STOP 3 | Israel: An Archaeologist’s Life + Congrats to Italy for winning Euro2020

Today's post is dedicated to Fotissima, who sent me a message today (July 13th) and made me cry, with her genuinity: friends are the ones who are, even if you don't see them everyday. Thank You. And anticipated 2022 Happy Birthday (well, you know about it :D)

Day 1

And so it began. Participating in an archaeologic dig as a volunteer has always been my dream since I studied Archaeology at Bocconi University with Valerio Massimo Manfredi.

I left my Dorm in Tel-Aviv on Sunday morning, to take a bus directed to Kfar Menahem. Kfar Menahem is a Kibbutz 20mins close to the Tell es-Safi excavation site. A kibbutz is a “is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture” (source).

Once arrived there, we did pottery washing – daily’s pottery finds are left soaking for 1 day, after that we clean them up with a brush and we let them dry. It was not an intense activity but I did turn my white shirt into orange.

After lunch, we had the opportunity to explore the Kibbutz – we are staying close to some school premises apparently – and we got even a discount to enjoy the amazing pool.

Also we get really good local food. It’s not cooked freshly every day probably, but it’s definitely Israeli :)

Night passed smoothly and we went to bed pretty early as alarm was set for 4:30AM, because we need to avoid as much as possible. As such, I missed ITA-ENG Euro2020 final. I kinda did on purpose, because every time I watch an Italy's game, Italy loses. First thing I did in the morning was to check the results on gazzetta.it. I had a positive feeling, I do not like the Italian manager/coach Mancini, as I’ve never seen him smiling in his life historically, and I don’t like people who do not smile. But I had the feeling, because the Italian team was great, there was connection, engagement, spirit, harmony among each other, and this is what makes a team successful, not the greatness of each team player. Italy, thanks for allowing Italians to be patriotic for one day, I was deeply touched.

Cheers to that!

The first dig (Day 1 + 2)

Waking up was tough, obviously and I did not know what to expect for the day. We boarded our bus and in about 20 mins we reached Tell es-Safi. A Tell officially “is an artificial topographical feature, a species of mound consisting of the stratified debris from the accumulated refuse of generations of people who once formed a settlement and dwelt on the same site.” (source). According to history Tell es Safi is identified with the Biblical city of Gath, belonging to Philistines. 5 were the Philistine city-states: Ashdod, Ekron, Ashkelon, Gath, Gaza City.

No city inscription has been found here yet, as it happened for Tel Miqne, identified with Ekron from an inscription found in the temple (source).

The dig is really well-organized...well, not that I have any previous experience with this, however, we have:

• Breakfast corner, with tables and covering tent
• Bathroom corner, witch chemical toilets
• Tents covering you while working.

The project can be followed at this website: gath.wordpress.com.

The agenda is pretty much the following:

04:30 – Wakeup (on your own!)

04:45 – Coffee/tea and cookies in rooms

05:15 – Bus leaves for Tell

05:45 – Excavations begin

09:00-09:30 – Breakfast on Tell

11:00-11:15 – Fruit break on Tell

13:00 – End of work

13:30 – Lunch in kibbutz

We do the digging in 3 areas, D, M and S, and I was assigned to area S. Below you can see how it was when we started on Monday 12th (I am participating in this week only for weeks 2 and 3 out of a total of 4 weeks), only one day was excavated during the last week due to lack of manpower.

This is the last year of a 25year journey of digging in this area, that has become now a National Park. We look for various pottery, bones, shells or – if we are lucky – any confirmation this is indeed the biblical Gath, distant only 8km from Ekron.

Basically, digging activities are the following:

• Using pickaxes
• Using handpicks and trowels
• Detect antiquities 
• Clean up the dirt/mud with shovels, and broom and dustpan
• Toss away the dirt with a wheelbarrow

Overall it’s pretty intense, we need to drink a lot of water despite a tent protects all of us while digging and we need to use sunblock, which I tend to refuse as it’s against my Sicilianity (this word means "being Sicilian", I will add to wikipedia soon :D). But it's fulfilling, really fulfilling. 

You can see below some videos/pics of me on the site, either working or posing for the camera, before everything got dirty.

And some finding within the first 2 days, including my first find – a small piece of pottery.

This the group from my square: each side is divided into 5x5m squares and a group is assigned. Our mission is to find the Gath's inscription!

This is how we ended Day 3 (Day 2 of Excavation), so we made pretty good progress in only 2 days.

Afternoon Activities

In the afternoon we do everything related pottery: cleaning/washing, reading, and writing. Such two activities are really nice and archaeology-specific, but I will discuss about them any other day. Sometimes we do field trips to close locations/sites or Archaeologic-related lessons by the professors.