Still Huffing and Puffing! Loving the Northern tour of Israel!

The second week we stayed at the Kibbutz Darot, we got an opportunity to excavate at Khirbet Summerily.  The first day they was the hardest and the hottest, removing all the back filled dirt from the previous excavation and learning how to use the tools. Kelly, Anna P., Ronda and I work with Kate Sheeler, our dig supervisor, in “square 75”.

 Breakfast was at 9:00 ish, the bathroom was a bush and the flies were the thickest after 10:00. The next three days were increasingly more exciting, as we removed the plastic that was under the back-fill, and explored in to the unknown, discovering pot shreds, bones and other rocks used as cutting tools or blades. Around 5:00 we gather around to wash the pieces of pottery we found that day.  Then, Dr. Jeffrey Blakely and Dr. Jimmy Hardin would have a pottery reading, using those fragments of pottery we found they could narrow the piece down to an period in time/a century (give or take a little)  the use of the piece, the technique use to make it, and the culture/people that made it, impressive. 

sunrise over the Dead sea, Israel