The A Team relaxes during a survey of Jebel Qat

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Letter from Nazareth 2023

Sunday June 18, 2023 Dear Family and Friends, I’m late with this first letter, so I’ll do my best to catch you up on our progress. I landed on May 30 with a small early crew. Most headed to Nazareth to start preparing our storeroom in the hotel and the site for the dig, while Tom and Mary Lynn McCollough and I drove to Jerusalem for a couple of meetings with folks at Hebrew U. The next day we joined everyone at the site to supervise the delivery of our tool container and toilets, and to get shade over our squares. Tom McCollough, Motti Aviam, and I walked the site, discussing where to re-open old squares and where to sink new ones. The weather has been kind to us. That has been the general pattern this year, with the exception of one day that hit 40 C/104 F, and yesterday, which got close to 38/100 during our tour of Megiddo, Beit She‘arim, and Caesarea. Most days have been somewhere in the 80s Fahrenheit, and today the high is predicted at 81. Two Fridays ago, we left the fiel...
Read more

First Week, continued

Third Post, Installment 2 Students also saw the 4 th and 5 th century synagogue floor at Hamat Tiberias, which was built of black basalt at the site of hot springs on the west coast of the Sea of Galilee. The wheel of the zodiac in the mosaic floor is a bit startling if you’ve never seen one in a synagogue before. I imagine it would be like encountering a large pentagram in the floor of the Washington Cathedral. It would have been the second zodiac we saw that day, but we missed the turnoff to Beit Alpha, where the 6 th century synagogue sports a similar floor that was discovered in the 1920’s after the discovery of the one at Hamat Tiberias. Since those discoveries many more have been found, including one at Sepphoris. Next came swimming in the Sea of Galilee, which the students did with some enthusiasm. I was not surprised that all went in because earlier they all had piled out of the vans to photograph one another on the banks of the Jordan when we crossed on our way north fr...
Read more

My Weekend of Free Time in Jerusalem - Part 1

To those so inclined to read this... This past weekend was our first full weekend of free time here in Israel. At the last second I decided to travel with Michael Flowers, one of the other volunteers, to Jerusalem so that the taxi ride would cost less for both of us. Once we finally got in the taxi (about 45 minutes after it was at the hotel) we then picked up a third member to the party at one of the neighboring towns. I think we picked her up at Afula, but it could have been Haifa. We then continued east until we got to Bet She'an and then turned went south. This course of direction led us straight through the area known as The West Bank. The entrance check point wasn't a big deal at all - we just drove straight on through. The change was immediate and easy to see as I went from the area just outside of the WB where there was a gas station and a small shopping area to the area just inisde of the WB where there was an old gas station no longer in operation (it was being ...
Read more