Dig Day 5 - Friday 29 June

Oh Dear Reader. You know what its like when you get that ominous feeling that something bad is going to happen that day, but you really only feel this in hindsight as you look back at the day's events. Hence this self portrait of yours truly Friday morning, desperately trying to look completely bad ass and present that "not another 4am start" kinda vibe. We were coming to the end of our first week of digging, and this was definitely one of those "Thank God its Friday" moments. Luke of course was the perfect man to remind me of this, and soon my badass funk was turning into a sense of relief.








The relief however was pretty short lived. Sadly, Dear Reader, my observation skills were not in fine form that morning. It was Dr Bob who alerted us to the fact that the Chancellery post, which we'd left partially buried next to the chancellery base, had been unearthed and stolen overnight. I was absolutely distraught, more so from the fact that I hadn't even noticed its absence from the mound. What's worse, I hadn't even noticed that the thieves, having gone to the trouble of unearthing and removing the thing, had decided that that they really couldnt be arsed going ahead with the heist, and ended up leaving it at the entrance to the site, the entrance to which all of us had entered. We'd practically walked past the thing. So it wasn't too bad, we still had the post in our possession, but it does make one wonder about one's observation skills and attention to detail. However, dear reader, this was 5.15 am - that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.












Aaron's section was looking pretty good this morning - can't really call it a cross balk anymore. A ritual pool or bath of some description, all it would need is a bit of a sweep and a mop to tart it up for the cameras, but that would come later. In the meantime, work would continue in "my" section. Progress was being made, but slowly...




Some of the larger rocks that we'd been avoiding we decided had to go today. The reason we'd been avoiding them simply was they were just too hard to lift. We put Fazel the machine to work with a sledge hammer, but even when breaking these into halfs and quarters, the haul was still a huge one.




You must understand, Dear Reader, that hauling these rocks is a god awful exercise, and having to haul them up steep hills in really crappy wheelbarrows, to dump against the perimeter fence at the top of the hill, in 35 degree heat - you get the drill, not very pleasant. So we'd hoped to get as much of this done by the end of the early morning, before that sun really hit. Shifting these rocks generally required two or three men.

Not that they'd be doing this. In a previous entry I'd expressed a hint of the frustration I felt regarding the somewhat - er, subtle work practises of our local guys. That frustration quadruples when it comes to the lack of safety shown by some of them. Trying to haul large rocks by themselves, lifting in ways that are far from safe, certainly not good for your back, without appropriate protection on your hands - I shiver just thinking about it.

In any case, it was now 7.30, we were well and truly under way in the midst of our rock hauling operation. I'd taken my gloves off to take a photo, or write something in the notebook, or something, I can't remember - in any case, the gloves were off. Raheem, in the meantime, was naturally trying to haul some huge piece of limestone bock by himself, and was struggling - I cannot stress how heavy these things are - how the ancients were able to use these to erect the walls that they did is beyond me.

So Raheem was struggling, I had the gloves off, and I went and helped his wheel this rock up the hill, where we'd line them up against the fence perimeter. We get to the fence, we ease the rock off the wheelbarrow, and commence rolling it into position against the fence. Oh look there's a fence post. There's my finger. There's the rock, rolling into position.

It rolled into position all right. Fence post - finger - rock - BANG!!

Now the pain wasn't all that terrible, nor was the blood, but I knew that the finger was in trouble. After the usual "Oh Darn!!" that I MIGHT have exclaimed (I simply cannot remember, Dear Reader, and Raheem being my only witness, and not proficient in the English tongue...), I managed to grab a bandana to halt the bleeding, Dr Bob sat me down, the crew gathered around (out of concern, I would hope, but who knows...), and we had a look.




The nailbed was exposed, the nail itself loose as all hell, and although the photos don't quite do it justice, the left side looked pretty mangled. I was guessing probably three or four stitches at least, and would probably lose the nail. Dr Bob quickly got on the phone to Dave - sadly Bob didn't have his phone with him, and had to use Aaron's, which was pretty much on its last lot of credit, but Bob managed to get the message to Dave before the phone cut out [Dave would later tell me that the message he received was something along the lines of - "Can you get down here, we've had an accident, a rock's crushed Richard's finger, looking pretty bad, might need..." then cuts out. Poor Dave, he was probably expecting amputation].




