Day 20-21: The Conclusion of the Dig

Note: This entry is from three days ago. I was unable to post it due to lack of internet. Sorry for the scattered nature of this entry. I was exhausted when I wrote it.

The dig has come to a conclusion and what an experience it has been. We spent yesterday (Thursday) furiously trying to prepare the site for publishable photographs. I am pretty sure Dante originally intended to include sweeping sand in the desert as one of his circles of Hell. Everytime I felt like I had done a nice job on an area, I would look back only to see my work washed away with a new wave of sand and dirt. We eventually finished six hours later only to learn that our square would be returning that night along with two other squares to take the photographs. Archaeology is a funny thing, and from what I can tell, you learn most of the tricks as you go along. Well, one nasty trick is that you have to take photographs of the site either at sunup or sundown. Sundown was at 7:30 p.m. and sunup was at 5:00 a.m. I guess we got the better end of the stick, because the un-photographed squares had to leave the hotel at 3:30 a.m. the next morning to get theirs finished.

So a couple hours after lunch, we piled into a few vehicles and headed back to the site. We saw our site in a very different light at night than we had in the mornings. The sun was lower on the horizon, and it allowed for a cool breeze to pass as the sun danced in reds, oranges and purples off the surrounding mountains. The breeze was ncie for a while, but with our luck, it picked up into a nice little sandstorm right around 7 p.m.--the frantic last minute brushing time before the photographs. We somehow managed to complete the cleaning job and our dig director snapped the photographs. It was a very joyous moment.

So after all that sweeping, what do you think we did today? Backfill. In order to prevent looting, archaeologists often refill a site once it has been dug. Plastic tarps were placed in most of the squares so we would know how far down to dig in future excavations (for this is only the first of many seasons at our site). It was a little bittersweet dumping the same dirt that had been extracted with our blood, sweat and tears.

But we managed to have fun all the same. Dr. Byron McCane taught us that if you take the end off of one of the archaeological tools, it made a great bat / sword / golf club. If you can imagine, we had a pretty fun time.

I must be leaving soon, but I have to include the conclusion to our day. We were digging under a mile away from a Jordanian military base, and we had many military visitors throughout the day. They were always friendly and inquisitive--they were generally interested in what we were doing. A General of the Jordanian army runs the base and he stopped and insisted that we eat lunch at the base. After the several polite, "No, in sha'allah" our dig director agreed and we set to do it on the last day of the dig (Friday-today). We loaded in our bus and headed to the base (even though it was a mile away, we were exhausted from the day of hauling dirt). When we got there the army served us mansef--a tradition Jordanian dish made of lamb, rice, and a yogurt / cheese cream. The general dug in and showed us how to eat it with our hands like the Jordanians do, and boy did we have a blast. It's not every day that someone can say they were the guests of honor for a meal at a military base.

Well, that is the dig. It has been a great experience, and it has wetted my appetite for more. We are headed to Petra now for a couple of days, then back to Amman on Sunday so we can fly out on Monday. Thanks for reading.

Brad