pics

A couple of pics, as I take a break from typing my end of season report on the dig, here in Hong Kong airport.

(Photo: Bob Miller, Uni. of Canberra)
Those of you who might be concerning that I've abandoned the 'big pick, small plan' approach to archaeology in favour of brushing can rest assured - it was purely for photographic effect.
That said, I did feel a bit guilty as what I'm cleaning is a 12th C lamp, which probably had a bowl placed above it as a foundation deposit... until we did a pick run through. Ah well, Wendy did a great job sticking it all back together, after I'd retrieved the pieces from the pottery bucket.

Wherever I went in the UK, there was a noticable police presence - purely coincidental, of course, that the Old Bill was waiting to arrest a squaddie off the plane from Amman... and out in force on a Fri night in Leeds train station... but I did start to feel a bit paranoid. And then customs took unusual interest in my backpack here in HK, kindly giving it a gentle swabbing (presumably to remove some of the dust attached to it) and giving the hardback copy of Warwick Ball's Monuments of Afghanistan a good prodding. No, it doesn't originate in Kabul, just the photos... honestly, do I look like a drug-runner?!

Siblings and one of my nephews in Leeds - three's trubble, four's a riot?

back in Blighty

Landed in LHR and it was 10 deg C and grey... could be summer, could be winter - you just never know with this place, although to be fair the sun's come out this morning. Flying visit to Cambridge, where I began my archaeology students and rabble-rousing 20 years ago - bit scary, really. Off up to Leeds, the land of culture this arvo and then Aber, where Mum and Dad already have a long list of things for me to do. Sleep was fairly high up on my list, so we might have to negotiate.

end of season

Quick pic from the last day of digging - came down onto beautiful thick plaster floors... you kind of need to have trowelled some of the more typical grotty ones to appreciate them. But sweet FA on the floors by way of finds, which is a bit disappointing - posh the building was; wot it was is anyone's guess.

Cold, wet and miserable here in Amman - the vollies have taken the sun with them!

LBA palace walls

Just a quickie, as it's all a bit hectic with one week to go. The trench feels basically under control... always an unsettlingly feeling, as archaeology has a habit of making a fool of the presumptive and our best informed predictions.
The Late Bronze Age destruction is poking through in places, which is great. The plaster floors are about 10-30cm below where we're currently at. It's now partly a matter of juggling men and time as we try to expose them all at once for photos. Should be ok if it doesn't rain, and we don't find too much trezur (but if we do, that's a nice problem to have).
Sorry the pic isn't great, half in shade, etc. but I was rushing to plan some of the metre thick LBA walls before hopping on the bus up to Irbid and internet. I think I've found the palatial parking lot (chariots to the west, donkeys on the east please), and audience waiting chamber, before ye olde people went up into the tower building (at the bottom of the photo)... Birq's less sure.

When I'm not doing trench stuff, I'm puddling mudbricks to find out what palaces, temples and humble abodes were built out of, but I won't bore you with photos of the 40 bricks I've analysed so far. Suffice to say, some are half a metre long and weigh over 30kg, whilst others are tiddlers.
Knackered... but happy as a 'khanzir bil wattel' as they would say round here, if creatures that go oink weren't haram.

