Day 22-24: The End

This will be my last blog, at least until next years trip back to Jordan. I did this blog in partial fulfillment for a grade that I will be receiving for a course at the end of the summer. If you wouldn’t mind giving me a little feedback, I would very much appreciate it. I will be writing a 15 page paper in the hopes of turning my experience into a community learning experience. If you could tell me what you enjoyed and didn’t enjoy, what surprised you and what agreed with your expectations, and what else you wished to know—I would very much appreciate to include it in my final paper. You can email me at brerick@gmail.com or brad.erickson@duke.edu. All questions, comments and snide remarks are appreciated, whether it is from friend, family, or present / past teacher.

Our last weekend of the trip was amazing (I cannot recall how many times I began a post with the adjective ‘amazing’). We journeyed to Petra for the weekend and spent two full days exploring the ancient wonder of the world. You might recall Petra from the last Indiana Jones movie (not the ‘Crystal Skulls’—I still rfuse to consider that an official Indiana Jones movie—but I am referring to the Last Crusade with Sean Connery). Petra, meaning ‘rock’ in Greek, was an ancient Nabatean stronghold later turned Roman stronghold. Visitors travel upon a modern gravel path until they reach an enormous Siq (an old, narrow river carved canyon) that serves as Petra’s only ancient entry. The Siq comprises about a mile of narrow twists and turns until visitors are presented with the Treasury—a giant building likely used as a mausoleum of sorts for the Nabataea kings. For visitors daring enough (and of course, we were!), a further hike yields a series of 821 steps (according to one of our Jordanian friends) that evontually guides visitors to the top of Petra where another giant building rests. My friend and I journeyed to the top and went a little further to a couple of lookouts that displayed miles and miles upon the beautiful, surrounding land. It was breathtaking and a visit that I will not soon, if ever, forget.

The last night at Petra, a group of around 20 of us decided to visit a Turkish bath at the encouragement of Dr. Byron McCane. It was something that Byron had talked about since his first week on the dig, and it was something to which we were all looking forward. Upon arriving, the men were separated from the women, and once situated in slim bathing suits, the men were sent into a steam room. We spent around 30 minutes going between a steam room and a cold shower. After this process, we began going for our special message in groups of two. Each message lasted about 15 minutes and how intense it was. I have never received a true message before. I have always been eery about paying someone to rub on my body—something about it still sounds creepy to me for some reason. But I decided to give it a chance. It was incredible. They spent a few minutes with a scouring pad, scraping the dead skin from our body, and they spent the rest of the time popping our bones and rubbing oils into our skin. After finishing, we went to a waiting room to dry, drink Bedouin tea, and to watch a coupe of World Cup games. It was a very restful and relaxing end to a high-energy three weeks.

At the end of our stay at Petra, we loaded up on a bus and headed back to Amman to begin the long journey home. A few students left that night, and most of us left the next day. We had an end-of-the-dig party at a local pub. Instead of tearful goodbyes, we spent a majority of the night recalling and relating our favorite moments from the trip. At the end of our party, a group of six of us returned to our hotel to smoke Nargileh (hookah) for a couple of hours. Around 2:30 a.m., I realized I better be getting to bed because I wanted to be up by 5:30 a.m. the next morning.

I woke up on time the next day, made it to the airport and left at 10:30 a.m. for what turned out to be a 14 hour flight to Chicago.

I am still struggling a bit with jet lag, but I am mostly back to normal. I will never forget this trip, the relationships made, or the lessons learned. I cannot wait for next summer to return to the Middle East to begin another trip. Thanks for reading throughout my journey. Again, if you have the time, I would love to get an email and hear what you have to think (or any questions you may have about the actual dig—I was unable to post certain material due to publication restrictions, but may be able to relate specific information on a one-on-one basis). Thanks again.

Ma’a Salama

Brad

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

Day 17-19: Beginning of the End

Sorry for the delay in posts. The last three days have been tiring. Monday followed the same pattern as the other days on the site. We awoke early, ate breakfast after a couple of hours of work on the site, left by noon to avoid the sun and so forth. Tuesday also followed a similar pattern except for one minor detail. Around 11 a.m. a sandstorm began and forced us to leave after 40 minutes of attempting to continue digging. The best way that I can describe it is that it was like snowstorm...but with sand. Our eyes were watering profusely, and we were coughing violently. I luckily had my kaffiyeh on and was able to cover my mouth and nose, but the wind had a sneaky way of unwrapping it from my head. When our directors decided that it was getting too bad to work, they pulled the plug, and we called it a day.

Today followed a similar suite as our other days. Today, our square director decided that we had dug down far enough (around 1.8 meters--not a small feet for four people working in a 5 x 5 meter hole). We spent a majority of the day sweeping, cleaning, and straightening our baulks in preparation for the taking of publishable photographs tomorrow and Friday. Our square was so deep that we had to lower one another in and pull one another out. It made for some fun and sometimes interesting times.

