Hands On: No Grid Lock at Ashkelon—The View from the Square

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It’s not glamorous being a square supervisor at a dig. It’s rather like being a sergeant on the front line, directing your “privates”—the volunteers, who pick, shovel and carry—while the “officers”—the dig director, the associate director and the grid supervisors—analyze and plan strategy. But you’re right there where the action is, and you know that the carefulness of your work determines whether archaeology is constructive or merely destructive.

For the past three summers, my job has been to supervise the excavation of one 10 meter by 10 meter square located on top of the tell of Ashkelon, Israel, within sight of the Mediterranean Sea.

The five recruits I supervised in 1987 were typical volunteers. They reported to Ashkelon well scrubbed and a little flabby. Overnight they became like the rest of the staff, thriving on the dirt. In no time they understood the basics of digging and recording. Rapidly they learned how to survive the ruthless battle at dawn to grab tools and wheelbarrows. They even managed to enjoy the afternoon sessions of washing pottery in between jokes and gossip.

One elegant, white-haired woman underwent a most striking metamorphosis. She arrived in a designer safari outfit, trailing in her wake a powerful French perfume. Within a few days, this Chicago socialite, a good sport, kind and funny, had forsaken mascara and the crease in her “Out of Africa” slacks and become like the rest of the troops, ragged and dirty.

The space my volunteers and I dug is called a “square,” which is the basic excavation unit of modern archaeological digs. It’s the physical feature that dominates most Near Eastern excavations and confuses people by looking like a room. The square is actually an arbitrary space—32.5 feet on a side—that defines a dig area. Its walls, called “balks,” preserve a record of the layers of each square to which archaeologists can refer even after their digging has removed the stratigraphic evidence within the square. Four or more squares make up a “grid.”

I first came to Ashkelon in April 1985, after driving 35 miles from Tel Aviv, through cultivated fields and the fragrance of orange blossoms. I was to join the Leon Levy Expedition, sponsored by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago and the Semitic Museum of Harvard University. I had already worked for several years with the director of the expedition, Dr. Lawrence Stager, and the associate director, Dr. Douglas Esse, in ancient Carthage, Tunisia (see “Child Sacrifice at Carthage—Religious Rite or Population Control?” BAR 10:01). Doug had told me: “It is high time to move from the microstratigraphy of the ‘Tophet’^a to the more mainstream Near Eastern archaeology.”

Although founded by the Canaanites, perhaps as early as 3500 B.C., Ashkelon is best known as one of the cities of the Philistine “Pentapolis” and the main port city of the five. The Philistines were among the non-Semitic “Sea Peoples” who arrived in the Levant at the transition from the Late Bronze to the Iron Age, about 1180 B.C. This was a time of great upheavals, 036marked by the fall of political powers, the disruption of trade routes and the migrations of peoples.

Who were the Philistines? Where did they come from? Professor Stager believes they should be identified with the Myceneans. The excavation of Ashkelon, scheduled to last into the next decade, should shed more light on the origins of the Philistines and on their early settlement in Palestine.

Today, the site of ancient Ashkelon is a lively, popular 150-acre national park, surrounded by sand dunes. At the center of the park, a mound, or tell, of 12 acres, ending in a bluff overlooking the beach, constitutes the presumed citadel of the Philistines.

Very soon after groundbreaking in April 1985, the Philistine stratum appeared, less than 18 inches below a grassy area where picnic tables had stood. Mudbrick walls, floors and silos of 30 centuries ago were, exposed. The discovery of a 19th-century B.C. Cappadocian cylinder seal—the first ever found in Israel—brought champagne to the dinner table that night.

Archaeologists’ slightly sadistic fascination with layers of destruction—which can be used as chronological “pegs”—should be amply satisfied in Ashkelon. In the course of its 5,000-year-long history, the city has known much violence, as it was attacked by the Egyptians (13th century B.C.) and the Assyrians (eighth century B.C.). A center of Phoenician culture in the Persian period and of Hellenistic culture, Ashkelon was later developed by the Romans, the Byzantines and the Moslems. It ceased to exist in the 13th century A.D. after a last battle between Mameluke Sultan Baibars and the Crusaders.

My square was a slow starter. While the five other excavation areas of the dig were speeding into Roman, Hellenistic, Persian, Iron Age and even Late Bronze Age periods, ours lagged behind. However, toward the end of the first season, we exposed a fourth- to sixth-century A.D. bath complex: a small plastered pool; at each corner, a heart-shaped column; and drains with marble slabs running through floors or crudely patched mosaic.

