unfortunately, she's in Jerusalem, so as to be able to show the summer tenants around the apartment, when they arrive early tomorrow morning. And as Uriel is with her, I don't have a new picture of him. So, have ( this one, from february )

4:29pm: Okay, I'm going to switch numbering systems here. Pre-season day 4 is up.
There's a new post on the official dig blog here. No pictures, but there should be pictures tomorrow, as our camera should be back from the shop. And when I say "our camera", I mean, "a camera to replace the one that broke while under warranty." Unfortunately, that means that the pictures from Pesach aren't coming back. Ah, well.

Something that I didn't mention was that I spent a fair portion of the morning revising the first three blog entries, to be a bit more accurate, and a bit less funny. Which is the price of being official, I suppose. Also, I had a legitimate archaeological reason to play some stupid flash games for a while -- I was making sure that the connection would stay up, and that the speed would be consistently high. And it seems to be okay!

And that's all, I think.

7:20pm: Official blog is official.
So, three posts are currently up at http://ashkelonexcavations.blogspot.com/. Some of the material is recycled from the last post here, including the joke about the teapot. But some of the material is new! Particularly the post about today's digging. Now, I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that it involved digging. There is a picture on the blog, as I borrowed my father-in-law's camera, but there isn't a picture of Uriel there. For that, you'll have to click ( here )

5:23pm: Ashkelon, Day 2
Okay. This isn't the official blog, for a couple of reasons. The first is that I've got the strangest sensation that I'm going to say something horribly inappropriate once I get control of an official forum -- "Tomorrow, we are going to try and dismantle that section of floor, and ANNEX THE SUDETENLAND." I mean, I'm not even sure if that's how you spell Sudetenland. The other reason is that I don't have a password and login on the official site yet. But that should come tomorrow. But, for now, this archaeological content is available on livejournal! But without pictures, because my camera is in the shop.

Anyhow, today was day 2. I missed day 1 because I was trying to straighten up some last minute things in Jerusalem. That . . . didn't work as well as I had hoped, as I managed to go from "have internet, but can't add computers to the network" to "contact your ISP for a file, without being able to access the internet." But, anyhow, since I wasn't there, nothing got done. Er, at least, not much got done in the area in which I'm working, and I wasn't there. Correlation = causation, right?

The thing is, this is basically the pre-season. The volunteers don't show up until next week, so we can't really do much proper excavating. Which doesn't mean that we aren't digging. In 1920 and 21, a fellow by the name of John Garstang excavated the basilica in Ashkelon. Poorly, but to be fair, it's not like there were many people doing better work in 1920. What we're trying to do is find his trenches, and take out his backfill. Unfortunately, his excavation plans show trenches where there aren't trenches, so finding that sort of thing is a little tricky. What happened yesterday was that they brought a bobcat in to do some excavating, but the area supervisor wasn't happy with that, as they uncovered a bit of floor, but bobcats aren't very good at fine detail. So, not much more got done, and today they brought in a JCB, which actually can do more fine detail, because it's got that little bucket thing on the other end. Unfortunately, while the bobcat could push enough dirt up to make a sort of ramp for itself, the JCB is too heavy to do that, so it has to go rather a long way around to get the stuff that it digs up to where we dump our dirt.

So, today was spent finding the edge of Garstang's wall, clearing rubble, demolishing a bit of wall, and keeping an eye on what was turning up while the JCB dug. This included a few bits of sculpted marble, probably from capitals of columns, and a teapot, which proves that he was British. There were also a great many fragments of marble tile, which might have been from a floor that Garstang went through, or which might have been part of the fill he excavated. Hard to say, without more digging.

Which is where we're at. Hopefully, there'll be an official blog starting tomorrow, and I'll put some of this there, and hopefully I'll get a camera before next week. But who knows what the future will bring?

5:18pm: Bleach
Okay, this is going to be about Bleach the anime, and not Bleach the manga, or bleach the cleaning product. It's going to be a bit long, and if you're not interested in the popular Japanese cartoon of dubious sanity, you might want to skip this.

( Or you can read more )