I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig
“I used to go over to the Albright Institute [for Archaeological Research] in Jerusalem for afternoon tea in
the garden behind the main building. A lot of the archaeologists, graduate students and professors would
gather there and discuss their digs and stuff like that. There were little tables scattered around the patio
area. I would sit down with a newspaper and pretend I was reading, while eavesdropping on the conversation
going on next to me.”
“I felt very much out of place,” Lindstrom explains, “but now I feel very comfortable. Archaeology has given me
my formal education.”
Lindstrom’s value as a volunteer grew with each season as he vigorously threw himself into the projects. The names
of ancient cities and archaeological sites now roll off his tongue like old neighborhoods. The mechanics of ancient construction and cultural peculiarities are as easy for him to discuss as current events.
The dig directors who have worked with Lindstrom praise his skills. Professor Strange, who heads the Sepphoris
dig, says:
“He gets things done. To look at Gary, you wouldn’t think he is organized, but he is. He is very good at analyzing the mechanical problems associated with excavations and is great at reconstruction. He spent one
whole summer reconstructing a third-century synagogue with another director who kept trying to recruit him
back. He is one of my best hands.”
“One day I was in the Rockefeller Museum [in Jerusalem] when Gary and a group from our dig came up
to a glass display case filled with first- and second-century artifacts. He didn’t see me, but I heard him give
an excellent interpretation to the group as to what they were looking at. That’s when I realized just how much
he had absorbed through his work with us.”
Professor Strange recalls with a hearty laugh how Lindstrom has also contributed some humorous anecdotes. Since
he is used to crawling around under houses, Lindstrom was nominated to go underground whenever needed, and he was
always willing to go into any hole in which he could fit.
“One afternoon [says Strange], Gary was assigned to excavate some tombs we had found. I left him alone in
one of the chambers for a while and returned later. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him. He was stuck.
He evidently had found a smaller opening at the end of the bigger room and had decided to explore it. He
squeezed through the hole and found another double tomb. However, the hole he wriggled