Please note: Because of problems with the blog's server, and a three-day trip to Jordan followed by two days in transit back to Canada, this post was written much earlier than today, when I am finally getting it on-line. Sorry for the delay.
Yesterday, Thurs 10 July, was the last day on the mountain for the eight of us Canadians. We leave this morning, Friday, for three days in Jordan, returning on Sunday evening and then leaving on Monday morning for a day in Jerusalem before flying home Monday night. Within our group, it feels both good and bad to be at this phase.
The good stuff flows from a sense many of us share that this dig really has been a tremendous success. A couple of people have mentioned their personal satisfaction at having risen above the difficult conditions, both climate-wise and work-wise. The hope now is that they can retain the strength and conditioning that an experience like this produces, once they get back to the softer and less rigorous life back home.
Our Canadian group of eight (L to R): Jenn Shack, Michelle Heumann, Ian Wemyss, Katie Anderson, Bill Hayes, Quinn Moerike, SC, Darren Siegle Another source of great satisfaction is the progress we've made on the dig itself. Hey, that's what we're here for! And it really has gone extremely well. Yesterday, in our squares (E-F, 0 and 1), we kept pursuing the north-west and north-east corners of the east-west wall. Ian and Bill worked in the east section, going deep--more than 2 metres below surface level--in a narrow trench. We were looking for either the bottom of the wall they were tracing, or its corner. The corner wasn't well-defined, but might have been there; it was hard to tell. And the bottom of the trench didn't seem to reach a clear bottom to the wall either, but again it was hard to tell. The presence of a layer of damp soil, uniformly along the whole trench, suggested that they were at least getting very close to bedrock (and thus the bottom of the wall). 
Bill's back was giving him some trouble, especially from using the Arny-net so many times to lift out huge stones. When you're digging that far down in a trench, it's often a three-stage process to get those bad boys out: first, out of the narrowest / deepest part of the trench onto the little shoulder beside it, then onto a big stone protruding from the wall of the hole part-way up, then finally up to ground level. Whew! Not just Bill's back, but the entire bodies of many of us, are glad this kind of work is now done.
Dr. Dan Westberg, working himself into a deep hole... In our western area, again tracing this same wall, we made great progress despite--again--a number of very big stones that had to be netted out in three stages. Dan Westberg and I just kept chewing our way down, focusing especially on the corners to keep the hole going down neatly and also, more importantly, to acquire the maximum amount of information from each level we were reaching. The tendency is, of course, to dig a pit with a rounded bottom--but then you miss out on all the data that's just a few inches, or feet, to the right and left of the deepest part you've dug. It's not that hard to just keep working outward until you've got a nice rectangular pit. And then, if you find interesting things, you can even undermine the corners by a few more inches, if need be, to learn more. Got it? 
By doing this, we too reached a layer of damp soil, at about the same level Bill and Ian had reached it farther west. Great! And then, as we kept chewing down bit by bit, we found what clearly seemed to be one of the bottom stones in the wall. It was fairly well-cut, being particularly flat on its bottom face. And under it was a layer of small stones, embedded in what seemed to be plaster. Hmm! Remember our earlier work in the wider trench just south of here? That's exactly what we found there too and diagnosed as bedrock--a vein of crumbly limestone marl, but bedrock all the same.
So Dan and I worked out from there, leaving everything in situ--exactly where we found it--and what a neat pattern emerged. Atop this crumbly limestone in several places were similar layers of small stones underlying larger ones. Other places there were somewhat larger cobbles, maybe fist-sized, serving the same function. And amid those cobbles were many pieces of broken pottery--something we hadn't found much of for quite a while, as we were going down. This is the typical Byzantine building-technique: set the bottom of your wall on a mix of smaller stones and broken pottery. So we were pretty sure this was "it"--exactly what Doc Schuler had wanted us to find. We found it!
Potsherds and cobbles, within a layer of damp soil, right at the bottom of the wall: Bedrock!
Doc was pretty excited, and so were we. I just love this part of archaeology, the investigative angle. You come up with a theory and then acquire data trying to either confirm or disprove it. If it's wrong, as it often is, you try to think of a better explanation. And so it goes, by trial and error, until you finally get enough confirming bits of evidence that you're pretty sure you've got it right. In this case, of course, we weren't trying to prove anything terribly significant: we found a set of old walls, set on bedrock, underneath what later became the
Another very satisfying part of our day yesterday as the great celebration we had last night for the 25th anniversary of Doc Schuler's ordination. He was completely surprised by it. Several of us had worked on the arrangements after Rhoda Schuler, his wife, alerted us to the occasion a few weeks ago; Nancy Endicott was the overall organizer, Jim Gimbel planned and led the rite, and I gave a short homily on "The Earthen Vessels of Ministry." All of this followed our normal Thursday evening devotion, which was led by the two high-school age boys in the group (Andy & Danny), and was followed by a time of appreciation for Mark's ministry, as presented by each of our digging-groups. We had asked them ahead of time to bring an object that illustrated in some way something they appreciated about Mark, and some were pretty creative. A bottle of water reminded one group not only of Mark's concern that we stay hydrated but also of his care for our welfare in every way. A jawbone with its teeth reminded another group of his determination to stay on-task and get to the bottom of things. Besides this sort of object lesson, another group wrote and sang a very funny song, "Old Doc Schuler Had a Dig." Hopefully somebody has posted it by now on another blog!
Doc Schuler with some of the special objects he received at his anniversary celebration So all of that is the great part of this project: We have really had a super time, both on the dig itself and within the relationships we've formed. I said to somebody lately that it sort of feels like summer camp for adults! We have fun, work hard, and get surprisingly close to the people who share these unique experiences with us. We know it's not "real life"--none of us could, or probably even want to, sustain this project indefinitely--and thus we are acutely aware, as the time ticks down, that we're going to be heading home soon. That's a good thing, for home is where we belong and where the Lord calls us to our various forms of service. But it's also a hard thing, the prospect of heading home and calling an end to this very special block of time. I sense a lot of us are going through some "closure"-type feelings, including sadness and loss at the imminent end of both the work and the fun. I'll have to make sure to de-brief the folks in our Canadian crew along the way back home, to acknowledge and help them start to work through these feelings---provided it's not just me who's feeling them! Again, in my experience at least it parallels the summer-camp experience pretty closely. Interesting link, eh?
Chambers' crew (left to right): Gene Balding, Jim Gimbel, Ian Wemyss, SC, Bill Hayes, Dan Westberg, Harry Westberg. What a great group of guys! 
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