Closing Up

Well we have made it to the end of the dig.  Today we spent both the morning and afternoon sweeping out our mega-square to get it ready for final photos tomorrow.  H8, Machal's square, already took final photos, and we have spent the last week in a heightened state of activity as we scramble to get everything finished up before we leave for Jerusalem on Sunday.  The Omrit plague left us behind on site clean-up, but it seems we're about caught up today!  I will get some photos of M11/N11 tomorrow so we can have a before and after for the season.

Since we last talked about the square, we've not made much progress (because there wasn't much left to do).  We have M11 uncovered to pavers and to the monumental steps in almost the whole square.  A bit of the putative Byzantine flooring surface is left, and my squaremates took some of that out while I was out with the plague on Tuesday morning.  In N11, we took the trench down to bedrock, exposing the putative Byzantine wall which now acts as a separator between the two squares.  In the lower courses of the wall, we found a small corinthian column capital made of limestone, and a beautiful small marble capital too!

A shot of some of our Tel Hai friends from their visit on Tuesday night

Pictures, another session of pottery reading, and our final cookout tomorrow!