Number 3

Hey all,

Sorry my updates have been pretty much nonexistant. I have little free time these days as digging is starting to get down to crunch time and sleep is getting less and less. We dig every day from 5 30 till 1 (or 12 30 on a short day), go home and shower and clean up. At 2 is lunch, then free time during which I usually nap. Then back to lab from 4 till 6. Today I actually got the energy to walk the 5 minutes here though.

Things have been getting really interesting in my square. We are deep into the Iron Age. We have found some really big pot sherds of storage jars and cooking pots. At one point we thought we had found a tibun, essentially an oven, and we got really excited. Unfortunately, we never found enough evidence to support that, just lots of broken mud brick pieces. We think that they were used to support the storage jars which have really small bases.

Today we dug down to bedrock in part of our square. On top of the bedrock was a whole mess of pottery, which was exciting. We probably have 1 or 2 more days to reach bedrock in the rest of our square and finish cleaning it out and then we move on to another part of the square. If we move quickly evnough we might close out our square forever and get to move on to helping excavate a Byzantine mosaic which would be pretty neat.

Other than that all is going well. My stomach has adapted to Jordanian food, I'm getting to know all the people on my trip, and our weekends have led us to some really interesting sites around Jordan. I'm not looking forward to lab time where I get to wash all the pottery and bone we found today, but this weekend is our 3 day mid field school break, and we head off to Petra and other sites in that area.

I'll try and give an update on that one soon!

Smile, It's an update

hey all,

This past weekend was filled with adventures.

Friday we went and attempted to fly kites in the outskirts of town. We walked through a part of town that obviously doesn't get tourists too much, because we got a lot of stares and a lot of "Welcome to Jordan!" People seem fasinated by us, especially children. My theory is that it is because we are always filthy and need to take a shower.

When we reached the edge of town a group of 10 or so boys led us to a primo kite flying location. Unfortunately, our 1 dinar kites did not hold up in the wind. It was fun though, and the kids thought it was hilarious. I dont think its often that they see 8 or 10 20+ year olds attempting to fly kites.

Saturday, we headed into Amman around 7 30 am to see some Roman ruins. I got some good pictures which Im sure I will share and will pop up on facebook, but since I cant post them up from the internet cafe, I've found some primo shots of other peoples.

<---- Temple of Hercules, roman

Roman arena could seat 9000 people V

We also checked out the archaeology museum and got to see some of the Dead Sea Scrolls!!

My favorite was the neolithic stuff, i.e. the old stuff, crude stone tools and human remains in cool burial practices.

In the afteroon we headed into the desert and saw some desert castles, including the former home of Lawrence of Arabia. We saw an old Umaayad bath house, or "pleasure palace." When they first found it it was really controversal because there are frescos depicting naked women on the walls, which goes against all Islamic artistic rules. It was pretty cool. Definetly a highlight of the day. It was especially cool because it didnt look like much of anything from the outside.

Qasr 'Amra -->

At any rate, that's all I got. I hope to hear from you all soon! I expect many emails etc!

Week One completed

Greetings from Madaba.

I thought I'd start a blog to ramble on about the inane happenings in my life for the next 6 weeks here in Madaba, Jordan. Madaba is located about 40 minutes outside of the capital of Amman. There are about 20 students and 5 or 6 staff members, most of whom are students at UofT or recent graduates. We spent the first few days aclamating to the time difference. After resting Monday due to an inability to get a digging permit, we delved into digging on Tuesday....sort of.

Turns out archaeology isn't so glamerous. Tuesday and Wednesday 5 30 - 12 30 were spent moving piles of rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. Today we got to dig in a little more. I even found some pottery and bone fragments on the surface where dirt had accumulated since last digging season. Really though, we were just preparing for next week whe we really start.

Friday is off and then Saturday we head off to visit Amman.

Hopefully further updates will be a little more exciting and a little less rambling on about every activity i do. If you want to hear about my tooth brushing technique, however, let me know.

I miss you all!