Mornings on Tel Megiddo

  Megiddo, Israel
Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Sunday was our first day of digging. We were up in time to be on the two busses at 04:55 when they pull out. Most of us are getting up around 04:30, leaving just enough time to pull clothes on, brush teeth, gather necessities for the work day and walk to the parking lot. I pour a cup of instant coffee into a travel mug, to sip on the drive in.
 
The dark sky is just beginning to brighten in the east as we arrive in the kibbutz parking lot. We file on the waiting busses and find seats. It takes 10-15 minutes to reach the Tel. We are now in the land of ancient Israel which was on the border of, and should have been in the area of, the tribe of Issachar (Joshua 17:11). But Megiddo was one of main strong points, probably the main fortress on the west side of the Jordan River guarding the north of the nation: it was given to Manasseh. It seems that at the time Manasseh (part of Joseph) was known as a tough, numerous, fighting tribe, others counted on it to look to the defense of Israel. As we drive to the Tel, we pass through fertile wheat fields on rolling hills overlooking the Jezreel valley. Driving through these hills in the early morning dark and coolness is a time to look out the windows and muse on times past. Who lived here 3000+ years ago? What was life like for them in their villages and towns? What wars were fought here? What will become of this land in the future?
 
The sun is still not up as we pull into the parking lot of the National Park installation. The Israeli Park Service buildings were originally constructed by the Chicago Archeological Expedition to Megiddo in the 1920s (more on that later). We file off the busses and start the walk up and around the artificial hill, created by human activity over thousands of years of habitation, construction, and reconstruction.
 
Though our Youth Corps group members are rooming together, we have been assigned to different areas of the Tel, where excavations are underway at different depths. As we walk up the hill, we split off to go to our various excavation zones. Some of us dig down in the Bronze Age levels at the virtual start of recorded history, some in the Iron Age, some even later in the Assyrian Period, after the fall of Megiddo to Tiglath-Pilesar III, which is where the Chicago Expedition stopped digging in most areas of the Tel in the 1930s.
 
Here is where we are working:
 
Area K: Bronze Age (pre-Israelite and Israelite Judges)
Melia Martin
John Nichols
Jessica Schultz
 
Area J: Bronze Age (pre-Israelite and Israelite Judges)
Fiona Meeker
Patrick Shabi
 
Area H: Iron Age (Israelite kings)
Liz Cannon
Kristen Waldrup
Garrett Wayne
 
Area Q: Started at the end of the Assyrian period, reached quickly into Iron Age (end of Israelite period)
Joel Meeker
Tatiana Meeker
Joshua Messerly
 
Working in the office, processing and labeling artifacts
Marjolaine Meeker
 
Some time after we start work, digging with pickaxes, mattocks, and trowels, the red disk of the run rises nearly over Nazareth, whose lights are barely visible if the air is clear across the valley of Esdralon (as it's also called.

Sunrise over Tel Megiddo

We work in our squares, clearing architecture (rock walls, and the like), and uncovering pottery, bone, flint and sometimes other artifacts like beads or metal, or installations like ancient cooking ovens. Sometimes the work is fairly light, like brushing off surfaces to look for finds.

Sunrise over area K

Other times it is back-breaking, like when we pickax hard soil to turn it up, or shovel it into buckets which are dumped into wheelbarrows, which must then be pushed to the end of the Tel and emptied down the side of the mound.
 
The 3 ½ hours from starting time until breakfast are the longest stretch without a break and usually the most physical. This is the most challenging stretch of the day.
 
Next post, I'll describe breakfast.