Temple of Artemis at Jerash (Photo by H. Birdi)
By Harpreet Birdi
Another week of digging complete! Digging in the heat of Jordan is hard and tiring however, I have gotten used to the heat by now and the amazing breeze from the wadi blows our sweat away. Last week we finished excavating our first square, so this week we focused a lot on cleaning and excavating our baulks. It was exciting to finally excavate this portion of the square because it revealed what was hidden so close to us during the season; we had architecture and installations. It was surprising to see how far it truly continued. We found lots of objects and pottery in and around the architecture and installations. We were all looking forward to completing our square in Field C and moving onto Field B with the rest of the crew. We finally closed up our square, and being the last ones in Field C was bittersweet; we were the last people there but had a great opportunity to find more artefacts and appreciate the view.
After each day on site, we came home and washed all the pottery and objects we collected. On Monday, instead of heading to lab and washing pottery we decided to help an NGO called Salam Cultural Museum. This foundation is dedicated to helping out refugees in Syria, Palestine and Jordan. We went over to their storage house to help organize the different donations they received. We were organizing clothes, shoes, wheelchairs, and crutches. While we were cleaning up the empty boxes and folding them, we found a litter of kittens in the back of the room outside in the courtyard. They were adorable and we scooped them into a box and the mother came by to take care of her babies. Overall, it was a great day and it felt nice to be a part of a great foundation and help make a difference in the world.
On Saturday it was our field trip day, we took a trip to a number of the desert castles and the famous Roman city of Jerash. We visited three desert castles, which were fascinating, including Qusayr Amra which had many paintings still preserved on the walls. It was a lot of fun to visit and really interesting to look at the architecture. Our last stop was at Jerash and it was absolutely beautiful. We walked down a large Roman road that was filled with columns and a lot of them had decorations on them. Because there were so many columns in Jerash, many people call it the city of 1000 columns. There was an ancient theatre and a temple dedicated to the goddess Artemis. At the temple, we met Jordanian employees that showed us the bottom of the temple that many tourists don’t get a chance to see. It was a bit scary because it was dark and full of bats. It was really cool to look at and it gave a new perspective to the temple. It was an adventurous week filled with new experiences and I look forward to opening up a new square in Field B and learning as much as I can in my last week of digging.