Test Test2 | Page 68

I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig
Byzantines and the Moslems. It ceased to
exist in the 13th century A.D. after a last
battle between Mameluke Sultan Baibars
and the Crusaders.
My square was a slow starter. While
the five other excavation areas of the dig
were speeding into Roman, Hellenistic,
Persian, Iron Age and even Late Bronze Age
periods, ours lagged behind. However,
toward the end of the first season, we
exposed a fourth- to sixth-century A.D. bath
complex: a small plastered pool; at each
corner, a heart-shaped column; and drains
with marble slabs running through floors or
crudely patched mosaic.
As we extended the excavations in
1986, our square began to look like a
moonscape of exploded limestone rocks.
We attributed this disaster to Seljuk Sultan
Salah el Din (Saladin), who destroyed the
city in 1191 A.D. to prevent its capture by
Richard the Lion Hearted during the Third
Crusade.

James Whitred/Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon
Rub Shoulders with your university president when you go down in the excavation
trenches and dig. From left to right: Leon Botstein, president of Bard College;
Barbara Haskell, curator of the Whitney Museum; Leon Levy, benefactor of the
Ashkelon excavation; and writer Shelby White.

For a few weeks we felt rather
snubbed by Dr. Stager, who expects results
from his team. Our square had become merely a vantage point to which the director would bring distinguished visitors
to give them a better view of the Philistine area below.
Two weeks before the end of the 1986 season, however, we made a real discovery—a monumental, apsidal building, 26 feet in diameter, with a cut, polychrome marble floor laid in the elegant pattern known as “opus sectile.” The
discovery of this building, tentatively dated to the sixth century A.D., established our status; from then on, we deserved
a stop on Dr. Stager’s rounds.
During the most recent season, in 1987, we firmly entered the Late Roman/Byzantine and even Early Roman
periods. A major challenge was peeling off the ubiquitous cement the Byzantines had poured over earlier structures—
cement that seeped into cracks between stones and stuck viciously to mosaic floors. Slowly our square began to show
a busy “architectural horizon” of walls built on top of walls in association with several layers of mosaic flooring.
Two discoveries kept us racing against the clock as the third season approached its end: a tunnel for water or sewer
use, and a “hypocaust,” or underground heating chamber of a Roman bath.
Under the sixth-century apse, and cut by it, we found an earlier sewer drain. This example of massive masonry, about
six feet wide and more than six feet deep, gives us a clue to the scale of Roman public works existing in ancient Ashkelon.
The tunnel was excavated in record time by a team of volunteers who each day filled 600 guffas—or rubber buckets—with
over a ton of the rubble that had collapsed into the drain tunnel. We can predict that a maze of underground channels, possibly extending all the way to the sea, might lure future “digging moles.”
The “hypocaust” consisted of a subfloor with small columns made of round and square bricks, over which a bathhouse floor was laid. Hot air would circulate in the hollow space under the floor, warming the room and creating a steamy
atmosphere something like that in a modern sauna.
As a “square supervisor,” I am the keeper of the detailed records that concern my square. I label and control hundreds of “layers,” “features,” “pottery baskets” and “levels.” Each day or so I draw a “top plan,” which is a horizontal
representation of the step-by-step progress of the excavation. I also make a vertical drawing of the balks of my square
in order to show a cross-section of the layers excavated. In my daily journal, I note observations, comments and opinions. Every week I add to the crucial document called the Harris Matrix; like a giant genealogical tree, it shows the
sequence of layers and features— the physical stratigraphy—to produce the sought out “relative chronology.”
At least, this is how the system is supposed to work. But, in fact, each grid has its own organization, each grid
supervisor his or her style in running an excavation.

© 2006 Biblical Archaeology Society

63