Day 13-14: The Weekend

We have survived our first week of the dig. The temperature has increased each day, but my body's capacity to handle the heat has also increased. This is good because we are heading to Wadi Rum early tomorrow morning for a camel trek / camping trip. The temperatures in the desert will be even higher this weekend due to a heat wave that is about to move through the region. We are excited, regardless of the heat, because Wadi Rum is where Lawrence of Arabia staged his attack on Aqaba during WWI. We will be visiting a very famous cave and spring where Lawrence held important meetings and both of which can be seen in the movie Lawrence of Arabia.

Today's dig was an entertaining one from the start to the beginning. Yesterday, another student and I (digging about ten meters from us) worked on an archaeological rap song. It aided to pass the time of sweeping the dust and sand (which there happens to be a lot of in the desert) in our square. Before I go into the exciting happenings of the day, of which there are two, I will talk a little bit about our daily schedule this previous week.

As I have said, we wake up at 4:30 a.m. so we can be on the bus by 5 a.m. We drive for about an hour each day to our site, arriving around 6 a.m. and just after the sunrises over the mountains. We launch into our dig and have breakfast (or second-breakfast for most of us) at 8:30 a.m. Our breakfast, every morning, comprises of pita bread, a hard-boiled egg, a chunk of soft cheese, a banana, a cucumber and a tomato. We usually slather whatever is given to us on pita bread and scarf it down under the shade of a Bedouin tent set-up just off the site. Breakfast lasts 30 minutes and then back to work until we pac up at noon. We finish at noon in order to avoid the more extreme range of the afternoon desert heat.

As for today, two exciting events took place. The first was the amazing discovery of Roman plaster that contained grafiti and a drawing of some type of animal. Finding writing at any site is big; finding plaster with paint remaining on it is even bigger; finding a mixture of the two is a pretty big deal. This was not in my sqaure, but we were all given a chance to come see it for a few seconds while it was photographed and documented.

The next exciting event was the roaming of the possibly wild herd of donkeys. They came running around the site and we laughed as we watched; then we looked in fear as they made a turn and ran directly toward our square. I grabbed my trowel and bolted from the edge of or square as the first donkey stampeded by us. I turned just in time to watch as all four donkeys ran past--one of which barely missed stepping into our balk--and unfortunately in time to see a rather frisky male donkey attempt to copulate with a female donkey. The female donkey was not feeling too keen toward the male donkey's advances and tried to escape. This fight / mating dance involved the female kicking the male several times in the head as they continued to run around our squares. Byron, right when the donkeys had originally approached, had grabbed a shovel with which to guard his square. Around this point, though, he had had enough and approached the donkeys and attempted to scare them away. After several attempts, the donkeys moved to the nearby field and gave us all a show--one of which we will not soon forget.

It goes to show you the general feel of the trip--not the donkeys intimate actions but the continual surprise of each new days adventure. I could have lived the rest of my life without having donkeys stampede toward me, but it gave us all a good laugh afterwards at a time when we definitely needed it. The US will be playing soccer soon, and I am heading to a local place to watch the game with some friends. Thanks for reading.

Brad