The Dig at Tel Dan

Here is my rather detailed account of the dig at Tel Dan. As a side note you should know that a few days after we left, the Dig was shut down due to the Lebanon attacks. I met up with my fellow diggers at HUC after they had left the site and they gave me hair curling details of shells being lobbed over their heads. It seems I have a sixth sense for danger and left just in time. Hopefully things will change quickly and the importnat work there can continue.

The Dig

Well, as you already know, Michal and I went to an archaeology dig at a place called Tel Dan, in Israel. It is at the very north end of the country, about a stone’s throw from the Lebanese border. There are still trenches there from when the Israel army set up a defense position during one of Israel’s wars. A “Tel” by the way, is any man created hill. In this case, the whole hill is a pile of city remains built upon city remains. Tel Dan is the site of one of the oldest cities in history and the oldest city gate ever built was found here, constructed of wood and mud brick. The dry weather and clay soil preserves things well, which allows items to remain untouched by time. Most of Tel Dan was constructed during the late Bronze Age to early Iron Age where it was a major trading hub and holy gathering place, a status it may have held as early as the beginning of the Bronze Age, and perhaps even earlier. Its stone walls used the latest in military defense which was tested against the many invaders that would want to claim the city as theirs.

Michal and I made arrangements with the Hebrew Union College, who is sponsoring the dig there, to spend a few days at the site, taking part in the finding and recovering of artifacts at the site. Once made, we packed clothes, tooth brush and tooth paste, towels (always bring your own towels), bug repellent, hats, sun glasses, sun block, and headed of to await our ride who was going to pick us up from Jerusalem and take us to the camp site. Daniel, who to this day stands as the tallest Israeli I have ever seen, picked us up in front of the college at about 4 PM in a car far too small for his 6’ 4” frame. He is the administrator for the dig and makes sure all the small details are taken care of. We took the route up along the coast before cutting back inland to the camp site, stopping briefly at a McDonalds for Dinner. The 5 hour drive flew by, due mostly to the great conversations we had with Daniel during the trip. He served as something of an informal tour guide, telling Michal and I about everything we saw throughout the ride. Since the sun didn’t set until after 8 PM, we saw quite a bit, and Daniel explained even more. By the time we got to the camp sight, the three of us were very tired, and as we had a 5 AM wake up call waiting for us, we headed straight to bed.

The next morning came all too quick for us, and we stumbled into our clothes still groggy. The sun is like a ticking time bomb, and we had to get to the site and uncover as much as we could before the sun could start to sap all strength from us. Once dressed and prepped for a day of digging in dirt, we head off to the bus that would drive out to the dig sight where history was waiting for us. There were a large number of student archaeologists this time around, and we talked to them as we were traveling to the site. Some of the people are experts, of course, each with their own specialty. Some can read bones like a biography, others can look at a broken piece of pottery and tell you when it was made, who made it, what it was used for, and how it probably broke. Every conversation bore new fruits of knowledge that fed my hunger. Not all that was learned was purely academic either. Much that was learned on the ride up was just the practical aspects of a dig. Things like: when we will get breakfast, what are we looking for specifically, what was has been found there, how many dig locations are at this site and that sort of thing.

All too quickly we arrived at the dig, virgins waiting to be soiled. David Ilan, the headmaster to this dig, and considered a regular Indiana Jones by those who know him, handed us over to one of the dig site managers, Yifat, who looks like a female Indiana Jones herself. She gave us a little more practical overview before again turning us over to another experienced student volunteer who gave us specific instructions on what to do. Pick axes and hoes started most of the work in an area, but once we got to a rock formation or an item of interest, smaller picks and brushes were switched in. By about 7 am we had found a formation of rocks. It was discussed that these rocks could be a stone path, or the top of a wall, or a threshing floor for separating the seeds from wheat husks, or a collapsed monument. To be honest, no one knew what the hell it really was, but we could tell it was important, so brushes and careful removal of dirt was the next step. In time, when the layers of dirt are removed, its true identity would be revealed. In other areas of the dig, fascinating shards of pottery were found, dating any time from the Romans to almost a thousand years before.

At 8 am, we stopped for breakfast. Already the temperature was over 80 degrees and even people who were not doing heavy labor were starting to sweat. We all gathered under some benches and tables under some trees and dove into a kosher dairy meal, with several types of cheeses, breads, fruit and eggs. Everyone ate a ton, as it had been a long time coming since dinner, even for those who ate as late as Michal and I.

