Team Work with Tel Aviv University Archaeologists at Timna Park, July 12-15 2017

Team Work with Tel Aviv University Archaeologists at Timna Park, July 12-15 2017

I have been off line having adventures, and doing a lot of waiting for rides, busses, trains…

     I just got back from Caesarea and Haifa, but before I left, I had quite an exciting experience at Timna!  

     One of the archaeologists with whom I had been in contact, Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef from Tel Aviv University, had said that he would be available to answer questions, but he would likely not be on site when I was here; their excavations take place in sane temperatures in spring and late fall.  (Afternoon highs at Timna in mid-summer have been 104-109 degrees farenheit.)   However, his team ended up having a last minute excavation, and they invited me to document the action.  Also fortuitously, the Discovery Channel was going to be there, he said.  It was a chance for me to make some contacts and learn from the pros.

     The excavation, near the Hathor chapel, was more fruitful than anyone imagined for 3.5 days in the sweltering desert heat.   The team found several skeletons, including a fetus (estimated 3 months) in the pelvis of an adult we had all been calling “he.”  We had to redress our pronouns.  They also found 2 glass beads and more pattern shards in a couple of days than they had found their whole last season, one lead archaeologist told me.

     I captured a lot of very solid video of the team excavating, and I captured some clean audio of the sounds of excavation—trowels clanking, brushes clearing, sifters sorting beads and bones from dirt.  We did a couple of 360VR videos.  I cannot publish most of the photos on the web, though, because of the human remains.  First the skeletons go with the medical anthropology team back to the lab at Tel Aviv University, and then I do not yet know what Israel's antiquities rules are after that.  I just know skeletons are a sensitive matter, just like in the U.S. 

     I enjoyed working with Erez’s team immensely, and I hope I have the opportunity to work with them again.  They were so inclusive and welcoming, and they really felt like tribe. Did I mention they fed me really well, too? We were al in sync with each other, and we shared a passion for the same interests.

     I actually cried a little bit when it was time to say good-bye!  I think it is because I felt a really strong sense of belonging to a group in a way that I only have three other times in life: with my 11^th grade circle of friends (and that was 1988), with some colleagues at UC Berkeley whom I have known for 17 years, and with the Santa Fe Striders -- a trail running group I ran with every Sunday morning for the academic year that I was a Visiting Professor in the Media Arts and Cultural Technology department at New Mexico Highlands University. 

    The Bay Area is a very challenging place to make friends and maintain relationships because everyone is far too busy with 60, 70, 80+ hour workweeks and loads of activities and even kids and their kids activities. No one wants to sit for 90 minutes in traffic to drive 15 miles, people pause over paying bridge tolls, and giving up a parking space is a risky gamble.  Add to that, few of my friends back home are friends with each other.  So this sense of having a cohesive tribe—like the Santa Fe Striders or Erez’s archaeology team-- feels very soul nourishing.

    There was one point where we were hiking up on a high narrow ridge, the way down was steep and sharp, and I had to balance with my camera equipment as we met up with the Discovery team taking shots in an ancient copper mine.  I completely froze.  I really did not want to test the limits of my UCSU health insurance overseas if I tumbled into a heap of broken bones.  One of the team members, a 20-something, sure-footed woman named Talia, took my hand to help me across the ridge, and I realized how much more we are all capable of with the support and confidence of others.  In the right team, we are exponentially more powerful when we pull together.

     Life lesson reminders.