Digging by the Sea

036

I was dreaming of the sea, paddling a rescue boat far beyond the breakers toward silence and tranquility. Tired of rowing, I dove into the water and pulled strongly downward listening to the silence of the deep. There was a ringing sensation in my ears. Half asleep on my cot, I was dimly aware of a distant rooster crowing and the pounding of the surf far below. Annoyed, I started for the surface. The noise persisted, and I slowly realized it was an alarm clock blasting over the camp PA. It was 4:30 a.m. and the beginning of another day at Tel Michal.

I could hear curses outside the tent and rocks hitting the loudspeaker as someone tried to silence its raucousness. “I volunteered for this?”, I thought with disgust.

I rolled over feeling my overworked muscles protest and resist and plotted my strategy for the next half hour. I would stay in bed for another 15 minutes, then bolt, dress, grab my gear, and run for the bus which left for the site at five a.m. Our camp, which was near the old mosque of Sidni Ali, was three kilometers from the excavation to which we were bused daily.

I could hear my six tent-mates walking around me, trying to find canteens, smearing suntan lotion on scorched bodies, and munching on crackers and rolls. One of them, Kate Willette of Winona, Minnesota, came in with a mug of coffee and tempted me. Coffee. I inhaled deeply. The smell of it, of even the thick muddy, gritty, Israeli coffee, roused me. Maybe I could get up after all.

“Last call, last call for the buses,” bawled Fred Brandfon, one of the supervisors. The laggards among us hastily dressed and sprinted. I stole a glance at the eastern horizon. It was a pale, yellow pink.

I was one of 130 volunteers participating in a summer “dig” at Tel Michal, 3.5 miles north of Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast of Israel. The site, a defense and trading outpost in ancient times, held secrets of civilization that existed as far back as the Middle Bronze Age (2200–1551 B.C.). We hoped to dig back that far during the eight-week summer.

Two summers earlier Michal had appeared on a surveyor’s map as only a mound with steep jagged cliffs dropping off to the sea. Now, 12 areas were open and a wine press and cemetery uncovered. Countless juglets, pots, and sherds had also been unearthed. Last year, volunteers discovered a horde of silver coins dating from the Hellenistic period (332–37 B.C.). However, no written records had been found though writing was usually evidence of major, long-term occupation. Perhaps therefore, Michal had not been a major center. What would we find? We wondered and hoped.

The buses passed through the sleeping town of Herzliya and turned the corner onto the dirt road leading to the site. We passed the garbage dump, and then the embankment where the military had been conducting maneuvers the day before, continuing down a long, winding road. We could see the tel in the distance; its hollowed out squares looked like black holes.

We clambered off the buses—hats, daypacks, and canteens in hand, and moved sleepily to the tool area. People found their work crews and picked up shovels, buckets, surveying instruments, and other smaller tools. A last stop was made at the water trough to fill canteens and then the slow trek up the face of the tel began.

At the top one could look west over the sea, east toward Herzliya, and north and south along a narrow, rugged coastline. The desert was still, its expanse unbroken except for an occasional scrubby bush.

We settled into our daily rhythm. Radios were turned on, work details were organized and people began to wake up. It was still a cool 75° at six a.m. We had three hours before breakfast and the first break.

The military had bulldozed several of the excavated squares at the end of last summer’s season, and several of us were assigned to “open” them. The sand was loose and shoveled easily but it never ended. “Where were these important finds?” we wondered as we filled and hauled bucket after bucket of sand. We cursed the military for their insensitivity and kept shoveling.

Other areas were at various stages of excavation elsewhere in the dig. Some were deeply dug out, exposing layer upon layer of stratified material, others were only a few centimeters deep. But over all, the procedure was the same: scratch the hard, sun-baked earth with a pick-axe to loosen the covering sand, shovel it into buckets, and carry it over the side of the tel. All day every day for two weeks, until all the areas were well-opened.

My group formed a bucket line to ease our aching shoulders. And we talked about what had brought us here. Surprisingly, out of the 130 people in the first four-week session which I attended, only a handful of volunteers had any strong leanings toward archaeology. Most were there for a “different summer experience.” We ranged in age from 16 to 75, and came from all walks of life and occupations.

A New Yorker didn’t want to “sling hamburgers all summer” and a retired Mormon missionary couple thought the field work experience would toughen them. Others were “just interested” in archaeology. I was doing a master’s project in photojournalism. We represented eight universities and three countries—a diverse group.

At 7:30 a.m. the BBC came on with an English language news broadcast: a link with home. Five minutes later the Israeli “top 40” resumed to the air and we listened to canned American pop tunes, interspersed with the Israel Symphony orchestra. Talk became desultory; we concentrated on picking, cleaning, and brushing our balks (the sides of our work squares) in the last big effort before breakfast. We had no finds yet, only a need for Ben-Gay and band-aids.

