STOP 3 | Israel: We got robbed + Visiting the Lab

July 23, 2021

This article is dedicated to my 49Best team (Shira and Shani, Monica and Hannah) and to all the people who follow their dreams and passions, not matter the age, geography, their job; just living in the moment!

This was my second and last week of my Dig Experience in Israel. A friend of mine has just asked me if I liked it as experience. Absolutely YES. Actually more:

I would suggest this experience to everyone, just to get in closer contact with nature and with history (and probably geography)
I would suggest this as a mandatory activity (for 1-2 weeks) for all the students during the last year of High School in the places where it's possible and worth it (e.g. Israel, Italy)

Probably my area was less interested versus the others as it was a new one: if you recall, we were digging just because of the parking lot: we found a lot a lot a lot of vessels, and walls of what may be a big (public?) building, but we needed to have more time to go deeper, and basically this is the last year of the project. But I loved my supervisors, it's not a cliché: Shira and Shani were really amazing (I cannot really do a relative comparison, I liked their professionalism in absolute terms.

But let me tell you more about what happened this week. Before leaving Jerusalem, upon Dudu's suggestion (another guy from the Dig), I tasted Kadosh in Jerusalem, one of the most amazing Patisserie in the city, apparently. Probably I exaggerated, but I had been really missing a decent espresso :)

I arrived just in time for lunch on Sunday at 1:30PM together with Jeff, the US professor in charge of supervising area D. It was Sunday, we just spent our time doing the usual stuff: pottery washing, pottery reading, pottery writing - most likely - as this is what we do during the work days, when we don't go to the site - and on Sundays we don't.

The most amazing thing though is what happened on Monday. We reached our Excavation site and...surprise...we got robbed! As Professor Maeir highlighted in the official blog of the project:

"We came to the site this morning and someone stole some of our equipment!😡 Thank God we have spare equipment, but it is a pain!"

This happened almost exclusively in my area (S), the closest to the roadway. It reminded me Mafia warnings from Sicilian movies: someone apparently did not like what we were doing and gave as a sign. So Monday was a hard day, as the Leadership team needed to decide if we were to continue in Area S or not. We kept digging, under the sun, making sure to drink more often, to put on sun screen and bug repellent.

I kept doing my activity of "pickaxer", and I was even requested by other "squares" in my area to support: I love pickaxing, going deeper, destroying the rocks...probably something I need to discuss with my therapist? Who knows :)

Around mid morning we were able to put up the shades again, after a lot of work.

My amazing team and I got moved to another square, with the goal of going deeper and adjust the bulk. According to the words of the another Dig coordinator - Noam - we did an amazing job, as we cleaned-up the square perfectly. He wanted to use our square as an example for future students: all credits to Monica, as she started perfectioning the bulk, while usually I was the one destroying it...

We had a lot of fun during the last week. Found more and more vessels, and were able to remove them smoothly from earth, just going around and underneath.

On Wednesday we also got the change to visit the Archaeology Lab at Bar-Ilan university: it was not completely a leisure visit, as we had to work (a lot) to bring pottery and equipment and to move them in and out from/to containers, but seeing what really happens in a lab was inspiring and fascinating: eventually our work has indeed a purpose in life :)