Half-way house

I'm currently on the mid-season break, which consists of 2 days off... most normal people call that the weekend, but it only happens once in 7 weeks on the Pella dig, rather than every 7 days. We've had warning that a cold front is rolling in, which isn't a surprise given that it's been blowing a gale for the past couple of days. Considering the glorious 1st 3 weeks' weather, we can't complain... it is winter, after all, and Jordan needs all the rain it can get. But it'd be great if we could get through the whole season without getting too squelchy - my trench, being the lowest, will turn into a swimming pool / mud-bath.
Given the ominous weather I was relieved to get the trench photographed and planned over the past couple of days... (just because you have mid-season break doesn't mean you don't do any work, if you're silly enough to hang around the dighouse). The 4m wide expanse of cobbles took a while to draw, but the plan looks pretty good and we're now about 25cm above the thick yellow plastered surface and other Late Bronze Age goodness. Given what's coming up already, it's exciting.
Had a pretty busy 3rd week on the finds front - I kept on trying to put the guys / vollies in places where they wouldn't turn up too much, to give me time to detail what had already emerged... but you turn your back and up pops a multi-handled painted krater, about half a metre in diameter, associated with burnt olive pips... and an opium-bulb kournos fragment, and an Egyptianizing trefoil lamp offering, not to mention copper pins from a possible sink hole, beautiful painted Cypriot and Mycenaean painted pottery fragments, 1/3 of a copper bangle, etc. Crazy. Sometimes all I seem to do is write labels.
But it's great - the best trench I've had at Pella, and now that we've dug out most of the Early Iron Age pits, the architecture's starting to make sense. I've even found time to puddle a few more mud-bricks, as part of my side-study on what people were making the bricks out of (yeah, I know - mud... but also other stuff which is where it gets interesting, if you're into that sort of thing).
Most people seem to have recovered from the cold that afflicted us last week - just in time for the next lot of vollies to arrive tomorrow with their lurgies. Honestly, there's sharing, and there's sharing we could do without. But the 1st group were great - really pleasant, dedicated people, and hopefully the next 15 will be too.

Pella pics

Looking South over cobbled paving


Looking North to the 'Palace' tower

Pella 2 – the story of more pits

The wind is rattling the branches on the corrugated iron roof (as I type this the night before venturing to a couple of lesser known Decapolis cities and an internet cafe in Irbid). We’ve been so lucky with the weather thus far – it’ll be gutting if it all goes to pot as the pointy end of the season approaches.
I’m currently attempting to ward off the cold both my vollies have had with medicinal nips of Bushmills; typing is also a bit difficult, as one of my fingers has a cut – they take it in turns to get snicks and gashes, and feel like sandpaper, but the thumb I fractured a couple of months ago is holding up ok which is a relief and the rest of the old bod is doing ok. In fact, it’s not as creaky as I feared it’d be. I’m even starting to get a tan and tone up a bit – maybe there’s a few years left in me yet.
I’m pretty lucky as I have the ‘money trench’ this season – about time, considering Birq started me in a silly triangular sliver in ’97 (I think I was the only one who could fit into it) and then I had several trenches of pain (due to rock-breaking). This week turned up a unique Iron Age two-faced idol candlestick holder / incense burner – it’s pretty crude, as opposed to the nude bed figurine, but has a certain charm. Like most of the buckets of pottery I’ve found this season, the idol is covered in a gunky green residue which is universally recognised on digs as ‘potty ware’. Whether people were crapping directly in the pits, or using sherds as a rough form of toilet paper is debatable, but we do seem to have a disproportionate number of broken handles cropping up.
One of the virtues of all the pits I have in my trench is that they give us an insight into what lies below, and it’s pretty exciting... if 10cm thick yellow plaster surfaces are your thing. Apparently they had similar surfaces in the Late Bronze Age (Egyptian) Governor’s Residence which they dug here in the late 80s, and they also appear in the section of the Middle Bronze Age temple just to the east, so there’s little doubt the building I’m digging down to is going to be a ripper when I (my long-suffering workmen) shift the metre or so of mud-brick collapse which is lying on top of it. In the meantime, one of my vollies, Michael, exposed 2 x 2m of stone cobbling today (see photo) which is pretty impressive but going to be a bugger to plan. Like the lower yellow plaster layers, it extends to the west, so it’ll be even more impressive when it’s fully exposed.
News from home is less good – the flat’s been burgled and I’m having hassles with my visa / citizenship. Apparently 20/20 in the ocker Aussie test isn’t good enough. The cops haven’t been able to spare anyone, since the tennis is on – my workmen all agreed that theft was ‘haram’ (sacrilegious) and offered to lynch the buggers who broken in. Gina said they didn’t seem to have taken much – just irreplaceable things primarily of sentimental value, rather than the old tv and dvd player, virused computer and cds. It’s pretty spooky, considering that we’re a 2nd storey flat on a quiet street – it’s not exactly an opportunistic walk-by robber. Such is the society we live in... and people question our safety travelling in the Moslem world.