So Dave comes and picks me up, and we head back to camp, me apologising every five minutes for being so retarded. "Not a problem," Dave keeps telling me. There was a problem - today was payday, and Dave had to get to the bank to get said funds for the workers. We made a quick visit to the local clinic, where they took an x-ray and bandaged the wound, but said I'd need to go to the hospital in Irbid to get stitches, and they'd probably need to pull the nail. I had to laugh at one point - whilst waiting outside the x-ray room on the lower floor, for the x-ray to be developed, the orderly who was escorting me lights up a fag. In a hospital. The x-ray tech comes out, shows me the slight fracture that my finger has suffered, and says that'll be 16 JD. I was happy to pay, but then he asked where I was from, and for the next five minutes, in our broken English conversation, we're discussing the finer points of Australian soccer and the upcoming game between Jordan and Oz. Afterwards he wavers the fee, wishes me well, and sends me on my way, but not before the orderly leaves his unfinished burning cigarette on a radiator before we head into a lift. In a hospital! I love the Middle East!!!

Dave drops me back at camp, really apologetic, but the workers have to be paid. I am in absolute agreement, and was happy to wait till he returned with Cheryl to take me down to Irbid. We were off to the the Society Rosary Sisters Hospital, recommended to us by the Dept of Antiquities. Catholic Hospital of course, you can't get more Catholic with a name like that, unless its along the lines of Sanctuary of the Blessed Immaculate Virgin Mary Mother of our Lord, or something like that.

Took us a while for the doctor to see us when we got down there. He gave me two options - either go for going under and inserting a thin piece of steel for the fracture, or have a simple local anesthetic and get two stitches and a splint. He didn't see the need for removing the nail, better to leave it on to protect the wound.




I went with the latter option - the idea of going under, far from home, I didn't find all that appealing. Nothing against the Jordanian Medical System - no complaints there, and cheap enough that it wasn't worth the hassle of trying to claim anything through my travel insurance. The doctor gives me two injections of local anesthetic, waits a couple of minutes, and proceeds to stitch up my finger - and I can feel it, really feel it. The doctor seems surprised, so gives me another two shots of local, enough to knock out a horse, he tells me. That's reassuring. At least know I didn't feel any pain. So two stitches and a splint later, out I was. All I can say is thank God it was just my finger, rather than the whole hand. And to top it off, I can now give the excuse that I can't work so hard, because I broke a nail!!




After the hospital I accompany Dave and Cheryl on running a few errands around Irbid - getting some water supplies for the weekend, charging up phones, and later an awesome lunch - I had a rice dish with a bbq chicken on top, and you're provided with a yogurt sauce to pour over the top, Kipsa I think they call it. After lunch, we feel its time for a well earned drink. And here is where I feel the need to pimp out Hanna Joseph Nasrawi's liquor store. Not only is it one of the only Christian liquor stores in town (we have to support the home team after all), they'll actually allow you to have a beer out the back in the storeroom. Accommodation at its finest. Poor Dave, he looks like he needed the beer more than I did.




We return home to the compound - I get the acceptable level of sympathy from my mighty colleagues, then get myself ready for the evening. The team of Area E have been invited to Khaled's family's home for tea, coffee, shisha (that's smoking of the hooka pipe - awesome apple scented tobacco), and Pepsi. Dr Bob, myself, Jennifer, Hannah, Luke and Aaron have an absolutely delightful evening, and look forward to next Friday when we're back, this time for dinner of mansaf, Jordan's national rice dish.
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Dig Day 4 - Thursday 28 June

Today Khaled and myself would be scraping away at Square 95, concentrating on clearing away more of the soil closer to the floor and around the middle column, but leaving enough there to keep it in place, without exposing it to a possible fall.



