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February 16, 2006

Roughing It

I just read through the website for the renewed excavations at Tel Gezer. It was all extremely interesting and exciting but the most abnormal paragraph was this,

Volunteers sleep in air-conditioned two-room suites, four to a suite. Each suite is self-contained with its own bathroom, television, telephone. These suites will be assigned in camp and volunteers will be responsible for the cleaning of their individual suites. Clean linens will be provided weekly. Two breakfasts will be provided on the Tel and at base camp. Lunch and dinner meals will be prepared by the kubbitz and served in the kubbitz dining room.

I spent three seasons at Tel Gezer, one under Bill Dever and two under Joe Seger and this is a picture of our "air-conditioned suites" - six to a suite in those days.

Gezer Camp

The structure in the foreground is the pottery shed were the field archaeologists "read" the pottery every afternoon. Peeking over the top of the "suites" in the background are the water tanks that supplied hot and cold running water: cold in the morning, hot in the afternoon and evening. At least once a year our water supply ran low and we were instructed on how to take a "shower" using no more than one liter of water (cold in the morning, hot in the afternoon.). Clean linens where provided weekly and both volunteers and staff were responsible for cleaning their own "suite."

We also had toilets but they were a bit of a walk from our "suites." I'm not quite sure where the nearest telephone was but when I needed one we had to go to Lud to find it. As for television: there was television in Israel in those days but one of the better things about being at Gezer was that a television was likely further away than a telephone and you were just too tired to watch it anyway. We did have great food including two breakfasts and we ate it in a wall-less communal dining area.

I had heard that field archaeology had come a long ways but it never occurred to me that it had come this far. Do dirt archaeologists still get dirty?

Posted by Duane Smith at February 16, 2006 2:04 PM | Read more on Archaeology |

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Comments

Now Now Now . . .

Of course we get dirty. Then we go back to the hotel and have a manicure and a pedicure and then watch some Fox News.

Honestly, it is workers like you Duane that make us realize how far that we have come in the past years. Without your early help and sacrifices we would not be where we are today. I am very impressed that you signed on for more than one season.

The photo looks like Marine boot camp.

Posted by: Joe Cathey at February 17, 2006 6:08 AM

I do hope that a Palestinian viper (Vipera palaestinae) or at least a nice big scorpion (Nebo hierichonticus) comes into one of those air-conditions suites just to let this new breed of archaeologists know they are alive. I also hope that no one gets hurt by any of these critters or by the stampede to get out of those lovely suites.

Posted by: Duane at February 17, 2006 8:57 PM

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