Surveyed and officially open

We feel safe and well protected on the dig site. To the north east we have a major military base on top of the hills about 1.5kms away, and to the north and very slightly to the west is the King of Jordan's winter palace on a hill about 2km away. In the foreground of the photo there is a red roof building and power poles. Just this side of them is where the outer walls of Sodom were. The walls encircled 62 acres which made it a very large place. By comparison, Jerusalem's foot print during the height of King Solomon's reign when Israel was at its biggest land wise, was 12 acres.

We are both very tired at the moment after another very heavy day, and thankfully last day, of clearing the surface layer of rocks and boulders and top soil. The soil is very fine and dusty and our clothes and bodies are covered with it at the end of each day and it's not easy to wash off. I just noticed the lobby tiles and lifts at the hotel have the tell tale sign of dust from all of us trapsing through when we get back. The soil is actually decayed mud brick. We are also dealing with destruction ash which is even finer, almost like talcum powder, which will become more evident as we begin the real archeological dig down tomorrow. The surveyor came today and set out the four 6m x 6m squares that our team will be digging in for the next 4.5 weeks so we are officially open as a dig site. We will be taking off layers a few centemetres at a time with the square supervisor recording the position of every rock, pottery sherd and whatever else there is down there in sectional maps. The pottery sherds will be put in labelled buckets and taken down to the washing and classification area which Helen has been asked to co-lead. That begins tomorrow. We will be going about 4 metres overall. We are lucky that we are already directly on top of a middle bronze age mud brick wall with signs of others connecting to it. Others are having to shift up to 3 metres of junk soil before they get to the interesting stuff.

The weather today was overcaste and about 15C on site, with a very slight breeze. This morning looking to the west across the Jordan valley we could just make out the hills of Judea through the haze, then they were gone again. We found two more sling shot stones and the archeologist identified them as the type used by the Assyrians in the Iron Age. About 12 km to the south east of us is a quarry at the foot of Mt Nebo. Everyday so far they have been blasting at least twice with massive explosions that you can almost feel as the sound of it comes. Looking over there is always a large mushroom cloud of dust rising up.

Early to bed and early to rise.