Focus today would primarily be on the cross bulk, though as you can see that word is pretty much no longer appropriate. The bulk of the crew, under Aaron's supervision, would be going hell for leather getting rid of the middle bulk here, with the aim of creating one big, square, exposing the floor, and attempting to get a better idea of what this level would entail. With that in mind, the crew quickly got to work.





Today would also be the day that Luke would lowered down the cistern, to get an idea of what would be down there. From this shot below you can see that it's not particularly deep, and is most likely just a rocky bed. No water to speak of. And I like how the flash from the camera brings out the spider's web.





Dr Bob had found some rope which, though he felt not ideal for this purpose, would be strong enough to support Luke's weight as he was lowered down. Tying knots into the rope at approximately 40cm intervals, he then tired a bucket weighed down with a couple of rocks at the end of it, and went about lowing the bucket until it hit the bottom, just to get an idea of how deep it went.




Once reading of the depth had been established, everyone did their bit to get Luke psyched for going down. Fazel and Nassar were called over to add that extra bit of muscle, and with all that in order, down Luke went...



Sad to nothing was found of any great significance (and no demonic hordes to unleash). Mainly a rocky bottom and enclosed "walls", no markings of any significance. Could be worse, could've been a tomb, could've even been his!!





In the meantime, Aaron appeared to be doing a pretty smash up job keeping the crew motivated and slowly demolishing the bulk. I have to say that of all of us attempting to have at least some functional knowledge of conversational Arabic, he's the one who has put the most work into it. I suspect he simply doesn't sleep, but of course that would simply be me making excuses. In any event, the clock was ticking, and Dr Bob was really keen to get a look at the floor by the end of the day.




Jennifer has been struggling a bit with the food whilst here, and this morning was feeling particularly lousy, so had to go home early. After his escapades down the cistern, Luke felt the need to get a bit more... down to earth shall we say, so he and Hannah got to work helping me out in my section, which so far, though we were shifting a fair bit of dirt, hadn't really come up with much except the usual bits of pottery and glass. Focusing on this eastern portion of the square, they unearthed what at first appeared to be a water channel leading into a tiny pit.





Of more interest, however, was this piece of mosaic floor they exposed. This appeared to be at a slightly lower level than the rest of the floor we were beginning to expose in the area, and by the looks of things this was the last bit of mosaic remaining. Our suspicion is that the rest of the mosaic level may well have been dug up to make for the later floor of tiles that were laid - a pity really, from our perspective, but I'm sure for those doing the alterations at the time, it made perfect sense. It was interesting to note that this bit of mosaic floor continues under the alter that is placed next to it. So whoever built this altar, as a later addition, rather than tearing up the mosaic, simply placed this limestone altar on top of it. In any case, having taken note of the mosaic and how fragile the pieces of tessara were, we covered it with a fair amount of dirt in order to protect it - work would be continuing in the area, and chances are further damage would come to it from falling rocks (and not to mention careless humans) - we could at least take a further look of it at a later date.




In the meantime, work was coming along just swimmingly in Aaron's section. Swimmingly actually would appear to be the operative word, since by the looks of it this appeared to be some sort of bath complex, or pool of some sort. A ritual pool may be? Incidentally, there is an old archaeologist joke that any object or find, for which you have no idea of its purpose, is simply called a ritual [insert your object or find of choice].





Pottery reading came up with this interesting piece of slab found the day before. Although the markings on it appear to be natural, and don't appear to be of any great significance, it did nevertheless make for an interesting photo. Some pieces taken from Area E yesterday did in fact manage to piece together, where we were able to come up for a complete handle to what would have been a Ummayid era pot.



Evening, after dinner...
A few of the locals from the dig have turned up for a game of basketball. A few turns into quite a number, before long we have a full on party happening. Doesn't last for long, but for the time the locals are here the star burns brightly. The yard is now full of people, a conglomeration of a basketball game being undertaken on the North South axis, whilst others are involved in a hefty game of soccer operating on axis East West. The JBU kids come down, having finished class with Dr Dave, Liz has broken out her newly purchased Hooka pipe (double apple tobacco, smells awesome), and has got a crew of four puffing away. The senior staff just look on with bemusement. Needless to say I just can't work under these conditions!! I look around with similar bemusement, looking at the locals and how they must view us here - all these Americans chilling out in their under wear (well, shorts and t-shirts). Not sure how the girls feel being so "exposed", but I'm sure for our visitors this must be heaven.

