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I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig

A Guide to ’98 Digs: The Volunteer’s View
A Day on the Dig

By Gregory S. Hobson

The predawn silence is broken by knocking on our dormitory doors. “Boker tov, good morning, put your feet on the floor,
it’s morning in Caesarea, boker tov.”
It is 4:45 a.m. I have 35 minutes before shuttle service to the field begins. I make sure that I have a full canteen,
my trowel, pick, tape measure and sunscreen. The rest of the equipment—guffas (rubber buckets for hauling dirt), hoes,
sifters, pottery buckets, brushes and pickaxes—are kept at the site.
My team works in Caesarea Vault, trench 1 (CV-01). There we are excavating around several large Herodian period
storage vaults (horreum), trying to locate the ancient sea wall that probably stood in front of them. For the last several
days we have been excavating Locus 043. (A locus is any three-dimensional feature, whether a soil layer, a wall or whatever.) By second breakfast (8:30 a.m.) we have filled many buckets with late Byzantine (491–640 A.D.) sherds. After
breakfast our trowels hit paving stones, part of an ancient road. Coins found under the stones date to the reign of the
Byzantine emperor Justin II (565–578 A.D.), so we know the road must have been made about that time or later. The
road becomes our new locus.
We work until noon. Back at the dormitories we have about three hours to eat lunch, write letters, do laundry, swim,
nap or hang out. At 4 p.m. half of us wash pottery and clean bones. Pottery washing is vital to date the various sherds
from each trench and locus. We dine at 7 p.m. and attend lectures between 8 and 10 p.m. Then I go to bed, knowing
“boker tov” will be here before I know it.

© 2006 Biblical Archaeology Society

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