The Storm is Over!

We woke up to a cold morning and thankfully the dust cloud had gone but leaving its tell tale covering over everything inside and out. Helen stayed behind again as I headed off to the dig, but she is pretty much recovered from the bug she had. We are digging again tomorrow to make up for the day we lost. Today was photo day at the dig but dummy forgot his camera. Over this last week people have made some great discoveries, except for our square. We are still shifting a layer of dissolved mud brick and ash 15cm at a time. About lunch time I came down on a very hard packed earth floor surface that butts into a stone foundation I have been following down for 8 courses so far. I was able to clarify the floor, which means uncover completely, and found some diagnostic pottery sherds directly on top of the floor that will be used to date the surface. One of the sherds had what is called a rope pattern on it which would date it as middle bronze age although the others were Iron Age 2, meaning Iron Age people often used MB stuff when they found it. In the square immediately next to us they have dug a 3x3x3m probe hole and this morning came down on a MB building that shows all the classic signs of the Sodom destruction layer. This means that we are very close as well to MB and that's where we want to be and hopefully next week when the iron age walls and floors are documented then taken out, we will be down there too. Up the hill from us they have gone down 5m and yesterday found a charred building beam the size of a log so they are into it. I will take my camera tomorrow and get some photos of the dig to show you.

Todays photo is a place we visited last weekend on one of our trips. It is "Moses' Spring" which according to local tradition comes out of the rock Moses struck. It is a spring, and it does come out of a rock, but that's about as authentic as it gets. Just after I took this photo people arrived with containers and filled them with the water as its supposed to have miraclulous healing power. Nice spot though.

I never thought having a shower was an art. After a day digging in yellow/gray dust that is like talcum powder, and then when you dry yourself on a white hotel towel and there is no yellow stain on the towel, you know you have mastered the art. A quote from the 80 year old dig photographer who has a one liner for just about everything. "I have been coming here for so long the Dead Sea was just catching its first cold."