Most of the party is now dissipated, most of the crew have headed upstairs to watch a movie on someone's laptop. Hi tech entertainment on the compound!! Now we have most of the neighbourhood kids hanging out on the porch. Rania from across the road has grabbed my camera (again) and gone around taking shots of everyone - kids, Raad from the kitchen, a couple of yours truly. It's interesting to see how, for such a supposedly conservative country, the kids are allowed to stay up late till all hours, playing in the street, hanging out with the grown-ups, and even being allowed to spend some time fraternizing with these crazy westerners. While most of us in the west would be ensuring that our kids are safe and sound inside our respective home watching TV or on the XBox, these guys allow their kids to (at least from our perspective) run rampant. Its certainly a different world here, one that I feel quite at home being in.

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Dig Day 2 - Shots that didn't make the final cut...

The Dig - Day 3 - Wed 27 June

Now of course I had promised myself that I wouldn't tell anyone that it would be my birthday today. However on two occassions last night night I got the age question, once from Mohammad, our newish security guard (top bloke - used to work for the UN in Sudan).




I was sitting with him and Ibrahim and Raad in the playground after dinner ( and yes, I know that sounds funny, but what else am I supposed to call it?), and he in his very good English asks me how old I am.
"Funny you should ask that," I answer facetiously, "I'm actually 42 tomorrow."
He immediately translates for Ibrahim and Raad, and Mohammad tells me we must have a party.
"No No, no one's supposed to know," I say, annoyed that I let that one slip.
"Nonsense," he says "Birthdays are important. We must have a party."
Later, on the roof with David, Cheryl, and Pete, I also get the age question from Pete.
"Funny you should ask that," I answer facetiously, "I'm actually 42 tomorrow."
So naturally news like that spreads like wildfire, and despite having intended to keep it secret, it was nice to get a resounding Happy Birthday at lunch today, after walking in from my customary post dig shower.




But that's later, in the meantime, you'll have seen my handsome 42 year old self portrait after getting off the bus, and here's my favourite scene that I pass everyday on my way from the bus drop off point to Area E.








Not a lot was happening today at my end, mainly just powering forward on Square 95. We'd been making slow but steady progress from the day before, particularly with the exposing of the bases of the chancellery screen and chancellery post. Today we'd be plowing forward into the mound, attempting to get rid of as many stones and dirt as possible. Since the section holding the chancellery base and post was surrounded by a not so stable mound (seen here above around the middle column), we thought it best to keep the base and post covered, until we'd found away to remove the surrounding fill without causing another landslide.




The chancellery screen itself had been removed and placed out of harms way. Looking a little worse for wear, we'd left it leaning against the opposite wall facing the mound, the missing pieces left in a plastic bag "hidden" behind it.




There was also the added problem with the fact that the column to my right (pictured here to the left) was leaning rather ominously forward, held in place by rocks and dirt, and we didn't want this collapsing without a suitable amount of dirt to break its fall, or worse yet, fall on someone unexpectedly. These things, as I'm sure you can imagine, are unbelieveably heavy, and could easily kill someone (or at the very least maim them permanently) if they happened to be unlucky enough to be present when the thing chooses to topple.




So whilst I would be supervising the grunt work in Square 95, Dr Bob, along with Jennifer and Hannah, would be setting up squares in other areas of the site, whilst Luke and Aaron would be continuing with work on the cross balk, the aim being to get down to the bottom of 121/122 and 131/132, before supervising work on getting rid of the middle balk that divides the two.




Not a hell of a lot found today, except the usual pottery fragments, glass shards, and the like. Felt more lie working on a construction site than a dig. Occasionally you get scenes like this though, which get you pretty excited. What lurks within those little openings?




