Tag Archives: Akko

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

We had to leave the excavation early.  It wasn’t our choice and we were never in any danger.  The various universities and their insurance carrier decided we had to leave,only University of Massachusetts, Amherst didn’t go with us, but they left the next day.  We were told in the evening that we would leave the next morning, by bus, for Amman, Jordan.  No one wanted to leave, and in fact, much of the staff remained.  I was leaving over the weekend anyway, so I went with the evacuees.  We were told that we would need $30 for an entrance visa to Jordan, but that the company evacuating us was going to try to take care of that.

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Reema Pangarkar and Alex Ference at the Israeli-Jordanian border. image by Alex Ference.

So, we all packed and scrounged around for money and contemplated leaving the next morning.  After breakfast, we boarded a bus that was waiting for us.  There was a driver and someone from the evacuation company.  There were also others in SUVs traveling in front of us and behind us, while we drove from Akko to Beit She’an about an hour away.  It was ridiculous, we were not in any danger in the Galilee.  Continue reading Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Different, But the Same

No one could be oblivious to what is going on in Israel at the moment.  Hamas in Gaza shoots rockets at all the major cities it can reach in Israel – and now they are targeting the bedouin villages in the Negev.  Israel bombs Gaza and is now on the ground searching out tunnels dug under the border to invade Israel.  It isn’t a pretty state of affairs.

We sit here in Akko, a mixed city too far from the rockets to worry about them, but not immune from the situation.  The local Arab store owners participated in a strike objecting to Israel’s killing of civilians.  A strike means their stores are closed.

But otherwise, most things go on as usual in this city.  People go to work, shop and go about their lives.  Continue reading Different, But the Same

Oft Interred With Their Bones

Ever wonder what happens to all those chicken bones after you eat your chicken, or the ribs from barbecued ribs or rib eye steak?  Sure, they end up in the trash, but one man’s trash is another’s treasure.  Eventually, your garbage ends up in a landfill and is buried.

Archaeologists make it a habit of digging up ancient trash, and one of the things we dig up are animal bones. How did they get there? That’s usually easy.  If they are a small rodent, we usually know that it just died in its burrow and we found it.  But bones from sheep, goats and cattle, or deer are generally considered to have been supper.  Continue reading Oft Interred With Their Bones

Not Panning for Gold

A’ndrea wet screening dirt for iron.
Credit: Jill Bierly

I was wet screening some dirt from the probable metals working area the other day, sitting under a shade near the path that winds up and around Napoleon Hill (Tel Akko) when two small boys, 8 or 9 I’d guess, walked by.  They asked me in Hebrew if I was looking for gold.  I said no, iron.  They gave me the strangest look, stopped for a second, and then began walking on. As they got about 6 feet in front of me they turned and said, you are looking for gold.  And they walked off.

Gold and silver, those are the precious metals that everyone thinks of when they think of prospecting or looking for ores and such.  But, for archaeologists in most places, the use of copper and then iron ores for metalworking is far more important.  Copper is the only metal beside gold and silver that occurs in its native form on Earth.  Just as one can find gold nuggets, copper nuggets – not as shiny bright and not as valuable – are also found.  Native copper is the only indication of metal working of any kind in North America in pre-contact times.  The nuggets were hammered into tiny bells or other ornaments, but Native Americans never smelted copper or any other metal.

In the Middle East, however, copper, bronze and eventually iron were smelted and worked.  Last year at Tel Akko, during the excavation by the Penn State and University of Haifa, Tel Akko project, excavations revealed a potential metal working area.  This year, a new area, next to the original was excavated and examined by students and a researcher from the Weizmann Institute.

Remember Wooly Willie or other metal filings games where you move the iron with a magnet to create hair, beards, etc.?  Run a magnet through the dirt in these two areas and the magnet looks like Wooly Willie with a full beard.  The number of hammerscales – tiny pieces of iron that fall off when hammering iron into shape – is truly amazing.  The area also yielded pounds of iron slag.  In other areas of the Tel copper slag appeared as well.

The first or second day of the dig, I found, in situ – in the ground in the original location – part of an iron blade.  Yes, I was digging in the same location with all the hammerscales.  Today, one of the last days of digging, someone found an iron arrowhead that is probably late Iron Age early Persian.

Some say that Akko was famous for metalworking.  Certainly indications from this year’s excavations suggest that some ironworking went on in the Persian period, if not earlier.

Fun in the Sun? Well, Maybe

I have heard people scoff and raise a skeptical eyebrow when hearing of a semester abroad or an international summer program.  I know what they are thinking – easy A’s, lots of eating and drinking and well…

I don’t know about all programs or even all Penn State programs, but I can categorically say that anyone attending Penn State’s summer archaeological program at Tel Akko in Israel is not having a grand old time.  Well, they are, but not in the way you think.

Today, the first day was an easy one.  We stayed at the Israel Marine School where we are living.  Began at 7:30 a.m. with breakfast, followed by lectures until lunch at 1 p.m. and more lectures from 4 p.m. until 6 p.m., then dinner at 7p.m.

I’m not sure how the students sat through it all.  We are all jet lagged and the overview spanned the time period from Early Bronze Age to the Crusader period and Napoleon’s failed attempt at capturing the city.  That is a lot of history and archaeology crammed into one day.  But hey, we were done at 7:30, right?

Sure, because we have to leave tomorrow morning at 5:30 so we can have a tour of the site and do clean up until 12:30.  They will feed us breakfast though.

The excavation project is sponsored by Penn State, the University of Haifa, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont McKenna University, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Trinity College. Students are enrolled in different programs through their schools, but all students and staff have to attend the lectures.

Oh, and if you think that we’re free after lunch, no, most days we have to wash pottery and then have another lecture.

There are trips on Saturday and a lecture Sunday at 6 p.m.  These few credits are not for the faint of heart, but, besides learning how to dig, uncover the secrets of the ancient past and make new friends, most of the students undoubtedly will think these four weeks were a blast.  And some of them will come back next year.