With the dig coming to a close, I am already preparing my trip back next year. One of our dig leaders (she broke her ankle at our Wadi Mujib hike and has not been able to make it to the field with us) is returning next year to dig at her old stomping ground--Petra (one of the Eight Ancient Wonders of the World!). It would be a blessing to be able to dig there and to continue learning from a group of people that I have come to respect greatly.

That is all I have for the day, but if you will allow me, I would like to share the topic of one of our professor's lectures with you breifly. Every night, we have a lecture from our dig leaders and on Monday night, Dr. Byron McCane spoke to us about archaeology and the Bible. He taught it through the guise of a troubled relationship--two endeavors that continually try to unite but two endeavors that continually fail to connect with one another. One relies on the examining of textual evidence to discover truth; the other relies on physical remains to discover truth. Please note that I am not dividing groups into Christian, ahtiests and other religious groups. Each faith tradition has representatives on both sides of the argument. Dr. McCane suggested that we need to stop relying on one or the other but use both in our quest to discover the past. It is an interesting argument that many of us have experienced. Books such as The Da Vinci Code add to this debate as they add their own ficticious arguments into the popular world of religion. It is becoming harder and harder to weed out the good from the bad, and it is becoming harder and harder for good professors to make their work known.

I have much more to say on the topic, but I am going to get a quick nap in before the US dominate the third game of the World Cup. Thanks for reading.

Brad

Day 15-16: Wadi Rum

I am sure more beautiful places exist in the world, but I have yet to see them. Wadi Rum was breathtaking. Desert extended into desert into desert, only so the horizon could steal its vastness from vision. Sandstone mountains stood haphazardly erect around us, stretching to the heavens and creating a false sense of enclosures in the ever expanding desert. Small shrubs and grasses grew along the base of many of these minor sandstone mountains, which helped to balance the red and brown sands that continuously blew around us. At any given time, we could look out and see no fewer than two dust devils blowing in the distance.

I believe I am getting ahead of myself. We went to Wadi Rum as a weekend dig excursion in order to participate in a camel trek, camping trip, and jeep trek. All three were incredible.

After arriving in a small Bedouin village on the outskirts of Wadi Rum, we were directed to our camels for the day. I immediately selected mine, and with a surprisingly strong lunge, was soon sitting far above ground. We launched our trek from the town and headed to Lawrence's Spring, a famous site that Lawrence met with surrounding Bedouin tribes before launching his attack against the Turkish controlled Aqabah. We then set off across a vast expanse of desert where we ate lunch and enjoyed a two hour siesta. I awoke once and looked around--we were all passed out. The Bedouin often take naps during the hottest time of the day to avoid the heat. I think this is a tradition that should be implemented in the States. After the sun reached its Zenith and began its long fall to the horizon, we set off again. Up to this point, my camel had been tied to three others. I mumbled what Arabic I had learned to try to ask if I could untether my camel and direct it myself. To my surprise, our guide did and let me go. It was a blast and only took 30 minutes of me running my camel (in a taunting manner of course--many of my friends were still tethered and their leaders would not let them take the reins themselves) until I was told not to run the camel so much.

Camels are interseting creatures and I wished I could own one. You sit with one leg crossed over the saddle, with your other leg either crossed over or hanging down to the side. Try to look at some pictures on Facebook if you get a chance to see some of the camel shots.

A little over eight hours after we started our trek (and a failed attempt to cross through a gorge), we arrived at our camp site. We laid down in a Bedouin tent and enjoyed a brief respite until we broke up in groups and decided to hike for a nice vantage point for the sunset. The sunset was beatiful as the waining light danced off the surrounding sand stone mountains. Colors of red, orange and deep purple flickered as the sun bid the world goodnight. Again, it was utterly breathtaking.

Most of us decided to drag our mattresses outside and we camped underneath the stars. Around 1 a.m., we began to notice a large cloud that stretched from one end of the sky to the other. We realized almost immediately that it was not a cloud but that it was the Milky Way. As a graduate of Space Camp and Space Academy (yes, I did just say that), I was taken aback. With hyperbole aside, it was an incredible view that I hope to see again someday.

The next day, we journeyed from site to site around the different canyons in jeeps. We saw several Nabatean remains and inscriptions, and managed to hike for a couple of hours as well (of course with another two-hour siesta at mid-day). Our last trip of the day was to a sand dune (that must have been a mile high--okay, probably not, but it took about 20 minutes to climb). Once we summited (those of us who were dumb enough to do it--it was hot and it was very windy), Dr. Byron McCane looked at us with a smile and said, "There's only one way down." After the last word exited his mouth, he took of bounding down a clear path on the dune at a full gallop. What took us 20 minutes to climb only took about a minute to descend. After building myself up for a sizable chunk of time, I too ran down. It was a blast. It made the horrible hike up to the top completely worth it.

