But until then...
We were almost there with Square 95. A handful of blocks and stones to move, and ever diminishing piles of dirt to dispose of, and we should be done.
Parts of the floor were now exposed, showing what appears to be a tiled surface. Kahled, Jennifer, Hannah, and myself would be joined by Faizel the machine, and should get this area cleared by the end of the day.
The rest of the crew would be working on today's major focus, getting as far down in Square 96 as possible. Seems simple enough, but as you can see, once the sun comes out, they'll be digging with no shade whatsoever (we'll at least have a little bit with the baulk between us, provided it doesn't collapse). Thankfully the limestone wall embedded there should make it relatively stable.
OK, so I thought we'd be pretty much done with the major heavy lifting, but sadly removal of the dirt in the southwest corner revealed yet more limestone blocks. Enough to make one's heart sink, let me tell you. After the accidents we've had over the last week (myself and Mahmoud), the thought of hauling more blocks up the hill in our pokey little wheelbarrows (Arabai for you fluent in the Arabic tongue).
Luckily we have Faizel the Machine with trusty sledge hammer on hand to break them up into more manageable pieces. Now with getting Faizel to do anything, you usually have a 75/25 hit rate. He'll generally be lurking in the background until there some major lifting to do, in which case he'll spring into action and lift what would usually take two of us. Thankfully with the girls around, he's always ready to please (and who am I kidding? Same applies to the rest of us males).
Judging from our discovery of the pick head yesterday, we weren't holding out to be finding anythong of value. Nevertheless, it was still slowly slowly with the sifting and disposal. At least now we'd cleared pretty much everything in the southeast corner. Now that we'd exposed the floor here, we noticed that the tiles in this section were of a smaller size (about half the size actually) and held the illusion of being laid in a different configuration to those in the Western half of the area. We were now seeing an indented impression (ie no tiles) in the centre as well, which no doubt would give us something to mull over. This break in the floor would be labelled Locus 007 (cue shaken not stirred references).
In the meantime, work in Square 96 was going great guns, but we'd soon be running out of places to dump the soil. So far we had a makeshift pit happening in the aisle to the south of the cross baulk/ceremonial pool, which so far was doing the job - we had three wheelbarrows going in tandem down the hill from the square, to the point that you'd forever be dodging traffic when crossing into this section. Pottery pieces, though not plentiful, were being unearthed, but nothing to get over excited about.
Dr Bob kept a watchful eye nevertheless, still keen to discover what we could find in this section, but any connection to our little chapel in Square 95 was unlikely, be interesting to know what purpose these holes in the wall served.
Thankfully we were getting seem decent cloud cover by the end of the day, and it was nice to see the extent of our handiwork.
The odd limestone block notwithstanding, it was satisfying to see Square 95 finally cleared.
Back to base for lunch, and the crew are getting all psyched for 4 July celebrations tonight. Dave even managed to get some hamburger buns as a bit of a change from the ol' Pita bread. Plus he'd managed to score some fireworks for the evening.
Despite looking forward to the evening's proceedings, there was a bit of a cloud hanging over us. News had filtered through that some uprisings had flared up in Daraa, a city just over the border in Syria, about 15-20 minutes from where we were. These were by no means the first, a quick look at Wikipedia would confirm that there'd been quite a number over the last year or so. Nevertheless, at the time Dave gave us the news, little was known about Daraa, or what was going on, except that there'd been an uprising and some deaths, and journalists were denied entry. Hitting Google wasn't much help, and even my trusty Al Jazeera app wasn't give us much to go by.
It wasn't that we felt unsafe - far from it, apart from the little news we were getting, we'd have been none the wiser. Just felt a little strange (and almost disrespectful) to be celebrating a US national holiday with fireworks when just over the border Daraa was probably having some fireworks of its own, and not the fun kind.
One could easily get all self-righteous and morose over the situation, especially when having to endure Leigh Greenwood' s 'God Bless the USA' blaring from someone's computer. But you know what? There comes a point when one needs to get over themselves and allow for some celebration. Besides, my American friends were hardly the flag waving, fist waving, USA-chanting jingoistic types, and after witnessing (and hearing) numerous nights of partying from the neighbouring locals, I think we could allow ourselves one night to let our hair down.
Anyway, the rest of the afternoon was a bit of a blur - either laundry or sleeping - you know, the usual...
After dinner, it was up to the roof. I'd promised Cheryl and Paulette I'd sneak up some wine - Paulette would bring the bottle opener. Jennifer brought up her laptop for the tunes, and the celebrations commenced. The crew got together for a bit of line dancing - not quite the boot scootin' kind mind you, it was more...geez, I can hardly describe it - if you could imagine Kanye West calling a square dance. I even had to join in for a bit, before retiring to our little corner to open a bottle. Paulette started having second thoughts, feeling a bit uncomfortable drinking in front of "the kids".
"Paulette, I said, "the kids are having their fun, we're over 40, we're practically invisible to them."
She wasn't convinced, although Cheryl appeared rather impressed with my a social observation and high fived me.
Dave had done such a great job with the fireworks - very impressive considering our humble facilities. God knows where he obtained them. Funnily enough, I never thought to ask. Sadly the photos are pretty arse, and don't do them nearly enough justice.
Happy Independence Day!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment