We continued to dig out the dirt & small rocks between the very large boulders on the main street leading up to the city gate. The boulders appeared soon after the removal of the very hard, compacted top layer of dirt. These boulders are from the collapse of the outer city wall (see the middle pic below) which occurred as a result of the earthquake of 363 CE. 4th century material has been found among the boulders allowing Rami to accurately date the wall collapse. Rami says the "archaeologists love destruction" and this is one of the nicest that he has seen which gives him a good picture of what the outer city wall looked like. The plan is to see more of the boulders to even more clearly perceive what the outer city wall looked like. The boulders will then be removed intact and a portion of the outer city wall will be constructed, possibly during fall 2005.
A iron fish hook and a number of lead fish weights were found. See the picture below on right of the fish hook - the "find of the week".
Digging continued in chamber 2 in an attempt to solve the enigma of what was under the city gate and the 4 chambers. While digging out the chamber a number of sets of crushed, compacted limestone floors were found. There still is no architecture to go along with these floors so the question posed is - what kind of walls were there ? Rami's plan is to go down to bedrock as had been done the previous year in chamber 4.
One of the volunteers planted a goblet "the holy grail" for Rami to find. Look at the picture below to see Rami's expression at finding this "treasure".
Pictures can be enlarged by going to the photo gallery & clicking on the desired picture.
Note : Interesting archaeology blog - http://archaeologydigs.blogspot.com/