A Student’s Perspective on an Archaeological Excavation
Mirianne Jacobs
So you think you want to be an archaeologist? The life of an archaeologist may not be all that you think it is: a high-flying adventure with tons of ancient treasure and the reward of exciting, news-making discoveries. The daily life of an archaeologist is not always so glorifying. Although archaeology is exciting it is also very hard work.
The alarm clock annoyingly buzzes my 4:00 am wake-up call for ten minutes before I realize what is going on! I stumble out of bed and get dressed in my work clothes, which I believe were white when I arrived. I slip on my shoes, that are so hard from dust that I feel like I have brown paper bags on my feet. While routinely brushing my teeth at the bathroom sink, still half asleep, I suddenly realize that I was advised not to drink the tap water, then think how much I am going to regret my forgetfulness later on.
Morning Time
Breakfast isn't so bad---for the first fourteen days. But there is a limited number of possible combinations of pita bread, peanut butter, jelly and honey. Sometime during week four you are seriously longing for a good piece of Merita white bread.
At 5:00 am we are in our small school bus and on the road, if you want to call it a road, to our excavation site. By the time we arrive, I feel like I have been popped in a popcorn machine (if you don't already have a stomachache from drinking the water you are likely to have one by the time you arrive at the site). We unload our bus at the edge of our site, greet our locally hired workers, and then carry all of the equipment to our squares.
The first order of business every dig day is to take pictures for photographic records of daily progress in each square. And this is no joke: just before the photographs are taken, you literally have to take a big brush and sweep the rocks inside the square and then you have to sweep the dirt floor (to remove our footprints). You have to make the rocks "shine" so they will show up in the pictures. That means brushing away the wind-blown dirt that has collected overnight. Try to imagine frantically sweeping dirt off of rocks, with the wind whirling around you, and watching all the dirt you just removed from the rock in front of you come to rest on the rocks you just finished behind you!
Before beginning the exciting process of digging there is still more work to be done. We must fill out a pottery tag with the date, loci, and other specifics needed. The tag must be placed on a new pottery pail and then the pail is taken to the sift. Also at the sift the "clicker", or counter, is attached to the sift for the workers to keep count of the guffahs that have been sifted.
Finally we can begin the day's digging, which is a slow process. This is not a race to see who can find the most and the quickest. It is, however, a tedious process of removing each layer of soil or loci. This is accomplished by using a hand pick, a 4-1/2 inch hand trowel, and a dustpan. It is very important to keep track of each locus that you reach so that later it will be easier to date the pottery found there. Along with digging, square work includes the articulation of rocks and walls, determining the loci and stratigraphy, taking Munsell readings, drawings and producing scale. During the entire workday, in almost every conversation, I was asked "Have you drunk any water lately?" Water is extremely important, especially in such an environment as Jordan. You can dehydrate very quickly, in the heat and low humidity, without realizing it.
A major aspect of work with an archaeological dig is group dynamics. You have to get along with your square supervisor because you work side by side in a small square for over a month. I was constantly apologizing to my supervisor for bumping into him or almost chopping his fingers off with my trowel. An essential requirement is the ability to get along with everyone and willingness to obey leadership. An archaeological dig is entirely a team effort. No one is paid; everyone is there on a volunteer basis.
By 9:00 am the team has been up for five hours and everyone is ready for a little break and a bite to eat. So we take a "second breakfast", which became repetitive rather quickly with watermelon served just about every day. Watermelon was also served at our hotel with meals, so by the time the trip was winding down I never wanted to see another piece of watermelon! When our thirty-minute break is over we return to our square for the last hours of work.
Noon Time
At 12:15 we all begin to finish our day's work and start the cleanup process. All of the tools that we used that day have to be carried back to our storage shed and put away. After waving goodbye to our two guards we set out on a tired, and very silent and bumpy ride back to the hotel. That same familiar stomachache returns to you, but you are so exhausted you barely notice.
Back at the hotel I try to be the first person off the bus and the first to the water hose. The first thing you have to do when returning from a day's work is to take the pottery pail and cover the pottery with water, so that during pottery washing the dirt is easier to remove.
Lunch is served at 1:45 so I have a span of about thirty minutes to attempt to remove all of the dirt and sand from my body with only a few trickles of water. If you are lucky, it may be halfway warm.
The main diet we consistently ate was chicken and rice, cooked in more ways than you can imagine. Each day's lunch was special; I never thought I could get so excited over a different color of rice or a different array of vegetables.
By the time lunch is over I am ready to crash. I don't have to be at pottery washing until 3:30, so I can get an hour nap.
It is 3:30 and time to wash pottery. We all meet outside the hotel and collect our day's pottery that has been soaking, along with a nylon mesh bag and a brush. Each individual piece is scrubbed until clean, so that reading and dating is easier. All pottery from each pottery pail is placed in a nylon bag. Once all the pieces are washed, the tag on the pottery pail is removed and placed in the bag with the pottery. This is done so that at all times the pottery can be identified. While today's pottery is being washed the pottery that was washed the day before is being read. Each pottery sherd is examined, identified by date and all diagnostic sherds are counted. The total number is recorded and all sherds that are publishable are counted and set aside for special handling.
Night Time
By the time pottery processing and cleaning is finished we usually have about an hour and half until it is time for more chicken and rice. It is 7:00 pm, suppertime, I watch as everyone slowly comes in from pouring over their field notebooks or a short nap. It is evident that spirits are high but bodies are sore from the long day of work. Supper is done, everyone is winding down to continue paperwork, prepare for the next days work, and attempt to get a good nights rest.
I absolutely loved every minute of my time in Jordan while digging with Karak Resources Project. I have been extremely blessed by being allowed this amazing opportunity, and I appreciate the people in charge for allowing me to go. The reason I wanted to go on this dig was to learn more about archaeology. Little did I know that I was going to come home knowing: a little Arabic, the area in and around Jordan, understanding the people and their culture from my own experience and not from secondhand images in the media. Most important, I learned the many aspects involved in making an archaeological dig efficient and successful. I pray that the Lord allows me another opportunity to visit Jordan, see my friends and to make new ones. The archaeological work was very hard and tiring but well worth it. I would go back on another dig in a heartbeat and would encourage anyone interested in an archaeological dig to participate.