On the Ground Floor (Part 1)

I have just returned from my archaeological excavation at Tall el-Hammam in the Jordan River Valley. This was my 7th season, and while the finds from all over the site were pretty amazing, my squares had some really great stuff.
I started the season excavating along the south wall of an ancient Canaanite temple tower. There have not been too many of these excavated in the Holy Land, but it looks like we have one here. That’s where we found the miniature juglet (see my 1/23/12 blog).

Then I opened a square along the inside of the foundation of the city wall that we think dated to the time of Abraham. Finally, I moved nearby to open a new square in the domestic area connected to that city wall.
This square is where I really wanted to dig because of my special interest in the archaeology of the Biblical family.   My thesis at Baltimore Hebrew University was “Domestic Architecture in Iron Age 1 Palestine” back in the last millennium.
While I have excavated the site’s domestic quarter before, including last year when I found my first forever whole vessel – a small juglet, we had never clearly identified the dirt floor of one of these houses. I have been thinking about this for a year and really wanted to a shot at it this season.
Most years I don’t supervise a square, because my duties involve keeping the excavation around the whole site going while the dig director does other things. But this year, we had more workers than supervisors so I had these squares – but notice I still keep moving around a lot, some of us just have a hard time sitting still!  

Can’t wait to tell you about what we found!
One Square at a Time,
Pastor Gary Byers
Spiritual Life Director