Apprenticing in Archaeology

Last Wednesday I visited a friend at the site of her dig in Tiberias. Anna (we were flatmates this summer), is an archaeologist who specializes in pottery. She has done work from the Hellenic period through to the Ottoman. She's currently digging at a 9th Century Abbasid settlement. It's located about 2.5 km south of the centre of Tiberias. And just next to the Hamat Tverya National Park where a 4thC synagogue has a preserved mosaic floor. (I missed this!)

Tiberias is an OLD town, dating from about the time of Jesus. It was built by Herod's son, another client king of the Roman Empire, hence its name which pays homage to the Roman Emperor Tiberius. The city sits halfway up on the western shore of the Kinneret (aka Lake Tiberias, aka Sea of Galilee). The area is replete with Christian and Jewish holy sites, and with tacky tourist hotels and falafel-shwarma shops. The Israeli Tourism Ministry markets Tiberias as a place for combining a relaxing vacation with visits to historic and holy sites. That's about right because you can swim in the lake (next to which Jesus did much of his work) and visit the hot springs for which the area has always been famous. Everything is all wrapped up together.

south end of Tiberias, looking at the Kinneret

My apprenticeship on the site started just before 8am with a tour of the site, which is a narrow strip of 6m set in about 15m from Hwy 90 (running alongside the lake) for about 200 m.

the site

The site workshop

Much of the site is perplexing the team of archaeologists. They are sure about a few things and totally confounded by  others. Part of what makes it tricky is that it is definitely 9thC but, the Abbasids cleverly reused Roman blocks and, evidently, re-purposed several structures.

A square on the site

All of this has created some discontinuity in the site. In a perfect world, the team would expand the area of the dig and extend the dig for another six months. But, the world is imperfect so the dig will wrap up in about a week.

Since Anna is a pottery specialist and I was her guest on the site, my apprenticeship was focused on pottery.

buckets of shards

I washed pottery to the soundtrack of fighter jets (cruising the Syrian border; that's a subject for another post or not). Sadly, I don't have a picture of me washing, but honest, I did! I was sitting in that empty white chair next to these two guys.

pottery washing station

Here's how you wash pottery:
You get a bucket of clean water and your bucket of pottery shards that have been soaking in water for a few hours or a day. (This is a good thing because your pottery shards have been caked in mud for nigh on a millennium!) And, you get a nail brush. Reach into the bucket of pottery shards and select a shard. Dip it in the bucket of fresh water and scrub. You will likely have 5 or more surfaces to scrub. And you should scrub pretty hard because it's the edges that are critical for the archaeologists to see in order to assess wear patterns and type of earthenware -- all of which goes to provenance. Dip your now cleaner (but really, not sparkly clean) shard in the fresh water to rinse and deposit it on the tray of clean samples. Repeat. Oh, did you get a shard that is disintegrating on scrubbing? That's a bone. Toss. Get another shard. Dip, scrub all surfaces, dip, deposit. Repeat. About an hour of pottery cleaning was enough to make me sure that a full day of it at 40C really wouldn't be much fun: it's back breaking, hand-shrivelling work.

Then it was on to sorting, which we did in the air conditioned trailer; I was grateful to be out of the sun. The outdoor work area has black mesh shade covering it, but it doesn't really protect you from the sun.

Sorting begins by laying cardboard down on a table top and dumping the contents of a bag of washed pottery shards on it.

Getting started

the hunt is on

Anna sorting

The first sort is by obvious features -- kiln bar (used in production), handle, rim, base, glazed, engraved. The shards lacking any of these obvious features are counted by type of earthenware and then disposed of. The shards of interest are then sorted by type of vessel -- jug, juglet (distinguished by placement of handles), lids and bases (distinguished by curvature of rim), cooking pot and pans (distinguished by burnt clay and thickness), and by type of earthenware -- buff, pink, grey, yellow (provenance).

glazed base and plain base

glazed shards

Not everything can be kept so if there are multiple pieces of a particular type, the best sample is selected. The glazed shards are sorted separately and grouped (in a small plastic bag - mini ziploc) if they appear to belong to the same vessel. The glazed shards are particularly helpful for research because glazing was so challenging and certain colours proved difficult to make in different regions due to raw materials available. So, glazed work can provide considerable information about where and who was making the pottery.

Along the way the archaeologist takes copious notes, counting and cataloguing the shards. This is a critical step as it will facilitate writing up the report later without needing to see all the pottery again.
Everything was amazing, but highlights were a double spouted bronze oil lamp, a coin (not sure from when), and the glazed work. All of it is so impressive.

Bronze lamp

Once again I was humbled by the ingenuity of those who toiled with minimal tools. It was an awe-inspiring day.