finito!

We finished digging today, with mixed feelings. Today was one of the toughest and most frustrating yet, which in a weird way was a good way to finish up. Now I wont miss it so much.
We had to backfill two of the squares because they were too dangerous to leave unattended all year until the next season. That meant that all day yesterday and today we had to move back all the dirt we had spent 6 weeks moving out of the squares back into them. After a lot of snipping at eachother, though, we actually finished early. I cant move my arms above my head, but damn do I feel buff.

The next couple of days we just have to relax. Tonight almost everyone is going into Amman to go dancing, and tomorrow we have our final party with all the people we worked with. I'm excited for both, but it's weird that tomorrow night will probably be the last time I see any of the guys we worked with.

I'm not sure if I am excited to be home or sad to leave, but it's been a good six weeks.

I think this is probably it for the blog. I'll see you all soon!

iconoclasm

Iconoclasm is about the coolest thing ever. I mentioned earlier that last weekend we went around Madaba to see the mosaics and sites. We saw tons of mosaics from around the 8th century, many of which were still very well preserved. The most interesting ones, however, were the ones that weren't. After the Muslim conquest in the 8th century a decree banning depiction of animals in humans in artwork soon followed. Many mosaics were destroyed or went under iconoclasm, where the tiles of the animals and humans in churches and public places were reorganized and jumbled. It is suspected that many of the jumbling was actually done by the Christians to preserve the artwork though. Many of the mosaics will be complete except for a fuzzy patch. The extent to which the tiles were rearranged varies and sometimes there will be a pair of legs sticking out nowhere.

Another cool mosaic we saw was the most famous, the Madaba map. It depicts very accurately Jerusalem and the holy land with each individual city mapped out in the area. It is thought that this was a destination along pilgrimage routes.





















If you are ever in Jordan, it's definitely worth it to stick around an extra day and check out the Mosaics. It has the added bonus of being almost entirely free of tourists. At each site we went to there were at tops only a dozen other people there with us.

tidbit: they call the police here falafel. we pretty much need to bring that across the ocean.

Slow week here, everything is winding down. I spent a lot of hours today registering pottery and washing pottery. That's alright with me though, I had my ipod to keep me company.

This Saturday we go to the Dead sea and go swimming. It's supposed to feel disgusting and hurt like a mother, so naturally, i'm pretty excited about it.

Everyone is in a flurry picking their classes for next year. I have mine all picked out but am contemplating dropping a few of the archaeology classes from my roster. As much fun as I'm having, I'm not sure i'm cut of for this as a career. We will see though.

More news soon.

A well deserved break

Today is our first day off in two weeks and I slept in until 10 and it was amazing. In Toronto/Milwaukee getting up at ten on a day when I have nothing to do is early. Here, it seems wonderfully late. Tomorrow our field trip is looking at the sites around Madaba so I don't have to be up and at em until 10 as well. Good stuff.

A friend and I decided to take our day off and take a leisurely stroll around town and look for scarves and jewlery. Unfortunately, we didn't take into account that it's Friday in a Muslim country and most stores wont be open for another hour, so we detoured here where I am sitting between two 14 year old boys playing counterstrike. Wait, am I back in Shorewood in Freshman year? Could be.

As far as news goes, there's not much. Last night we had a Jordan vs Canada soccer game with some of the guys who work with us on the site. As a girl I sat on the sidelines which made me miss home. Even with one of the Jordanians playing on our side we got our butts kicked. I think this has more to do with the majority of the Canadians being archaeologist from UofT then us being North Americans though. Still...we should have represented a little better. After the guys were done playing a couple of us girls stole the ball and played for 5 minutes or so and amazed the Jordanians. They couldn't believe that we were better than our male counterparts.

Getting to know the workers a little bit has been one of the best parts about this trip. We still get looks when we walk around town, so it's good to know locals and feel a little less like foreigners and tourists.

That's all for now

Happy 4th of July!

I apologize in advance from the brief update. I always feel rushed when I'm here at the internet cafe (The Iron Rod) and I have to get on to lab ion a few minutes.

We went to Petra and Wadi Rum (among other sites) this past weekend. It was our "break" but it was rush rush rush and it left me more exhausted then the rest of the week. It was definetly worth it though. I knew about Petra and had seen pictures, but I still didnt know exactly what to expect. It was amazing. And HUGE. We walked around all day and still didnt see everything that was excavated, and only 5% of the site is excavated.

What was more amazing to me then the huge carved rocks though was the scenery and the mountains. The religion of the Nabataens (who carved the stone and lived in the area) was dependent on these mountains. The mountains were Gods and Godesses, or vice versa. WHen you climb (or take a donkey) up to the monestary or the high place of sacrifice on the top of huge mountains you can see why they worshiped their surroundings. It is amazing.

I'm out of time now but i;; update again soon.
Love.

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!