On Moving Dirt

“Jon, you moved a lot of dirt today.”

This is the daily refrain I get from my site supervisor, Gary, who I have been working with all week. Gary has been on working on Tall el-Hammam for 8 years, since the very beginning of the dig. He has been my archaeological mentor and has taught me more than I ever thought I would need to know about baulk lines, the ideal trowel size, and when NOT to use a pick to get through dirt.

These lessons have been the daily routine of my week in Jordan. It’s cool, but it’s not all that glamorous (this is why there have not been many updates since digging began).

A Typical Day

6:00 AM. My roommate, Kenny, an 18 year old high school graduate from California and I do our morning devotions together. This week we’ve picked some Psalms to go through. I’m teaching him the importance of daily Bible reading and to believe that God can speak to him personally. I believe it was Martin Luther who said that we teach best what we need to learn most. 

Kenny and I make up the entirety of the young adults group that I now lead. 

7:00 AM Breakfast buffet. They just keep filling your coffee too! 

7:30AM 40 volunteers get on a coach bus and drive off to the site.

7:45AM We load up trucks and hike 10 minutes to our digging square.

8:00AM Start moving dirt around. This part is not very sexy but can be rather tedious, slow and yet still occassionally rewarding. You really have to lower your standards from hoping to see destruction all the time to being excited to see a new wall developing. That being said, it is still quite spooky to go through a solid layer of ash and charcoal on the top of each area.

You should understand that, in the above picture, this is what I’ve been working on for 5 days (with 3 other volunteers). If there is nothing in that little square, there is nothing I can do about that. I say this only to protect myself from having to answer the question of “How many bodies did you find?” 

They found two in the square beside me. I’m a little jealous of that but that’s between the Lord and I and certainly not for the blogosphere to have to worry about.

11:30AM A schwarma based lunch with the team and the Jordanian workers we hired to help us. They’re a friendly bunch and call me “Beeg Jon.”

2:30PM Pack everything back into the trucks and head to hotel for our daily pottery washing routine.

I am good at washing the pottery but I’m useless to know anything about it. The supervisors are trained to be able to look at a base of an artifact, a curve or a handle and be able to date it as (Early Bronze Age 1-3 or Iron Age 1-3 etc). It’s quite impressive.

Lots of our findings are the Middle Bronze Age, just as one would expect from the biblical timeline of when Sodom was wiped out.

4:00PM The work day is now done. It’s time to shower up, rest, go float in the Dead Sea, get dressed for dinner or a combination of a few of them.

6:00PM Amazing dinner. Worth mentioning because it is a highlight for many- not for my gut though.

7:30PM I have a lot of reading to do for school. This is study time in my room or hotel lobby.

10:00PM Lights out. 

This Is The Place

Even though I haven’t found much, I have resigned myself to see that such dramatic findings are not why I’m here. I have learned so much in being on the site, by asking many questions and just see the geography and lifestyle of the Near East. The Bible always comes more alive when I can see it firsthand.

The places the Bible talks about were really there. The events it talks about really happened. After being in Jordan at Tall El-Hammam for the past week, I’m more convinced of this today than I was before I came. I will have to post the reasons later. For now, It has been worth playing hookie at Oxford for a week to come and check it out for myself.

They’ve told me I will be coming back and I believe it. There is so much more to go. 

I think you should consider coming as well. There’s always room in the square for one more. They’ll supply the trowel, you just have to move the dirt.