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I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig

Digs and Digging 1980
A Volunteer in the Negev

By Crystal Loudenback

Crystal Loudenback
The author at Tel Ira prepares a square for photographing—a job she was assigned
more times than she wished!

When I told my friends that I planned to spend the summer of 1979 on an archaeological dig in Israel’s Negev Desert,
I got one of two responses: “You’ve got to be crazy!” or “Gee, that sounds like a lot of fun!” Both turned out to be true.
I had been to Israel twice before, participating in directed tours, but this time I had decided to fulfill a lifelong
urge to indulge in an archaeological expedition.
Carefully reading about the project possibilities in the March/April 1979 BAR, I was drawn to the section entitled
“Rescue of Archaeological Sites in the Biblical Negev,” BAR 05:02.
The article explained that because of the necessity to relocate military installations from the Sinai to the Negev as
a result of the Israeli-Egyptian peace agreement, many important unstudied archaeological remains may either be
destroyed or become off-limits for security reasons. Therefore, the Israeli government allocated funds for a massive effort
to “save” such sites as Tel Ira, Tel Masos and Tel Malhata.
Other summer excavation plans were then modified to allow money and people to be used in the Negev rather than
on previously scheduled digs. Such was the case with the Joint Israeli-American Expedition to Aphek-Antipatris directed
by Moshe Kochavi and Pirhiya Beck from Tel Aviv University. The first session of the Aphek-Antipatris dig was rescheduled to Tel Ira.a
I arrived at Beit Yatziv Youth Hostel in Beersheva on the afternoon of June 17th, carrying a suitcase crammed with
items suggested by the Project’s U.S. Coordinator, Dr. Don Hobson of Allegheny College. Included were such diverse
© 2006 Biblical Archaeology Society

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