Now that the Digging is Done...

What to say about digging? It's hard work and labor intensive but rewarding and the most fun that I have ever had in my life. The first couple of weeks were mostly about buckets. Buckets and buckets of dirt. We cleaned "the square," leveled the walls of the trenches, put up shades, and removed mountains of dirt. When we discovered that what we were looking for was still underground, a JCB (back hoe/tractor type machine) came in and ripped up 70cm to more than a meter of dirt from the square. After that damage was done, we went in an created 2 steps and a newly formulated square. Created is a such an illusive word. With large picks and hoes, we removed soil from the square and made artificial terraces so that we could continue to work on finding our Iron Age structure.

The purpose for digging at Dan is a little illusive. In past expeditions they have been able to prove that both this is the ancient city of Dan and have even found some evidence that King David existed. In area L, affectionately called "area Hell," we weren't sure what we were looking for. There is a pavement structure that goes from the Iron Age gate all the way to our area and stops abruptly. David Ilan, the dig director, wanted to see what we had over there since in past seasons they had only uncovered the medieval Muslim occupation remains with some Iron Age pottery surfacing. By the way, when I say Iron Age, I mean around the 10-8th centuries BCE. I know that the dates are fixed exactly but those centuries help us to date most of the pottery we found.

Anyway, area Hell was interesting because we actually found stuff. Although most of this is speculative, we think that we found a courtyard adjacent to a house. There appeared to be a wall that was possibly robbed out to provide stones for the medieval Muslim structures. We also found a whole bull bones, donkey bones, and sheep/goat bones. There was an apparent collapse of the mudbrick wall and stones which killed the cow--finding a whole animal's skeleton preserved and not disturbed by small animal or rodent feeding made this find remarkable. The fact that we are finding so many animal bones etc led David to believe that this collapse probably happened at night (when most animals would be in the courtyard and not in the field) and since we are in the same century, he thinks that this might be a result of the "great noise" that the prophet Amos talks about. In other words, perhaps an earthquake caused the collapse that killed our bull. We also found an Iron Age pavement and a lot of pottery. Some of the pottery finds included a chalice, a lamp, pithoi, store jars, juglets, jugs, baking sheets, and even a grinder on the very last day of the dig.

So, although we didn't find any inscriptions in area L, we may have helped uncover something important about the way that Iron Age people lived. The next season will have the privilege of excavating the house next to the courtyard. I am really excited for whoever is a part of that excavation--you have a legacy to uphold--area L is the hardest working site on the whole Tel. Farewell Area Hell!!