Thanks for reading.

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

Day 12: The Dig...Continues

We have dug for three days, and we have begun to develop a rhythm on the site. This rhythm that has developed however, is one of flexibility. When we feel assured with our abilitywith one task, we are given a new one to learn. There is an ongoing atmosphere and learning and adapting to knew stimuli. There is never a boring moment.

Today, I spent a majority of my time diagraming and graphing an artifact along with another student. We thought the job would require no more than an hour--it took the entire six hours. A lesson in patience is never wanted; but it is eventually appreciated.

That is all I will write about the dig for today. There seems only so much you can say about digging in sand. Or maybe it is that I can only put so much into words. A lot of it is hard to describe and must be experienced. If you missed it, that was my plug to get you over to the Middle East on a dig.

The last bit I will write is on the perception of the Middle East around the world. It seems as if our news networks have become facinated with portraying Islam in a sleazy and violent fashion. It is hard to argue against without being exposed to the way true Islam functions, but I am beginning to respect the religion more and more. The national religion of Jordan is Islam, and the calls to prayer can be heard five times a day from the minarets. Many of the shops around around town have live broadcasts of Mecca and worship in conjunction to its call to prayer (which is synonymous with the other mosques in Jordan, as far as I can tell). The religion is one of peace, patience and virtue.

One story that sticks out is when one of our dig leaders accidentally broke her ankle (as if the breaking of an ankle can be anything but accidental). We asked for help from the front desk to get her up a ladder from a hike that we did, and in response an ambulance, a fire truck and nine army men appeared within fifteen minutes. After helping her up the ladder, one of the army men turned to another one of our dig leaders and said: "Praise be to God that we were able to help." All the glory, all the thanks, and all the praise was intentionally direceted away from those who helped and given to one held higher. Islam is not a simple Sabbath based religion (although they do hold a Sabbath). Islam is a lifestyle lived in reverence before God. No matter what you believe, the dedication and humility of Islam's practitioners is one to be respected. Thanks for reading. Sorry for breaking from the outline of our adventures, but I thought a change of pace may be appreciated.

Brad

Day 10-11: The Dig Begins!

Again, sorry for the lapse in posting. Our internet has been down. I am not entirely sure what I am allowed to post and what I am not allowed to post. Since our site is going to be published in journals and presumably in other mediums, we have a sort of gag order on what we are allowed to share. I am going to write what I am able, and I may edit based on what our directors say.

We awake at 4:30 a.m. and are on the bus by 5 a.m. The bus ride to the dig site lasts an hour and requires passage through two customs / military checks. The Jordanian military men that come onto our bus are nice and genial. Their true purpose is to make sure we are not smuggling anything out of Aqabah because Aqabah has a special tax free status in Jordan. We pass both without any problems. We get to the site and after an hour of sand dune after sand dune, we arrive at the sand dunes that we will call home for the next two weeks. We are divided up into our squares with our directors. Most squares have five students in them. Our square is moslty filled with sand, and the emptying of that sand is our primary job the first day. The sun is brutal and what begins as a cool morning quickly turns into a dry heat. Surprisingly, we don't sweat--or so we think. We learn that our skin remains dry because the desert produces such a dry heat that our sweat immediately evaporates upon production. We all decide to take a quick water break after this lesson.

We all wear hats or kaffiyehs in attempts to keep our heads cool. My kaffiyeh maintains the my head's sweat, which aids greatly in keeping my head cool. I keep it on throughout the day.

We finish at noon to avoid the worst heat as the temperature explodes into the hundred range. We get back back, eat a quick lunch, and take a nap.

Our day today is more of the same. A cool strong breeze keeps us cool, but makes our shoveling and sweeping of sand difficult. By the end of the day today, we had broken through two loci (two levels). We have built a nice baulk in our section and are ready to begin digging through harder ground. We are excited to launch into the dig tomorrow.

Over the past two days we have found an assortment of pottery--the real finds still remain below the surface. We are heading to dinner soon and are currently at a local pub watching a world cup soccer game. I still do not understand how I am so lucky to be doing what I am doing. I have had amazing people--professors, friends, and most of all my parents--to encourage me throughout me love of history. I remember going to the Chicago field museme each year and digging in the dinosaur pit--believing that I was truly helping to excavate something important. Now we are excavating something of importance--something that no one has excavated before. E. T. Lawrence (Lawrence of ARabia) did pass through our site and mention it in one of his journals. Before he fought for the British in WWI, he served the middle east as an ancient near eastern archaeologist. Thanks for reading.

Brad