I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig
The five recruits I supervised in
1987 were typical volunteers. They
reported to Ashkelon well scrubbed
and a little flabby. Overnight they
became like the rest of the staff,
thriving on the dirt. In no time they
understood the basics of digging and
recording. Rapidly they learned how
to survive the ruthless battle at dawn
to grab tools and wheelbarrows. They
even managed to enjoy the afternoon
sessions of washing pottery in
between jokes and gossip.
One elegant, white-haired
woman underwent a most striking
metamorphosis. She arrived in a
designer safari outfit, trailing in her
wake a powerful French perfume.
Within a few days, this Chicago
socialite, a good sport, kind and
funny, had forsaken mascara and the
crease in her “Out of Africa” slacks
and become like the rest of the
troops, ragged and dirty.
James Whitred/Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon
Nicole Logan, author of the accompanying article and square supervisor at Ashkelon,
and archaeologist Samuel Wolff excavate in a stratum above a Roman bath.
The space my volunteers and I dug is called a “square,” which is the basic excavation unit of modern archaeological digs. It’s the physical feature that dominates most Near Eastern excavations and confuses people by looking like a
room. The square is actually an arbitrary space—32.5 feet on a side—that defines a dig area. Its walls, called “balks,”
preserve a record of the layers of each square to which archaeologists can refer even after their digging has removed the
stratigraphic evidence within the square. Four or more squares make up a “grid.”
I first came to Ashkelon in April 1985, after driving 35 miles from Tel Aviv, through cultivated fields and the fragrance of orange blossoms. I was to join the Leon Levy Expedition, sponsored by the Oriental Institute of the University
of Chicago and the Semitic Museum of Harvard University. I had already worked for several years with the director of
the expedition, Dr. Lawrence Stager, and the associate director, Dr. Douglas Esse, in ancient Carthage, Tunisia (see
“Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” BAR 10:01). Doug had told me: “It is high time to
move from the microstratigraphy of the ‘Tophet’a to the more mainstream Near Eastern archaeology.”
Although founded by the Canaanites, perhaps as early as 3500 B.C., Ashkelon is best known as one of the cities of
the Philistine “Pentapolis” and the main port city of the five. The Philistines were among the non-Semitic “Sea Peoples”
who arrived in the Levant at the transition from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age, about 1180 B.C. This was a time of great
upheavals, marked by the fall of political powers, the disruption of trade routes and the migrations of peoples.
Who were the Philistines? Where did they come from? Professor Stager believes they should be identified with the
Myceneans. The excavation of Ashkelon, scheduled to last into the next decade, should shed more light on the origins
of the Philistines and on their early settlement in Palestine.
Today, the site of ancient Ashkelon is a lively, popular 150-acre national park, surrounded by sand dunes. At the
center of the park, a mound, or tell, of 12 acres, ending in a bluff overlooking the beach, constitutes the presumed
citadel of the Philistines.
Very soon after groundbreaking in April 1985, the Philistine stratum appeared, less than 18 inches below a grassy
area where picnic tables had stood. Mudbrick walls, floors and silos of 30 centuries ago were, exposed. The discovery
of a 19th-century B.C. Cappadocian cylinder seal—the first ever found in Israel—brought champagne to the dinner table
that night.
Archaeologists’ slightly sadistic fascination with layers of destruction—which can be used as chronological
“pegs”—should be amply satisfied in Ashkelon. In the course of its 5,000-year-long history, the city has known much
violence, as it was attacked by the Egyptians (13th century B.C.) and the Assyrians (eighth century B.C.). A center of
Phoenician culture in the Persian period and of Helleni