by Ilmar Kanbergs
Things have been moving along quite quickly at the site and this week was our first, full 5-day work week. It was a rather busy week of digging in the dirt as well over a thousand large rocks and buckets of dirt were removed from the squares. The hard work was well rewarded though with hundreds of pottery sherds, in addition to several walls which are believed to have been from a tower. This is where I am digging this season. Each square is unique with different finds in each, different excavation goals, more or fewer rocks, and a different dynamic between the students and supervisors. It’s great to see everyone getting along so well. It’s also good to see that, despite the differences in the work needed in each square, everyone works very hard and is interested in finding anything they can. At any time during the work day, if you were to look into one of the squares, you would find people picking at rocks, hoeing up soil, sweeping dirt, killing the occasional scorpion, and just generally working hard. At the same time we manage to have fun doing the work by talking and joking with each other as the day moves forward.
I have been amazed at how much I have learned about the excavation process during my time here. This week my square, aka “the tower team”, started to shut down our square which required us to map the visible stones by measuring where the corner of each stone was in relation to the edges of our square. I have not had the opportunity to try this yet and it was interesting to see it done, though it became somewhat difficult to measure once we figured out that our square is on a steep slope. However, we managed to find a way around the problem and successfully mapped out our square and then closed it.
Overall, our second week on site was a busy one. It was very productive and interesting. I am excited about uncovering more of our wall and finding some objects. By Thursday you could tell that everyone was excited to have some time off and visit Petra. I am looking forward to seeing what else we are going to find at Khirbat al-Mukhayyat.