Nearing the End...

*phew* This has been one tiring week. We're still not technically finished in my area - I was supposed to be finished on Wednesday, but it's difficult to put a time frame on archaeology. It's just been a bit of a confusing mess in places, though I guess not as confusing as some other areas. It's still been really stressful. Thursday the scientists from Tel Aviv came back to our camp to take more samples from the vessels we've been removing. It was super cool, but really nerve-wracking at the time. Steve had asked me to stay back at camp that morning to give them the samples since I knew what all was going on. He also told me to keep Savanna, one of my volunteers, also. Sometimes the volunteers know better about exactly what things look like since their doing most of the grunt work.

I had to draw out the area and plot all the locations of where things were found and color-code them, so we could figure out exactly what's going on and see a large picture of things - real interpretive archaeology!!! I was really afraid of having all this responsibility, but now that I look back on it, I think, "Cool I did that!" Steve also said that he'd like to have a picture of it to put up on the slide show for the final dig party! He likes it! Yay!

Now this weekend is intense paperwork time so I'm all settled for getting my paperwork done as fast as I can. I leave 23 hours earlier than everyone else, which means I need to be finished 23 hours sooner than everyone. Before I go to bed and whenever I wake up at night, all I think about it interpreting my area for my final dig report. I even had a dream about it last night. Oh, which I want to tell my roommates about because they'd appreciate it. haha.

Anyways, here's also the last of my pictures from my weekend in Galilee. Funny, it took me 3 weeks to do it. These are of Tel Dor. It's absolutely amazing. It is directly on the Mediterranean Sea. Marcella, Lesley, and I decided we were going to switch digs and work here instead because we could just jump right into the sea at the end of the day. That'd be awesome. But it was more joking than being serious...but it would still be awesome.

Here you can see the beach and the flat-topped mound that we archaeologists call a Tel. That is Tel Dor.

Ah, the sea at sunset...

It was super cool, there were a bunch of rocky islands you could swim to if you really wanted to and hang out there for the day. There were people having BBQ's on them. I wanted to join them soooo baaaad!

This is some of the ruins that have been uncovered at Dor.

Some more of the beach and the islands.

More ruins. This is some real archaeology! All walls and various phases of living! Just a big mish-mash of architecture and not knowing what the hell these people were thinking!

Oh, here's the sign for Dor. I can't remember why I wanted this to be in the blog. I think it was the part that says, "Watch for holes" or something...

Walls...

More walls...

This is at the edge of the tel before it drops into the harbor they made. The walls are massive, which would indicate some kind of important administrative center, which also matches with it's location in relation to the harbor. Namely, a trading center.

This is where the harbor was. It's teeny, but would have served the purpose anyways. The beach rock probably would have been much higher - the ocean eroded a lot away.

I have no clue what this is. It just looked cool.

A column base! It's from the Roman times.

See? This is a Corinthian column capital. Um, it's sitting upside down, it would have been at the top. It's also badly eroded. Those sea breezes to a number on rocks.

This is also a part of the columns. Most of the times, the columns weren't whole. They found that they could hold more weight (and were easier to transport) if they were in pieces and held in place together with a metal pipe through the middle. Wait, the Greeks figured that out first. It was the Romans who figured out (well, I don't know that for sure, but they at least utilized it) that reinforced concrete was stronger.

Haha, excavations still go on at Dor. This is their container for their supplies. We have a green one at Gezer. :)

A mosaic floor! Well, it at least made from tesserae (small, square tiles to make flooring).

This is where the ancient Dorians quarried their stone!

This is difficult to see in a photo, but it's a ramp. They'd pull the ships up from the sea onto ramps to keep them in place.

Driftwood in an eroded part of the harbor.

And a doorway!

Well, that's all there is to my Galilee pictures. I'll show everyone my excavation photos at home - I don't want to put them up online. You probably won't here from me until I'm home at this point. This is going to be a super busy week coming up. Sunday's even going to be really busy - the staff is visiting another site at 2:30 and then we're going to a reception at the Rockerfeller Museum in Jerusalem for all the excavations that are still going on. I'm hoping we're back here by 9 so we can get to bed on time. Oy weh.