Prof. Denny Clark from the College of Idaho arrived with 19 people including Dr. Toni Fisher, Dr. Mark Smith & Dr. Diane Raptosh. Including the groups that arrived the 1st week that brought the total number up to 72 people, the largest number of workers for over 10 years. Toni will be analyzing bones from previous years in order to ascertain what they ate, which gives Rami information about social conditions.
Elizabeth's group continued to excavate structures in area C. A beautiful broken quartz bead was found in the sifting, showing how important it is to sift each & every bucket. Se the pic below. With the tools of the time it was extremely difficult to drill the hole in the bead which was probably worn by a proud woman.
Area A west continued to excavate around the Roman structures. A very nice Hellenistic loom weight was found; see the pic below. A cache of 3 silver coins was unearthed. Were they Imperial from Rome or were they locally minted possibly in Syria? We'll just have to wait for them to be cleaned to have the answer. Rami let me take a bronze incrusted coin 2mm thick & 36 mm diameter home for cleaning, even though I'm not an specialist. I boiled it in water for about an hour then brushed it with an old toothbrush then a stiffer brush. Much of the dirt came off after which I cleaned it in a "home made" electrolysis bath for a short while. See the pics of the coin below. Its a Roman bronze, probably Imperial, coin with the picture of an empress, most likely Livia the wife of emperor Augustus. On the reverse there's a depiction of a she wolf suckling the twins Romulus & Remus, who according to mythology founded Rome. Great find guys!
In area A east the volunteers continued to remove rubble that had fallen from the city walls. They found an apparent Roman floor just to the east of the city iron age main road. Floors are dated by analyzing the material underneath the floor so Rami allowed us to remove some of the cobble stone floor & dig down. Very soon a large vertical iron loop appeared that looked modern, but how could there be a modern piece under a Roman floor? Digging down we discovered that it was the ring imbedded into the concrete top of a Syrian army bunker. Apparently the Syrian army buried this bunker when they occupied Bethsaida before 1967, then covered it up with dirt & a cobble stone floor like used in antiquity. A good laugh was had by all considering that all the careful work & finds from this area were all a waste. That's archaeology; you never know what awaits you a tiny bit below.
One click on any picture will greatly enlarge it -------------------
Link to all the pictures I took this season - CLICK HERE
Note : Interesting archaeology blog - http://archaeologydigs.blogspot.com/
Human interest - http://www.communitycorrespondent.com/kptm/, search for Judith Schwartz