As we extended the excavations in 1986, our square began to look like a moonscape of exploded limestone rocks. We attributed this disaster to Seljuk Sultan Salah el Din (Saladin), who destroyed the city in 1191 A.D. to prevent its capture by Richard the Lion Hearted during the Third Crusade.

For a few weeks we felt rather snubbed by Dr. Stager, who expects results from his team. Our square had become merely a vantage point to which the director would bring distinguished visitors to give them a better view of the Philistine area below.

Two weeks before the end of the 1986 season, however, we made a real discovery—a monumental, apsidal building, 26 feet in diameter, with a cut, polychrome marble floor laid in the elegant pattern known as “opus sectile.” The discovery of this building, tentatively dated to the sixth century A.D., established our status; from then on, we deserved a stop on Dr. Stager’s rounds.

During the most recent season, in 1987, we firmly entered the Late Roman/Byzantine and even Early Roman periods. A major challenge was peeling off the ubiquitous cement the Byzantines had poured over earlier structures—cement that seeped into cracks between stones and stuck viciously to mosaic floors. Slowly our square began to show a busy “architectural horizon” of walls built on top of walls in association with several layers of mosaic flooring.

Two discoveries kept us racing against the clock as the third season approached its end: a tunnel for water or sewer use, and a “hypocaust,” or underground heating chamber of a Roman bath.

Under the sixth-century apse, and cut by it, we found an earlier sewer drain. This example of massive masonry, about six feet wide and more than six feet deep, gives us a clue to the scale of Roman public works existing in ancient Ashkelon. The tunnel was excavated in record time by a team of volunteers who each day filled 600 guffas—or rubber buckets—with over a ton of the rubble that had collapsed into the drain tunnel. We can predict that a maze of underground channels, possibly extending all the way to the sea, might lure future “digging moles.”

The “hypocaust” consisted of a subfloor with small columns made of round and square bricks, over which a bathhouse floor was laid. Hot air would circulate in the hollow space under the floor, warming the room and creating a steamy atmosphere something like that in a modern sauna.

As a “square supervisor,” I am the keeper of the detailed records that concern my square. I label and control hundreds of “layers,” “features,” “pottery baskets” and “levels.” Each day or so I draw a “top plan,” which is a horizontal representation of the step-by-step progress of the excavation. I also make a vertical drawing of the balks of my square in order to show a cross-section of the layers excavated. In my daily journal, I note observations, comments and opinions. Every week I add to the crucial document called the Harris Matrix; like a giant genealogical tree, it shows the sequence of layers and features—the physical stratigraphy—to produce the sought out “relative chronology.”

At least, this is how the system is supposed to work. But, in fact, each grid has its own organization, each grid supervisor his or her style in running an excavation.

Ross, our grid supervisor, is a daring and intuitive archaeologist. He believes in swift action. There are times when, goaded by the 037inquisitive expedition architect, he becomes impatient to find the answers. He will not hesitate to pull a wall down or tear a floor apart in order to disentangle the stratigraphy. “A good archaeologist,” Dr. Stager told me one day, “knows when to go fast and when to go slow.”

Under Ross’s guidance, the grid soon began to make much more sense. The confusing, disconnected bits of information began to tie together. On the drawing board of the architect, as if by magic, suddenly appeared whole buildings, rooms, thresholds and courtyards. Ross practices one of the basic precepts of excavation: “To proceed by making reasoned guesses on the basis of insufficient evidence.”

Each grid supervisor’s findings are regularly put to the severe test of the “phasing session.” In this brainstorming exercise, participants include the grid and square supervisors, experienced archaeologists from other grids, the architect, the associate director and the director. For a rich and puzzling grid like ours, we would spend hours working toward a logical, reasoned understanding of “relationships.” Dr. Stager demands strong evidence. How were the mosaics associated with the walls? Were there two or more phases to the bath? Was the apse “cut into” the mosaic?

In Near Eastern archaeology, pottery is a crucial indicator, not only of chronology but also of material culture. Huge quantities of sherds are required to provide scholars with the necessary data. For instance, Tel Gezer’s ceramic typology was based on the study of 350,000 sherds!

