3000 year old domestics

Helen is leaning out our hotel room window three stories up looking down at a wedding party that has just arrived for their reception in a stretch limo. The drums have started and the bag pipes are piping. I think the musicians are professional wedding players because they have been here before. As the bride and groom walk into the lobby they are accompanied by both families who sing and dance traditional looking dances. This will go on for about 15 minutes or so, then it's down stairs for the reception. The men in this particular group are wearing long black "dresses", don't know what they are called, black shirts and arabic headress. The women are a mixture of burqa wearers, western clothes with heads covered with scarfs, or very western looking. Helen says to say the brides dress is traditional european in white with veil and train and quite ornate. Couples get married at a court house with two witnesses with everyone else waiting outside. Then it's a convoy of cars tooting their horns all the way following the limo to the reception. We heard this lot coming! Apparently there is no religious service and 25% of marriages are still arranged by the fathers, according to our very knowledgeable bus driver, Sultan. The wedding reception means 8pm dinner for us.

Because we missed a days digging during the week we dug today, and Helen was back in charge of the pottery washing and sorting. It was actually a cold day with a strong wind so we had extra layers on. Thankfully the winds of the last few days have removed the dust from where we are, but we making more to replace it. We could see it raining higher up the hills and the streets were wet back in Amman.

The picture is of Irena Graves and the "taboon" she discovered in the square next to the one I am in. Irena's husband David is the square supervisor. The room she is in is the "kitchen" of a 3,000 year old domestic dwelling - Iron Age 2, maybe Moabite or Gadite, about the time of David and Solomon give or take a generation or two. Irena is in the process of pulling it to bits before the square is taken down the next level. Originally it had a cobble stone hearth of small stones around it. A cooking fire would be on top so the stones would get hot centred on the middle circle. The circle is a baked hard clay ring and in the bottom of it is a large stone that is convex. When the stone is hot the ashes are cleared away and flat bread is baked on it. Bedouins still use this method of cooking. Irena also found some things on the floor like flint cutting blades, small clay vessels and two marble size ceramic balls with a hole through each. If the photo is good enough you will see a gray layer in the "baulk" (I called the bank of the dig hole the "bolt" in a previous blog - put it down to getting used to different accents around the place). The gray area is a layer of ash that covered this room, infact the whole dwelling that has been uncovered to far. You might also be able to make out a couple of brown blobs in the ash. That's broken mud brick. This building had some catastrophe happen to it, but its not the Sodom destruction layer. That's another 1.5-2m below this and the guys on the other side of the wall to Irena's right are down there. In my square we are still sorting out Iron Age walls and floors and have about 1m to go before we get down to the top of MB. Some pictures from there over the next few days.

Tomorrow is a day off and we are going on another tour this time down the valley and the shores of the Dead Sea including a chance to go for a swim. Unfortunately I have just learnt that Helen packed my togs. Then its onto a Crusader Castle I think. We are enjoying our time and as things become more familiar we are feeling more relaxed about getting around and going shopping and catching taxis. Our Jordanian hosts watch out for us and we keep an ear the the ground and keep up with the Jordan Times, although it is definately a government newspaper. Over the last couple of days the government is making sounds towards ground troops being committed against ISIS as well as the continued bombing. Security is tight. Yesterday and today we heard occasional bursts of machine gun fire from the direction of the border with Israel. Hopefully just some training going on.

Today was the Muslim Holy Day. On the dig we can see and hear at least four Mosques in the nearby town, plus there is the small one that belongs to the family who own the Tall. When the prayer call starts it seems like a competition as to who is the loudest. One prayer caller is so out of tune some one needs to tell him. Today, because it was Friday Prayers we got to hear four 30 minute sermons simultaneously broadcast at full and sometimes distorted volume over the loud speakers at the top of the minerets of the Mosques. Helen was down at the Mosque at the pottery washing place and said the little Mosque was packed with cars parked up the road with lot's of kids running around. They didn't broadcast the sermon over the speaker though, although we do hear the prayer calls from there