Before long we were back at work, racing against the noon sun that inevitably made us pull up our tents and head back to camp. There were tarps posted up over the dig areas that kept the worst sun off of us. However, the very air was so hot that by the time our fruit break came up a few hours later, everyone was drenched in sweat. Few complained about it as we were all so intensely focused on the work we were doing. Even so, I can tell people were just not moving as fast as they had in the early morning hours. Every minute the sun drained more and more energy out of us all.

While on break, we got to look at one of the other sites that were being worked on. It was an ancient Muslim burial ground, determined to be so because all the corpses are lying on their side facing Mecca, and by some of the other tell-tale traditions followed by Muslims of that time period. At only 500 years old, these tombs are among the most recent additions to the Tel, and belonged to a people who moved in long after Tel Dan’s glory days. Most likely the place was nothing more than a big hill filled with weeds and trees, and the occasional odd stone outcropping. An army of archaeologists were working feverishly to excavate, examine, and document the tombs before any Muslim zealots would come in and attempt to close down or sabotage the site.

We also talked to one of the professors who were in charge of this graveyard excavation who gave us fabulous background information, explaining all the defenses the ancient city used to defend itself against the constant Assyrian invaders that would some day be the cause of the city’s demise. Talk about your field classrooms - this was it! She explained the defenses as we walked along the outer city wall and the remains of the defenses themselves. Nothing like seeing the history first-hand as it is taught, and sometimes even discovered!!

By about 12:30, we closed down the dig, bringing the tents down and putting all the tools away. Last-minute field measurements were done, documenting where everything was at this point of the dig. Since history is laid out in layers, we had to document everything found at one layer, before we could remove it to get to the next layer. It is much like a layered cake, with each layer uncovering a new story, or filling in the details of a story half told.

By 1 pm, we were back at base camp where we gorged on what was most definitely the best-tasting crappy lunch I ever had. The food looked horrible, but seldom did food ever taste so good. These are the rewards of a hard day’s work: the appreciation of a meal and a solid night’s sleep. But a long sleep was not to be had, at least not yet; after a short nap, we got up again, for we still had shards to clean and identify.

The mud- and clay-covered shards of antiquity are brought back to camp in buckets that were tagged with information on where they were found. These buckets are filled with water and the shards within are soaked. After about 15 minutes each shard is pulled out and carefully hand-scrubbed to remove the soil and earth to better reveal what it is. It is then rinsed off and laid in a basket where it will spend the next 24 hours drying off. After all the shards from that day are washed, we go to another area where the pottery pieces from the day before are placed in a wooden box, and the area manager teaches us how to identify the time, place, and meaning of every significant find. Sometimes these explanations had huge historical back stories to them and made me feel like a kid huddled close to a storyteller who would paint a scene of a time long ago. This exemplifies the unique experience in archaeology that can only come from a dig.

After all is done, it was dinner time, usually another kosher meal that on any other day I would have turned my nose from; but not at the dig. I am filled with history and learning, and as full as my brain was, my stomach was that much empty and I ate like a starving man. After dinner Michal and I spent some quality time together in a remote area, talking about the day and discussing the bounty of information we had absorbed. We hope that the huge influx of knowledge poured into us will cement in and holds up as well as the ancient walls of Tel Dan. As we looked at the setting sun, we wondered who may have watched this same sun go down 3000 years ago, and how he or she may have seen it. It is romantic to think what the sun’s setting light may have touched here 1,000,000 sunsets ago.

Babies don’t sleep as soundly as Michal and I did that night.

Come 5 AM, the cycle started all over again. This is the day and life of an archaeologist. Most of the work is the back-breaking moving of soil from place A to place B. Spurred on by the occasional pottery shard, the real archeologist doesn’t spend his or her day dodging Nazis, but following bread crumb after bread crumb until he or she finds a mother load of artifacts. A single room preserved can unfold mysteries you can’t imagine. The things and places discarded by people thousands of years ago are the bread and butter of the archaeologist. These great finds are often made possible by unsung heroes without whom much of who we were and are would forever be a mystery, nothing more than a myth or legend of something told late at night, with us not knowing to believe them or not.

There are certain things in life that can only be experienced for us to truly know. An archaeological dig is one of those things. I feel I have enjoyed the opportunity of a lifetime, to touch the biblical age with my own hands. Nothing compares with that. If you ever have the chance to do the same I highly recommend that you do. It is one thing to read history; it is something all together different to touch it.