Every day, dozens of pottery buckets are brought back from the field to the “pottery compound”—an open-air enclosure near our hotel. The 80 to 85 volunteers sit on small stools in long rows and scrub the sherds with nail brushes. Then they lay the sherds on strips of burlap to dry in the sun. Once dry, the pottery can be “read.” The director “reads” the Bronze Age and Iron Age pottery. Sometimes he washes it himself.

At Ashkelon, a threesome of pottery experts forms a knowledgeable team with a distinctive zest for their work. Barbara, the Roman/Byzantine specialist, has a ravenous appetite for pottery. In no time, she bulldozes through a mountain of Gaza or “Nile mud” amphorae, or of Palestinian “baggies” (bag-shaped store jars). She enjoys the elegant ESA ware (Eastern Sigillata A, dated to the first century, which was first found in Pergamon, Asia Minor) and the ARS (African Red Slip) from the fourth century. Charles analyzes the magnificent craftsmanship of the Persian and Hellenistic ware in a witty way, sometimes resorting to suggestive metaphors to describe the shapes and fabrics.

Joelle introduces us to the glazes of the Islamic pottery—to its many hues and innovative application methods, including dripping and splashing. Occasionally her mentor, Miriam, drops in to deal with some of the pottery puzzles.

The Ashkelon Expedition emphasizes the “field school” approach, offering a busy schedule of lectures and activities for the volunteers. Lectures range from fairly basic to more specialized presentations. Sometimes Larry Stager tells slightly apocryphal tales. For example: He was excavating at Idalion, Cyprus, and could not find the 30-foot-wide city wall, although he was sure the edge of the acropolis had to be fortified. Fortunately Doug Esse (who dug with Stager at Idalion) fell one day and hit his head on a balk, which crumbled, revealing the magnificent wall! Doug avoids the usual comparison of excavating a tell with the peeling of an onion. During his lecture on stratigraphy he used another image: Swiss cheese pocked with pits and holes. Larry Stager, sitting beside me at the lecture, roared with laughter: “I never heard that one before!” he said.

The lectures cover a variety of topics ranging from regional geology to the introduction of iron and metallurgy into the Near East by the Philistines. Trude Dothan and Seymour Gitin, co-directors at Tel Miqne, bring news from the other Philistine site currently being excavated in Israel.

Workships on different skills—on photography or on drawing pottery, for example, are very popular among volunteers. Paula, a bone specialist, came to talk to us in the field. We learned that the quantity of animal remains collected at Ashkelon is phenomenal. The ancient city was on a flight path of migratory birds, and remains of more than 100 bird species have been found here so far. Numerous jackals, lions, foxes, ostriches and camels existed in this region. Great quantities of domesticated animals’ bones have been found, including those of dogs, cats, chickens and pigs.

A different type of workshop took place unexpectedly one day in the field. Fragments of early Roman lamps—some of them with highly explicit erotic scenes—were discovered, crushed between two plaster floors. The news spread fast throughout the dig. Soon Larry Stager and Doug Esse arrived to give their expert opinions. Doug poured water from a thermos on a fragment. Someone handed out a dental pick, another person a paint brush. The volunteers huddled around with intense interest at the “porno workshop,” eager to get a look. Later, Larry turned down an offer by Penthouse magazine for an interview on the sensational finds.

One morning, a square supervisor I nicknamed the “deepest woman in Israel” treated my female recruits to a short course on how they should swing the pickax and the rubber baskets called guffas. This supervisor had achieved the incredible feat of digging a shaft 60 feet deep under the ramparts of Tel Dan in northern Galilee. Her stories of a snake snapping its coils over the workers’ heads at the bottom of the trench made the adventures of Indiana Jones seem tame. She explained to the volunteers: “Women don’t have the upper body strength men have, so use what you’ve got.” She demonstrated that the secret is to use your hips.

More than one-third of the volunteers—young and not so young—dig to earn college credits. The others come from a variety of backgrounds: There are homemakers, engineers, judges, armed forces veterans and members of the clergy, to name a few.

As a square supervisor, I find this “wall-to-wall with people” existence particularly enriching. I feel I am an important link between the highly specialized professionals and the enthusiastic one-time diggers.

And what better place to live this experience than in Ashkelon, one of the most important maritime and mercantile centers of the ancient Near East; a city whose people, despite the bad connotation the Philistine name carries today, were in fact sophisticated in the arts of pottery, small crafts and architecture.