Day 6

Howdy everyone!  Today was a tough day out in the field.  It was hot a blazes and we had lots of fun trying to get our shade tarp in place so that it actually provides shade for us!  We finished out our baulk excavations yesterday and spent the morning laying out our new square and then putting up the shade for it.  Our new square (M11) is just south of the baulk we'd been excavating and we're hoping to find out how the structure with the large threshold stone relates to the rest of the temple complex.  The directors are hoping to find stairs, however I am not sure they'll still be around.  They might have been taken out for secondary use somewhere else in the area.  Anyway, here is the baulk-area and threshold stone after we'd cleared it out. 

After setting up our new square, we spent the rest of the morning hoeing and picking up the extremely hard-packed tractor fill which constitutes the first layer of our square.  We started collecting pottery and Edward found a coin!  It is very small and thin, and hard to see any markings on it.  It looks a bit like the one in the picture to the left, which is of me and a coin I found two years ago.

This afternoon, a few of us drove into Qiryat Shmonah with Ron, the surveyor, and we got real coffee and used the ATM.  I found some Murphy's Irish Stout to break up the Goldstar monotony, and picked up some sunflower seeds, which remind me of my time studying abroad in Turkey.

This evening was really exciting!  Those of us who have been participating in the Skype class (Advanced Topics in Middle Eastern Conflict)-- there are five of us at Omrit now, drove over to Tel Hai College in Qiryat Shmonah with Andy and met with our Israeli and Palestinian counterparts!  We had pizza, skyped in Fritz (our Mac technician), and chatted about Israel, recent developments in the region, and the Balkan Beat Box concert at Tel Hai tomorrow.  I hope to get to the show, though it will supposedly end sometime around 5am, which is when we have to be at the site digging!  The meeting with the Tel Hai students was great, and I can't wait until Sunday, when the whole group will go over to Tel Hai to watch a movie and have a discussion.

Its getting late here, so I will let you know how M11 progresses tomorrow!  Here is a picture of it before we began excavating.  Lilah Tov (goodnight).