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I Volunteered for This?! Life on an Archaeological Dig
During the second week of digging, I found part of a figurine dating to about 1200 B.C. Probably connected to the
Baal cult, the piece resembled a pig-calf creature and was roughly the size of my thumb. As I studied the figurine, I
remembered the story of the golden calf in the Bible, and suddenly I felt connected to the narrative as I never had before.
As the weeks rolled by, the discoveries in our grid continued: We found oil lamps, beads, bowls, cooking pots and
more figurines. All of this brought ancient Ashkelon and the Philistines to life for me. The stories of the Bible became
personal, for I was able to get a glimpse of life as it was lived in this region nearly 3,000 years ago. Working on the
Ashkelon dig was an experience I will definitely take with me into the classroom and beyond.

Ron Tappy
Külli Tõniste, from Estonia, is currently working on her Ph.D. in Bible Studies at the
London School of Theology. A volunteer at Tel Zayit last summer, she reports that she
finally learned to “read dirt.”

Külli Tõniste—Tel Zayit
I spent the 2004 excavation season digging at Tel Zayit, in the foothills of the Judean mountains, approximately 30 miles
southwest of Jerusalem. Zayit is a small tell (mound) and was chosen in 1996 so that excavators could learn about village life in ancient Israel. Ironically, the discoveries of each season have revealed that Zayit was not the tiny village it was
believed to be. The site was larger and more important in ancient times than we had thought.
Upon our arrival last year, we faced a tell that had not been excavated for two summers. It was overgrown with
thistles and thorns; scorpions and snakes had made their home there. We spent our first week pulling weeds, digging fire
trenches, burning the wild growth off the tell and filling sandbags in the hot sunshine. We looked like little sun-burnt dirt
devils by the end of each day! This all had to be done before we were able to dig deep to the good stuff.
Our little tell did not disappoint us: Everyone found some pottery. My personal favorites were a fully restorable
Roman cooking jar, a perfectly intact Herodian oil lamp and what appeared to be a stone measuring cup. We also uncovered a substantial Late Bronze Age Egyptian building, believed to have served a public function. It included some valuable stoneware and a large grinding stone. We also found a cylinder seal, as well as several monoliths that formed a
circle on the top of the tell—something for the next dig season to uncover and for archaeologists to puzzle over. These
monoliths are one more indicator that Zayit was not a mere peasant village but a more centralized administrative center.
We were a relatively small group of volunteers (50 people), which gave us the opportunity to work side by side with
our supervisors, Egon Lass and Gabriel Barkay, and our dig director, Ron E. Tappy. We did much more than sift and drag
© 2006 Biblical Archaeology Society

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