At 8:45 we started looking for the truck that would bring breakfast from the main camp. Each day a different work detail was assigned breakfast duty and if our colleagues were late the rest of us felt betrayed. “How could they make us wait like this,” we wondered. “It could be them.” Finally, the truck was sighted in the distance! Spirits soared.

We bolted down the side of the tel. It didn’t matter how tired we were or how absorbed we may have been. Being near the head of the line meant a chance at getting both the flavored yogurt which was always in short supply and a full half hour’s escape from the sun. The staff and seasoned diggers followed at a more leisurely pace.

Breakfast: hardboiled eggs, cereal, milk, salad, cucumbers, green peppers, rolls, peanut butter, and a thick chocolate substance which looked like canned frosting. A kibbutznik’s breakfast. We would come to hate it.

We lingered savoring cigarettes and shade. When it was time to return to work I joined the gravediggers. Kate was measuring a six foot male skeleton: ‘Who was he?’, I wondered. We had been told earlier that Michal had been occupied primarily by Phoenicians and that all 35 skeletons found so far had been dated to the time of Persian rule, 587–332 B.C. Could Kate’s find have been a Phoenician who plied the seas some 2500 years ago? Our tentative ancient mariner lay with his arms folded across his chest, looking west, out to sea. It was fun to speculate.

The wine press was adjacent to the cemetery. I found my colleagues deep in the pits, hoisting heavy buckets of sand by ropes and ladder. Installations adjacent to the wine press could hold 1800 gallons, far too much for the small local population that probably lived in the area. Could it have been traded? If so, was this Michal’s principal industry? More pieces, theories, intrigue.

I returned to the leeward side of the tel. It was hot now and we were warned to keep our hats and shirts on, and to drink liters of water, whether or not we were thirsty.

Those of us who didn’t follow these directions found that the desert is a very difficult task-mistress. In the intense heat and low humidity our bodies were evaporating much needed fluid at a very high rate. Without a shirt we lost this moisture. But we were also cooler. Some of us gambled our future against momentary comfort. We were to pay dearly. Heat exhaustion was no fun.

“Hey, come here!” an excited voice called. Becky Freedman, a second-year digger from Brooklyn, New York, had found her first important find. She was beaming. It was a Persian pot almost intact, nestled against some rocks. “All I did was haul sand for six weeks last year,” she said breathlessly. “That’s why they call me ‘Becky Buckets.’ I’m so excited! I’m going to draw a picture of it and write home.”

We crowded around, sharing her excitement. Then the pot was mapped, cataloged, and put in the “special finds” box. We turned to our squares. Somehow it didn’t seem as hot as before, time didn’t drag as slowly. There was a reason to keep digging.

My crew talked to pass the time. I told my story of the ancient mariner. Interested, someone asked the larger question: “What was Tel Michal?” And then, the essence of the matter: “What are we doing here?”

Someone recalled that historically Israel had been a land bridge between Syria in the north and Egypt in the south. The land we were standing on, which was part of the Sharon Plain, was the central passageway between the two countries and a valuable buffer zone. Whoever controlled that land controlled the trade route between north and south. Michal and its commanding view of the coastline was part of the defense system holding the land that was to become Israel.

What was of almost greater importance to archaeologists was the fact that Michal showed evidence of a large population during only one period: the Persian. A mass migration from the larger neighboring defense post of Aphek to Michal took place shortly before the Persian period. Then, just as mysteriously, people left Michal 250 years later, and resumed to Aphek. Michal was never again to experience a large occupation. No one knows why. It was one of the reasons we were there.

The buzz of a plane overhead interrupted our conversation. We looked up and saw a light Israeli military aircraft patrolling the coast. “Things haven’t changed much,” I thought. “Whoever controls Israel. … ” Now, this land which had changed hands so many times over the centuries, is again a nation. But the price of nationhood is high. The borders of Israel are marked by barbed wire, gates, blockaded roads, and U.N. peace-keeping forces. The state of Israel continues to be a land of dispute whose existence is constantly threatened and which must be protected. This was one of the strongest impressions I would take away from the summer experience.

11:00 a.m. Midmorning. “Mitz” time. Our “mitz” was a drink similar to Gatorade. It was high in potassium and would replace our body’s depleted electrolytes. As people walked down to the dining area, some of us elected to spend the 15 minute rest period drinking canteen water at the top of the tel.

Without radios, the scrape of shovels, and the constant buzz of conversation it was quiet. We could hear the roar of the wind on the cliffs and the crashing of waves down below. An occasional gull hung motionless against the blue sky caught in an updraft between the cliffs and the sea. We sat, side by side, feeling the cool of the wind, lost in individual thoughts.

Chatter behind us reminded us that there was work yet to be done. The next two hours were the most difficult. The sun was directly overhead and we were tired. We picked, shoveled, brushed, and lifted pieces of pottery out of the dirt. Someone came by to map and catalog something. We watched with numbed disinterest.

The heat shimmered and I noticed great beads of sweat coursing down the back of one of the men who was picking. The ground was hard; it wouldn’t break up.

