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I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig
I could hear my six tent-mates walking
around me, trying to find canteens, smearing
suntan lotion on scorched bodies, and munching
on crackers and rolls. One of them, Kate Willette
of Winona, Minnesota, came in with a mug of
coffee and tempted me. Coffee. I inhaled deeply.
The smell of it, of even the thick muddy, gritty,
Israeli coffee, roused me. Maybe I could get up
after all.
“Last call, last call for the buses,” bawled
Fred Brandfon, one of the supervisors. The laggards among us hastily dressed and sprinted. I
stole a glance at the eastern horizon. It was a
pale, yellow pink.
I was one of 130 volunteers participating in
a summer “dig” at Tel Michal, 3.5 miles north of
Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast of Israel. The
site, a defense and trading outpost in ancient
times, held secrets of civilization that existed as
far back as the Middle Bronze Age (2200–1551
B.C.). We hoped to dig back that far during the
eight-week summer.

Mary Remole
Persian urn fragments are painstakingly pieced together by a restoration
expert.

Two summers earlier Michal had appeared on a surveyor’s map as only a mound with steep jagged cliffs dropping
off to the sea. Now, 12 areas were open and a wine press and cemetery uncovered. Countless juglets, pots, and sherds
had also been unearthed. Last year, volunteers discovered a horde of silver coins dating from the Hellenistic period
(332–37 B.C.). However, no written records had been found though writing was usually evidence of major, long-term
occupation. Perhaps therefore, Michal had not been a major center. What would we find? We wondered and hoped.
The buses passed through the sleeping town of Herzliya and turned the corner onto the dirt road leading to the
site. We passed the garbage dump, and then the embankment where the military had been conducting maneuvers the
day before, continuing down a long, winding road. We could see the tel in the distance; its hollowed out squares looked
like black holes.
We clambered off the buses—hats, daypacks, and canteens in hand, and moved sleepily to the tool area. People
found their work crews and picked up shovels, buckets, surveying instruments, and other smaller tools. A last stop was
made at the water trough to fill canteens and then the slow trek up the face of the tel began.
At the top one could look west over the sea, east toward Herzliya, and north and south along a narrow, rugged
coastline. The desert was still, its expanse unbroken except for an occasional scrubby bush.
We settled into our daily rhythm. Radios were turned on, work details were organized and people began to wake up.
It was still a cool 75° at six a.m. We had three hours before breakfast and the first break.
The military had bulldozed several of the excavated squares at the end of last summer’s season, and several of us
were assigned to “open” them. The sand was loose and shoveled easily but it never ended. “Where were these important finds?” we wondered as we filled and hauled bucket after bucket of sand. We cursed the military for their insensitivity and kept shoveling.
Other areas were at various stages of excavation elsewhere in the dig. Some were deeply dug out, exposing layer
upon layer of stratified material, others were only a few centimeters deep. But over all, the procedure was the same:
scratch the hard, sun-baked earth with a pick-axe to loosen the covering sand, shovel it into buckets, and carry it over
the side of the tel. All day every day for two weeks, until all the areas were well-opened.
My group formed a bucket line to ease our aching shoulders. And we talked about what had brought us here.
Surprisingly, out of the 130 people in the first four-week session which I attended, only a handful of volunteers had any
strong leanings toward archaeology. Most were there for a “different summer experience.” We ranged in age from 16 to 75,
and came from all walks of life and occupations.
A New Yorker didn’t want to “sling hamburgers all summer” and a retired Mormon missionary couple thought the
field work experience would toughen them. Others were “just interested” in archaeology. I was doing a master’s project
in photojournalism. We represented eight universities and three countries—a diverse group.

© 2006 Biblical Archaeology Society

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