Jackpot! 5"6", UN & Accomplishments & Fails

Photo1: Where we left off yesterday in my square. Today three of us completed digging down the level areas this side of the wall. Just before lunch I transferred to finish off digging down above the wall next to the baulk. When digging you never know what you might find the next level down.

Photo 2: Look what I found! Literally 15mm below the surface a very large pottery jar. It is shattered into bits but all the bits are together.

Photo 3: It is sitting on a coble stone floor and was covered in a layer of gray ash. Undeneath it is a layer of charred wood and ash as black as, with some of the charred wood still recognisable. You will notice the rim has broken off, this was done by mud bricks tumbling onto it. The jar also had large stones, many of them split by heat, jambed around it in the ash. The jar is full of dirt so it has kind of kept it's shape. I had already taken the top pieces off exposing the dirt inside when the photo was taken, so this jar will be coming out in bits.

Welcome to the Middle Bronze Age destruction layer. I could smell the burn - no kidding. The big boss came for a look and said work on finding the rim because that's the best part to date it by, and watch for the remains of any contents that might have survived. Later in the day it was confirmed as MB and being part of the Sodom destruction layer from Genesis 19:24 means it is 3,700 years old, frozen in the layer of catastrophic destruction.

I thought all that was cool until I started at the bottom of the rim to brush the inside dirt away a little at a time, incase there was some indication of what might have been in it. If your eyes are good and the photo quality is good you will see what looks like a little white stone on the pottery and below it a patch of brown against the gray ash. I found three of these little brown patches inside the jar against the bottom section. That little brown object is a section of human skull and the white object is a tiny tooth. I have found an almost classic MB infant burial - Jackpot!

In MB times it was common to bury infants and young children in clay jars under the floor of the family home. These burials were done with care and detail with babies and infants sometimes holding something of value or sentiment in their tiny little hands. Sodom might have been the most wicked city in the world, but they still loved their kids.

What is not classical about my find is that the jar is on the floor. This might mean that it was being prepared for burial when the destruction event happened, one of a couple of theories.

I didn't have time to do much else today so the jar is all covered up and my task will be to dig out the dirt and retrieve the rest of the skeleton and whatever else is in there tomorrow. A perfect last day of the dig. Will let you know what I find.

We have a guy on the dig who works for NASA and is involved in weather forecasting and tsumani watching satellite warning systems. He told Helen and I today there is a height restriction of 5 foot 6 inches on astronauts going to the international space station. This is because the Russian Soyuz space capsules can't fit people any taller. It wasn't a problem when the space shuttles were working. New privately operated space shuttles will be ready in about three years time for tall people. I love this story, because even I are too tall to ride a Soyuz rocket.

Another guy works for another American agency and told us that the UN convoy we saw yeaterday landed in Jordan's port of Aquaba and is heading to northern Syria, a bit of a hazardous trip according to him. He seems to know alot about these things, like when a huge American army transport plane flew low over the bus on the way home. Most likely another shipment of ordinance resupplying the Jordanian airforce we were told.

Today at luch time we heard extended bursts of heavy machine gun fire and other explosions from up in the hills near the army base. We said we hoped it was manouvers but we were all working out how to get back into the depths of our excavation holes. The Jordanian army was in action last night killing some men trying to cross the border from Syria unseen.

We have accomplish the skill of street crossing in Amman. We can shop OK now. We have more or less learnt to use the currency. We can find our way around two blocks from the hotel. We have learnt three words of Arabic - La for no, shukran for thankyou, hamman for toilet. We continue to fail on haggling prices and getting a fair deal from taxi drivers.

Last day digging tomorrow and it's going to be hot one at 27C in the valley.