Shalom

















I am in Israel on an archeological excavation at the biblical site Bethsaida. The site itself is located just east of the Jordan river. We are staying on a kibbutz called Ginnosar (much like a commune) on the Sea of Galilee a few miles south from the site. During the morning we dig and at noonish we return for lunch and showers. Digging is hard work in the heat but definitely rewarding. I've been finding a great deal of Roman pottery shards, mostly wall shards the size of a finger, some as big as my hand. Handles are not as commonly found, but I happened to find several today. Most exciting part of the day was the base of a Hellanistic style bowl almost fully intact, found by one of the women in the group. She made the find just as the History Channel filming crew showed up to shoot an episode of the Naked Archeologist. I had never heard of the program, but it was fun to watch none the less. No one however was naked. The crew interviewd the woman who found it and of course they spent a number of hours filming Dr. Arav the archeologist who found the site in 1986. They did actually film us digging for quite a while, but who knows if they'll use the footage.

I will continue to update throughout my stay here. Unfortunately I'm unable to upload photos from this community computer... they may have to wait til I return.