Second Letter from Nazareth

June 16, 2019

Dear Family and Friends,

Because today is Father’s Day, I begin with three discoveries from this season’s excavation that my father would have liked to see. There are, of course, more than three. Remember that in two articles published in 1994 and 95, he and a team from the USF Excavations at Sepphoris identified this hilltop as the “Shiḥin” (שיחין) of rabbinic literature and the “Asochis” (Ασωχις) in the writings of Josephus. They based their conclusion on their survey of the site in 1988.

The first discovery is the mold for making a Northern Darom lamp that I mentioned last week. It is the first from the site that is nearly complete, and it is lovely. Before excavating, no one expected to find evidence of lamp production here, or in any village. Dad would also be interested in an emerging debate. On one hand, Yeshu Dray, who is conserving the artifact, thinks the mold’s carvers were making a political statement. This is because the amphora and grape leaves on the mold resemble the same objects struck into the obverse and reverse of a prutah minted in the second year of the First Jewish Revolt (around 67 or 68). Motti, on the other hand, thinks that these designs were in widespread use by Jews in antiquity; hence, it is more likely that both coin strikers and lamp mold makers were drawing from the same collection of images.

The second discovery over the past two seasons is the pools we have uncovered. Because of their proximity to the kiln, they are probably associated with the manufacturing of ceramic lamps and may have been used in the levigation of clay. Motti has reminded me that, despite the number of pottery kilns that have been excavated in Israel and neighboring countries, few digs have recovered these pools. Hence, Shikhin could teach us some important lessons about the industry.

The third discovery is the piece of the northern wall of the synagogue. This was a nice bit of detective work that I mentioned in the last letter. Last week, the team of Square I.26, who found the wall, began excavating its foundation trench. We assured them that they would find bedrock when they reached the bottom of the stones. They found a lower course of stones instead. We again assured them that bedrock lay just below. It did not. A third, then fourth, fifth, and sixth courses turned up. On Friday, a seventh course emerged, by which point the excavators disappeared from view the moment they lowered themselves into the trench. Shortly thereafter, the crew finally reached the wall’s founding level. It was not bedrock. Rather, it was a very fine plaster floor. Yes: at the end of the digging day on Friday, it appeared that a massive, six-course foundation wall was laid on top of the plaster floor of an earlier building in order to buttress the northwest corner of the synagogue. That was quite an engineering feat for these villagers, and building it on a plaster floor is just weird. All of the pottery we have read so far confirms a construction date some time in the second century, which matches the data we’ve recovered from other contexts. We will consult with other ceramicists, and we will have to clean and read one coin that came out of this fill. Eventually, we will section through the floor.

These sorts of things make me wish I could see Dad’s expression and ask him what he thinks.

Our group is nicely diverse in many ways. One can count on variety in any group like this, but archaeology in Israel always attracts different sorts of people who come to dig for their own reasons. That goes for students too: it’s never simply that they’re seeking course credit. This means that, in any given year, during the early days it seems as if the only thing people have in common is the dig itself, and that it might be wise to avoid discussions about religion, politics, and sports. It does not take long, however, for people to find their commonalities and to base new friendships on them. The differences do not go away, of course, but it does look to me as if people have to give up the stereotypes that underpin political discourse, and they even change their feelings about other human beings.

Maybe we could make those changes of heart last longer if we sought out differences in our neighborhoods and volunteer associations too (you know, places of worship and other organizations; we might as well include social media). That way, we wouldn’t come home to a comfortable homogeneity that cured the fever brought on by vacation in Israel.

If you pray, pray for the peace of Israel. If you do not, walk toward peace. Those who pray must also walk.

James