:Last Days of Work

Greetings,

Things are winding down now, soon the team will be packing up and moving all of the equipment to the warehouse.

On the last days off the team did some traveling to nearby sites. This is a picture of Ain Sara (or the Spring of Sara). It is a local sources of water which heads down to the Dead ea eventually. The team was interested in surveying this area because several years ago we found an interesting capital much like the ones found at our fortress near this spring. So the team used the day off to visit the area near the spring to do some sherding on the surface. 

The team also visited the train station at Qatrana Railway Station. This is a part of the Hejaz route (that is the train that would take pilgrims to Mecca.) You might recall that this railway line was the target of frequent attacks by the British during WWI (Lawrence of Arabia).

Another thing that we have experimented with this summer is using Skype to connect Jim Pace and later myself to the group during pottery readings. This has allowed Jim and I to "attend" pottery readings and keep track of what is happening.

Here is some of the pottery at pottery reading. We "read" the pottery to tell the age of the pottery so we can determine when it was made and from that determine the time period the layer of the soil layers that we are excavating.

Another type of work we do in camp is flotation. This is a process where we put soil samples into a 55 gallon drum and "wash" the dirt. This separates out material that will float like carbonized seeds.

The sieves help us separate material out from the water.

We process soil that we have found especially in areas where there has been in ovens or campfires or other areas where things have been burned.

Here you can see we use different sieves to separate out fine material.

This material is then dried and it will be shipped back for examination in a lab. From this material we can determine what kind of plants were being grown, gathered, and eaten.

Here the team is drying the float material so we can ship it back for review in the lab.

Look for another entry soon.

The team will be coming home soon!


John Wineland
Grayson, Kentucky