Week Two Over at Zeitah

The dig is 40% over, and things are getting much busier. I managed through diplomacy and politiking to get an ethernet cable in my room, so I've been more successful at ichat-ing with my wife and son. We had many visitors to the tel last week, including a group from ASOR and the Antiquities Authority. We spent the first part of the work continuing prep work, fixing the sand bags on the baulks, etc. But now we're in full swing digging. My 10x10 square (O-19) has been fairly straight forward. We are continuing a probe we conducted last year to the south, and we basically have two destruction layers, both Iron II. One dates to around 830-815 BCE (based on C-14 and pottery) and the other is about a century earlier. I very much enjoy the biblical archaeology aspect to this all. I worked at sites in South Jordan sort of out of the scope of the biblical authors, but this place Zeitah is right on the border with Judah and Philistia. We only have about 16 ceramics that are definitely Philistine, so it seems clear this is a Judean site. My student Roy is doing great. He is off to the Galilee this weekend. Kalypso my daughter is doing great, though she took the death of a bird pretty rough. Her earlobe also has an infection, but we've been taking better care of that lately. She has been to all of the lectures, and she has told me that college is boring. She of course if right.