The pace slowed and conversation began about the weekend. Several people were checking into a local hotel. They talked of air conditioning, ice, sleeping late, and no sand. Others were going to Jerusalem, Haifa, Tiberias. They were concerned about the necessity of arriving at their destination before public transportation ceased for the Jewish Sabbath which starts at sundown on Friday.

“Buses! The buses are here,” someone yelled. Instantaneously, our energy level increased. Tools were put away for the day. The afternoon was before us. Some boarded the bus for the ten-minute ride to camp. Others walked the three kilometers along the beach, stopping to plunge into the cool of the sea, washing their bodies of dirt, sweat, and fatigue.

At camp bedlam reigned. 130 people needed to wash at the few shower stalls or at the long washing troughs in the one hour before the 2 p.m. main meal. The more enterprising among us used the public showers at the beach below the camp.

Later in the afternoon we swam, played backgammon, wrote letters and slept. In the slowness of the afternoon we developed friendships while talking about where we had been in Israel, and where we wanted to go at the end of the four week session.

Several of us from the Minnesota group had grand designs to go scuba diving in the Gulf of Eilat, along the Sinai coast. We would rent a van, pack ten people into it and camp along the way. Then someone mentioned that the price of gasoline had just been raised to $3.50 a gallon thereby personalizing Israel’s 120 percent inflation rate. No matter, we would take the bus.

“Ice cream, who wants to go get ice cream?” someone asked. It was time for the daily trek to the local ice cream parlor. Seven of us set off to stuff ourselves with creamy mountains of calories, nuts, and whipped cream. Kate and I, coffee addicts, found a new craze: iced coffee. We doled out our dollars rationalizing the expense of an added scoop of ice cream.

Our small group separated when three people picked up the local bus to Tel Aviv. Four of us remained talking in the shade of the sidewalk cafe. ‘The neatest thing about this experience,” remarked Becky Levitsky of Los Angeles “is our friendships. You wake up in the morning and of course you hurt, but people ask how you are; they care.”

We slowly walked back to camp, thinking about that last remark. We paused at the barbed wire fence that encircled the camp protecting it from local thieves, and waited for the guard to unlock the gate. Becky was right, I thought. For those of us who were not professional archaeologists, the long weeks of hard work had forged friendships; the group had melded into a tight, close-knit community. For many, these friendships would be the most important find of the dig.

At 5:00 we had pottery class during which we learned how to sort through and interpret the dozens of seemingly inconsequential fragments we had picked up earlier in the day. The instructors confidently sifted through our morning’s labor, singling out the important pieces, discarding the rest.

“I’ll never again pick up every small sherd,” said Pam Girod of St. Paul, Minnesota, after seeing eight hours of painstaking work reduced to a few minutes of skillful interpretation.

After class, some people ran along the beach in the cool of the evening while others ran to grab cameras. A contemporary version of an ancient evening ritual was about to commence on the cliffs of Sidni Ali. At precisely sundown, a dozen camera shutters clicked in unison as the sun sank into the ocean.

At the evening lectures, some of the questions about the day’s work were answered. Mandatory for those who were “digging for credit,” these after dinner lectures provided the background for what had been found on the tel. Even though Near Eastern history, numismatics, and pottery techniques were subjects of the four-week lecture series, our ignorance could not be eliminated so easily.

“Nothing hangs together on the site,” was a complaint common to almost all the first year volunteers. Archaeology moves slowly and many of the discoveries are made not at the dig but later in a laboratory or over a typewriter. Not privy to those advances we volunteer fieldworkers endured the disappointment of incomplete conclusions and identifications.

Though we were limited in knowledge we were willing and able to let our imaginations run wild. Unearthing fragments of a civilization that had been buried for thousands of years and then reconstructing its way of life is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.

People were inadvertently nodding off while listening to the lecturer’s sonorous voice. At 9:00 p.m. the lights went out. 4:30 comes early.

I lay on my cot, listening to the soft murmur of voices outside, and tried to piece together the significance of the Tel Michal experience. “It’s finding roots,” I thought sleepily—finding the remains of a succession of peoples who had been part of an area’s history and part of the larger family of man.

But more importantly, Tel Michal was a touchstone for all of us, progeny of those born in the Fertile Crescent. How would we be seen 2000 years from now? What have we learned from our past? Would others learn from us? A plane droned overhead, and then only the quiet of the night touched my thoughts.

I had a suspicion, as I drifted off, that the full impact of the experience at Michal would hit me only after it was long over and that this summer would be a part of me for a long time to come.

I was dreaming of the sea, paddling a rescue boat far beyond the breakers toward silence and tranquility. Tired of rowing, I dove into the water and pulled strongly downward listening to the silence of the deep. There was a ringing sensation in my ears. Half asleep on my cot, I was dimly aware of a distant rooster crowing and the pounding of the surf far below. Annoyed, I started for the surface. The noise persisted, and I slowly realized it was an alarm clock blasting over the camp PA. It was 4:30 a.m. and the beginning of another […]