The Hole of Doom

I love my job.

Several times over the course of these past weeks, I have been tempted to say those four words with a certain amount of chagrin, sarcasm, bemusement...

Today, however, I love my job in the fullest sense of the word. 

I love my job.

For the last two days, I have been working with Jim Rogers, Brennan and Arnie southeast of the church.  Our goal was to find the continuation of a wall, which we began to uncover yesterday.

Today I look over and see Brennan playing with a hole in the ground.  Now, at the beginning of the season, Michael (Number Two for the entire hill) said, "In past years I have spoken about the snake problem and have said not to worry - they are more afraid of you than you are of them.  This is no longer the case.  The snakes are now very aggresive and should be avoided."  Imagine my surprise then when I look over a little later and Brennan's HAND is in the hole.  He says, "There are some good pieces of pottery in there."  Although I am not one to stand in the way of pottery, I did remind him of snakes, animals, too many alien movies, etc. 

Well, after breakfast, I left the square to go over to the inscription with Andrea to see if we could make a dry rubbing of it.  Having found no twelve-year-old child from whom I could steal crayons, we tried to make the rubbing with the edge of a pencil.  It didn't work, unfortunately, but Dr. Schuler now has a pretty bizare picture to hang up on his refrigerator. 

Anyway, I returned to my square to hear Brennan say that the hole went pretty deep.  By now the square was calling it a cistern (a plastered hole in the ground used to catch and retain water).  Brennan dropped a rock into the hole and there was a DEFINITE gap in time before we heard it clunk at the bottom.  Arnie had the idea to tie a rock to the end of a rope and then hang it down until we reached bottom.

It ends up the cistern is about 4.5 meters deep (Four of Andrea, for those who know her height).  We swung the rock from side to side and originally thought that it was bottlenecked at the top and expanded at the bottom. 

So I began digging around.  Imagine my surprise when about 30 centimeters away from where I thought was the opening, dirt started falling down, down, down.  At this point, I backed up to re-assess the situation.  Linda suggested clearing around a bit with the broom to try and pick out the stones and weak areas. 

Ends up that the cistern top is huge, to the point that to remove the dirt from the other side against the wall, I had to sort of a Cirque de Solei splits over top the hole, with either leg bracing agains the side of the hole and me bending and stretching to remove dirt from the other side (No cameras were present (thank goodness), though the comments from the back (thanks a lot, Andrea) were aplenty - at least I learned the reaches of my new-found flexibility).  Many big rocks were still jumbled over top, but I was afraid that once we removed the perfect one, the rest would collapse. 

So Linda and I continued picking around the entrance, until I came across a BEAUTIFUL, ENORMOUS handle of some sort of smooth storage jar, with many, thick pieces of the body still intact.  That can be the find of the season for myself.  Let others have the jewelry, the gold, the nails - I am quite content with a beautiful and unique piece of pottery.

Before we left for the day, we strung security tape around the walls and hole.  The hole still is pretty hidden under the tumble of rocks, so the worry is that some silly tourist is going to leap on top and fall on down.  I'm hoping the security tape provides some hinderance rather than an incentive to gaze closer.  We'll see.

The other option is to stick one of the undergraduates down the hole and see if we can catch the lynx-like creature that has been haunting our site at night, leaving droppings and footprints all around.  I have at least two students working for me, so I could offer them the option of going down in the cistern overnight and getting an A.  The other offer I have made to them is that if they steal an ostrich egg for me from the pen on the kibbutz, I would be more than happy to give an A+.  Otherwise they can just continue working hard and we'll see where the grades fall. 

All in all, exciting day.  I love my job.