The tomb of some long dead martyr. A cache of lost manuscripts that would set the Discovery channel ablaze. Or simply that elusive inscription that Dr Bob wants so badly. No such luck. Generally its just more dirt, or worse still some creepy crawly that'll be ready to sting the hand of any intruder who would be so rude as to try to evict it. This is prime territory for scorpions, beetles, centipedes, and the like, though the last thing one would expect to be jumping out of the dirt would be my new best friend here.








But we plow on, as you can see. Occasionally we require the assistance of Fazel, whom I've dubbed the machine, to break a few rocks, either with a pick (depending on how soft the rock is, or a sledge hammer (depending on how hard). He'll generally sit around for most of the day, interrupted by short spurts of actually working, but when he does work, he probably does the work of three guys in as short a space of time as you can imagine.




Now how can I comment on the work pracftices of the locals without appearing rude? Lets just say they that have a somewhat "different" work ethic to we whiteys in the west. They're not lazy, as such, more, shall we say, selective in when they get round to going for it in the trenches. There tends to be a lot of standing round watching oe or two of their own do the work, but it tends to end up being a tag team affair, some unknown signal oblivious to us will go off, and before you know it the two or three working will exit, and replaced by a new set of faces. Its definitely a work to live rather than live to work attitude, and can often be frustrating for those of us raised with a strong protestant work ethic. But we somehow get through it, and there are moments when they're fun to be around.




Meanwhile at the cross balk, Aaron, Luke, and their crew have hot rock bottom, literally. Hard to tell what this area is, but by the looks of it its most likely an earlier era bath complex or pool of some kind. We'll know more once the middle balk is removed, which is the next task for the guys. Dr Bob sets up some "labels" showing which section for which square, just as a record for the photographers, before work commences on the middle balk.




My crew blaze on forward. By mid morning we receive a visit from the Dept of Antiquities guys, adn from on now on we'll generally get a visit from them, in which case Dr Bob will drop everything he's doing and excort them around the site, explaining what's what and the work is progressing.

By 12 o'clock we're done for another day. Back to the compound, fill our buckets of pottery shards full of water, which later will be cleaned in preparation for pottery reading the next day. Shower (if you have time), lunch, laundry (if you can be bothered - I can be bothered, I love laundry), then do what ever needs doing (reading, writing reports, papers), though for me I was in desparate need of a nap. Oh yes, the crew sings Happy Birthday to me at lunch - I thank them with a victory lap around the table and a kiss for each of them. Dr David at the ast minute turns his head so that my lips land on his - a bit too enthusiastic for my liking, but he's Spanish, so all is forgiven...
Waking from an afternoon nap can be an interesting one. Depending on the heat of the day, often you'll wake with your pillow showing a rather large wet patch (and I mean large, we're talking hread size) from the sweat of your neck. At least I hope its the sweat from my neck, and not me drooling during my slumber. Oh God, please no!!!




4 o'clock - pottery reading, surveying the previous days finds, mostly"rubbish" although we'll occassionally get a piece that gets Dr Susan all excited, although to these eyes (and often Dr Bob's) its a "face only a mother can love" kinda thing.




After dinner, which included some cake and ice cream for desert in celebration of yours truly, its free time till bed. A few people have gone out to dinner at one of the locals' homes, so I settle down on the porch to hit the ol' iPad with bluetooth keyboard. Rania and her sister Ayr from over the road pop over to say Hi.




After taking a shot of them with Alyssa, Rania grabs my camera and takes various shots, including this one of Liz with Ayr (she's quite good, isn't she? Even gets a half decent, though admittedly off axis, one of birthday boy here).




I hope the blog entries aren't coming in too slow for you all. Sadly I don't get a lot of time to write, even though I always seem to be on this thing when I get a spare minute. WIFI here can be a bit patchy as well, so up loading entries to the Net (especially when they're photo heavy) can be pretty time consuming. Plus the fact that I didn't come here just to spend all my time writing about coming here (or writing about writing about coming here). One needs time to socialise, both with your colleagues and the locals as well. Khaled has invited our team over to his place on Friday for tea, coffee, Pepsi, and of course several hits on the ol' Hooka pipe. Never a dull moment in these parts...
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