Today has been designated as an opportunity for each team to visit their designated Areas with their supervisors, basically to get better acquainted with their areas, conduct some initial studies (that will include measurements, top plans, and the like), and basically prepare themselves "in the zone" before the onslaught on Monday, when the "real work" will begin - the 4am starts, the physical labour, and of course having to deal with the supervision of our local hired help.
Myself, Aaron, Jennifer, Hannah, and Luke have been assigned as Dr Bob's team in his excavation of Area E, the five aisle Ummayad (formerly Byzantine) church completely decimated (along with the rest of Abila) by the earthquake of 749. Excavation on Area E commenced in 1990, and since 2006 Dr Bob's been supervising work on the area. There will be three main sections upon which we'll be working.
Squares* have been laid out in the centre aisle section numbered 121, 122, 131, and 132 separated by a cross section balk**. The floors of these have revealed an earlier, possibly late Roman level, including a couple of stairs. The aim here will be to get rid of the dividing bulk to provide greater horizontal exposure, so by cutting out the balk you can see the entire late Roman installation.
The other section will be this mound, designated as Square 95, Locus 1. It's basically fill, mostly remains which haven't seen the light of day since that devastating event in 749. This will be the area that I'll be assisting in a supervisory capacity, the aim being to clear as much of it away towards the south. It'll include remains of the the west retention wall that collapsed during the earthquake, so there'll be a ton load of rocks to shift - no doubt back breaking work.
There should also be a floor that will need to be exposed, will be interesting to see how that will look. Dr Bob believes that, since we have some water channels leading to this section, there should probably be some sort of baptistry, perhaps a baptismal font, or evidence of some sort of baptismal area. He believes this because in churches of Arabia, baptistries are often located in the southwest corner exterior to the church. During the Ummayad period, Abila would have been in the diocese of Arabia. Later that night he would share with me his huge hope, his absolute dream, would be to unearth an inscription of some sort - perhaps a dedication to a bishop, a saint, or at least some description that would explain why this church was such a large church, expanded the way it was, and for what purpose. Everyone has to have an added impetus to the goal, right?
Hopefully another little project on the site will be the investigation of the bottom of this particular cistern. Dr Bob's earmarked Luke to be the guinea pig to go down, he being slight of build. Be great to see what's down there, and in the meantime Dr Bob has been busy trying to acquire some suitable rope and equipment for this purpose. I'd like to think that it's some region of the undead, holding some evil demonic force that Luke will no doubt release inadvertantly, unleashing some havoc, better yet a potential apocalypse of doom and destruction, upon an unsuspecting world. Everyone has to have an added impetus to the goal, right?
Apart from getting acquainted with the site, the main aim of today's exercise was to get some "real world" top plan action happening. "The Boys" are assigned squares 131 and 132, the west side of the balk, the girls and Dr Bob do 121 and 122. Thankfully the top plan for these were nowhere near as complex as my room the day before, and since Luke had a background studying engineering, we stuck him with the pencil, ruler, and graph paper. Still a bit of a struggle though, despite Dr Bob's insistence that I have the advantage since I've gown up with metric.
I never had a chance to check out the girl's efforts, but I suspect they're more naturally gifted with the pencil and paper than we were. Luke got frustrated after a while, incensed that he got a couple of measurements wrong. We ended up having to redo it when we got back to base, but we eventually got a functional top plan happening.
Back at camp, after lunch Ibrahim and Raad have the weekend off, so for Friday evening and Saturday its up to us to make our own meals. The rest of Friday is free time - some head out to walk around the village, myself and a few others stick around - I promptly perch myself on the "verandah" and attempt to get down to some blogging action. Proves to be more of a challenge than its worth. The last couple of days have seen an unusal amount of cloud. Come 3 o'clock, and the miraculous happens. I walk out onto the caught and feel a few drops on my shoulders. It starts to get heavier, and before you know it I'm hearing thunder. And the drops keep coming. Not heavy by any means, but I scream to the few assembled to get their butts out here. And for a few glorious minutes we're standing outside soaking up the rain. Everyone is so exhausted from the heat of that day, so no one has the energy to do a dance. Dave is gobsmacked - it NEVER rains in June in Jordan!! Man I wish I'd gotten a photo of us. Before long the rain has stopped, and already the wet concrete is feeling warm under my feet. I was only able to get this after shot, with a few little puddles noticeable at the back
Haven't written a hell of a lot about the food here, but generally its superb. SOMETIMES however we will have a meal that's dominated by a particular cold rice dish, which to be honest is not all that fantastic. To the extent that there's usually a truckload of rice left. I ascertain that there's probably enough for tonight's dinner, so I offer to cook for the crew that night, doing a makeshift fried rice surprise. The only thing I'm missing is soy sauce, but I think I can pull it off. A few of the girls offer to help out, so we get to work in the kitchen. Cut up some garlic and onions, grab what fresh eggs we can find, tomatoes, peppers, chili, tuna (sorry, TOONA!!). Fry up the eggs to make an omlette, slice it up and set it aside, get to work on the onions and garlic, get the girls slicing the vegetable, grab look to see if he can work out the gas powered oven, and sort through what I can use for the spices. Totally driving blind, but it gets done, some of the guys come back with some cucuumbers they bought in the street, get a makeshift salad happening. Sweet!! Dinner is served at 6.30, and I'm happy to report that dinner went down a treat. Just sorry I didn't get a photo - guess you'll have to wait for Richie's surprise Food Blog to be unleashed on the world.
That night I sit down with Dr Bob to go over my notes and get some more in depth analysis regarding Area E. He's VERY passionate about the project (and why wouldn't you be?) - we end up chatting for a couple of hours - well its more him waxing forth, me furiously taking notes. Satisfisfied that I've got enough for now, I head up to the roof, joining Dave, Cheryl, and Pete for cigars, where we while away the hours and talk about Jordan, the dig, life, home, all with the lights of Hartha and, further afield Syria, before us. Not sure how many of these we're going to have in light of the early starts we'll be having ahead of us, so far now we make the most of it.
* Square - The Portion within each Area opened for excavation, whatever its geometric shape, identified by an Arabic number (1,2, etc.)
(Taken from the Abila Archaeological Project Staff Handbook 2012)
** Balk - The soil left behind as you excavate the square, to be used again or later in looking again at the stratigraphy
(Thank you Dr Susan!!)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment