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Babies & Kittens
Jordanians are known for making people feel welcome in their country, in their homes. You hear about it, but it’s not until you’re actually here experiencing it that it really sinks in how important hospitality is to the Jordanian culture. Our forman, Abu Isa, invited myself and a few of my crewmates to his house to meet his son and wife recently.
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I never thought I would say this…
… After all the problems I’ve had here with hospitalization, gluten poisoning and thinking that I would have to leave early, and the like, I have to say that I’m not looking forward to this trip ending.
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Floating & Eating
The Dead Sea is a great idea in theory. Relax in the warm sun and water, floating along without having to do anything to hold your head above water. In order to have that much buoyancy though, there is a certain amount of salt required. While floating was a unique experience, the salt was a painful one. Salt water ebbed and flowed over every small cut, scratch, and raw part of my skin. My hands, from all the digging, were the worst off, but my feet weren’t to be outdone after finding many jagged rocks on the sandy floor of the Dead Sea.
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Of Ovens and Women
Several days ago, I came across a strange pattern in the earth layer I was excavating. It was oddly rectangular, seemingly degraded mudbrick surrounding one locus and being bordered by another. It looked like an oven to me, so I called to my field supervisor, “Hey Dave! Look, an oven!” “That’s not an oven Jill, it’s just some strange looking soil.”
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Ancient Connections, Artisans, and CNN
If I haven’t been clear about my progress on the dig, it’s because the square I’m working in began this season as cobbles, which we took out to find some dirt, followed by cobbles, followed by dirt. I’m really hoping I don’t find another layer of cobbles. But the other day, I pulled something new and different out of the ground. The usual finds are broken ceramics and bits of bone, but this one was a little bone pendant. Carved at the top with a small drilled hole. If the Law of Superposition combined with the might of ceramic typologies have not failed us, this find dates to the Iron…
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Pregnant Cats, Princesses, and the Rose City
There is a filthy, pregnant cat that follows me around. I shoo her away all the time, but she keeps trying to make me love her. She must know that deep down inside, I’m really sad that she’s pregnant and homeless, but that there’s not much I can do for her. One afternoon, I walk into my dorm room to find Erin staring at my bed in shock. Lo and behold, Pregnant Cat had made herself comfortable. She had opened my mosquito net, and curled up into a neat little ball on my pillow. When I walked up, she moved from the pillow to the end of the bed as…
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Adventures in Taxis
This evening, Erin, Russ, Sean, and I went down to wander the Suq and relax after a long day. On the way home, we hailed a taxi and had no idea what we’d be in for. Our driver was friendly, with a wicked sense of humour. He was so excited to be chauffeuring us for the evening. When he heard that Erin had never driven a standard before, he decided he would teach her.
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The City Tour & Weeding
I can safely say that I’m healthy now. I’m back to normal and and hoping it stays that way until the end of the trip. Shopping around here has been a lot of fun. I haven’t purchased much yet, but it’s always an interesting experience. The open-air markets are called “suqs,” and there’s a different one depending on what you’re looking for. Want clothes? There’s the clothes suq. Want art? There’s an art suq. Recently, we went looking for the gold suq and nearly caused a riot.
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Flights, Hospitals, and Digsites
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BEES!
My square supervisor is an interesting old man. He’s crochety and strange and keeps telling me to toss things into the sift pile. It has me worried. I’ve been taught to hoard every scrap of artifact that comes across me, so I’ve just been doing what I normally do in situations like this: I’ve done it my way when he wasn’t looking. Meanwhile, there is a bee-keeping operation just down the side of the Tell from us. Today, they were disturbed from their hive. Today, they were angry. Today, they sought vengeance.
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Flights, Hospitals, and Digsites
My flights to Jordan were uneventful, but I wasn’t feeling well for most of it. Add in the fact that I couldn’t eat any of the airplane food thanks to it all being chock full of gluten, I didn’t have much to eat over the multi-day trip to Jordan. The first flight was 9 hours to London. I managed to get a whole row to myself, so I was able to sleep for some of the trip, but it’s still sleeping on a plane, so it wasn’t very comfortable.
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The City Tour & Weeding
to see the world in a grain of sand.
