Father's Day at the Site

This is Dr. Jerry Mattingly, the director of the excavation and his daughter Leslie Mattingly Bean. They make a good team at the excavation. They spent their Father's Day together at the site.

Here Dr. Michael VanZant works with his daughter Mellissa VanZant (center) and Amy Stickler. Mike and Mellissa are another great father/daughter team at the site.

Today we hired local workers to help us at the site. Here Jerry Mattingly greets the new workers in the nearby village.

Here the local workers arrive at the site and are assigned to their areas for work.

The major job for the day was cleaning up the squares so work could continue. Here Christiann DeSilva and Ronaldo Denuna work in Area D cleaning up in preparation for excavation.

We get up very early so that we arrive on site just as the sun is rising. That means it a long time between breakfast and lunch. So we have 2nd breakfast about midway through the working time at the site. Normally that means watermelon and some rest. Here Abu Hajar slices the melon while the crew takes a break.

After much hard work the excavation squares are reestablished, cleaned up and sandbags are placed around the edges to protect them. Now the squares are ready for excavation. This is a view of Area D.

One of our bus drivers, Hussein sits on top of the gate tower and watches over the work.

Here is an example of some of the hard work that it takes to clean up the squares. One of the workers breaks a rock with a sledge hammer while John Mark Wade supervisors in Area D.

Here Adam Bean and Amy Stickler clean in the balks.

We have not work at the site since 2009 so the area can become eroded over those years by wind, rain, and human activity.

It is not all work and no play. Here our photographers Freidbert Ninow and Tim Snow document each other taking photographs.

Tomorrow we will be able to begin the excavation process.

John Wineland
Jordan