This week ended another exciting season of excavating at Bethsaida.  There were 16 - 18 volunteering who continued from week 5 in order to give Rami lots of information to decipher this winter when he'll be sitting at his desk on a cold, snowy winter day in Omaha.  Six different loci were dug, all in area "A" west, which were worked the previous 5 weeks.  Mainly, work was conducted at the Roman level.

The locus where the "window" was found during week 3 was dug out to its iron age base and  Rami closed work on this locus.  As explained earlier, the basalt frame the Rami thought was a window is either a very narrow door, closet or a niche.  We'll just have to wait for the future to see what it is.  Rami also closed the locus just to the west as the diggers had gotten down to the iron age pavement.

Many interesting items were found such as copper coins, a Roman earring, iron nails, lead fishing weights and a   myriad of pottery sherds to help date the specific levels.  Coins, of course, are wonderful finds, but they only tell us that the specific level came after the date on the coin.  Since coins can remain in circulation for hundreds of years, coins can not accurately date levels.  Pottery sherds are another story, since they typically only remain in use for a limited time period and then discarded mainly because they break.  Consequently, at pottery reading quite often accurate time periods can be attributed to levels and areas.

The mollusk shown at the bottom right tells an interesting story.  The inside meat was used to make the "imperial purple" that was originally only allowed to be wore by the Roman royalty.  It afterwards spread to the the rich citizens and the purple dye remained quite expensive.  It seems reasonable that the cloth would have been sent to Rome for dying - could the mollusks have been sent to Bethsaida, the cloth dyed there then sent to Rome ?  Another item for Rami to puzzle out this winter.  See this informative article about the mollusk and the use of the dye - http://www.mmdtkw.org/VPurple.html

The last day was spent cleaning up, taking pictures, putting all the tools away into the store room and saying a fond adieu to Dr. Arav and the fellow volunteers.  We volunteers extend a big thank you to Dr. Arav, Steve Reynolds and the rest of the marvelous staff that made this 2007 season excavation the "experience of a lifetime".

   Pictures can be enlarged by going to the photo gallery and clicking the desired picture.            

   Note : Interesting archaeology blog - http://archaeologydigs.blogspot.com/        

             Interesting human interest - http://www.communitycorrespondent.com/kptm/, search for Judith Schwartz