Dig Assignments

     The bus trip out to the site took about 15 minutes, but not a minute of it was to be wasted! The director absolutely did not want anyone being late, not on that first day, or any other day. Because every director wants to get in a full eight hours of work each day, every dig in the Middle East (to the best of my knowledge) gets started by 5:00 a.m. This is due to the fact that the temperature will climb so high as the day progresses, that working out in the scorching hot sun will become unbearable, if not downright dangerous. At Abila, we quit work at 1:00, and believe me, by then you're drenching wet with sweat, covered in dirt, and completely exhausted! But this I had yet to experience first hand, as I was for all intents and purposes still an archaeology virgin (my term!). Dr. Mare had made all the work assignments for everyone, from who would be working in the registry in camp, to who would be digging in the field, and had originally assigned me to work for another area supervisor out in the field quite a distance from Area A where J worked; but being a new bride and all, I really wanted to work more closely with my husband, and so after giving J a pleading look that said, "Are you really going to let this happen, and basically just desert me out here with some stranger,"  he spoke with the other supervisor and they made a switch, which made me feel very happy that I would still get to see J for most of the day, every day! And J wanted me to be happy. He was already worried about all the outbursts of tears he had witnessed thus far in so short a period of time.
     While I'm pretty sure that eventually I would have shed some tears over my dig assignment, right now I was satisfied, and all I had to worry about was learning how to dig a proper square. Unfortunately I am not, nor have I ever been a digger of any kind. This particular skill does not appear on my resume. I played in a sandbox when I was young, but I didn't really dig. I was too afraid of getting worms under my fingernails (which I could accidentally ingest, and which could then screw up my entire digestive system until at which time I might eventually poop them out --something my mother obviously must have warned me about, no doubt). I am not a gardener of flowers or of vegetables, and I swear that even having to dig in my purse for an object that has found its way to the bottom upsets me beyond belief! But J assured me that I would have plenty of help, and so not to worry as I would get the hang of it. In defense of real archaeology, I want to go on record as saying that several wonderful archaeological field manuals have been written on the subject of digging in the Middle East. J even assigns to his own students either Bill Dever's, A Manual of Field Excavation, or Martha Joukowski's,  A Complete Manual of Field Archaeology whenever he teaches a course in introductory archaeology, and both of those books, along with Larry Herr and Randall Yonker's book, Excavation Manual: Madaba Plains Project are recommended reading before going on the Abila dig. However, to be clear, I did, after all, study English, not archaeology, and so like I said earlier, I prepped by reading Agatha Christie, though in my defense, I read up on her life during the time she was married to her archaeologist husband, Max Mallowan (which I found very inspiring!), and not her fiction (give me a break). Anyway, J gave us all a demonstration on how one should properly go about the business of digging a square, removing tiny little scoops of dirt, as we carefully picked our way down through the stratigraphic layers, all the while maintaining a straight line. (This is my version, not the official version!) The straight line would be maintained by using the plumb bob. But I do jump ahead of myself here, because really, first we had to clear all the sheep dung out of the previous seasons' squares (they obviously had made for excellent pens), burning that, along with all the briars that had grown up all over the area since the last season as well. Finally, we were all ready to be assigned our spots where J wanted either new squares put in, or old squares dug deeper or dug wider. I was put over in what we affectionately termed the Kathleen Kenyon hole. (Kathleen Kenyon is perhaps the most famous female archaeologist, having once dug in Jericho and in Jerusalem, among other places. During the 1930s, in Samaria, which was the British mandated territory of Palestine, she actually dug a trench across the summit of a mound and down the northern and southern slopes, exposing the Iron II, 900-721 BC, to the Roman period stratigraphic sequence of the site.) Not to out do her by any means, but I would be digging earlier than the Iron age, as I would eventually dig down as far as the Late Bronze Age (1550-1200 BC), but like her, I would be digging down the slope of a hill. Help! Where was my help? Ah, local guys. Men from the local villages would be helping me do all this digging. They would carry out and empty the goofas (rubber baskets made out of old tires, made especially for archaeologists), and they would dig wherever I told them to dig. Man. We were all in trouble. Oh, but J would be standing over me, watching, dispensing advice, that is when he was not overseeing someone else's digging in another square. While I dug, he supervised. I kept reminding myself that he had earned that position, and good for him! Me? I didn't have any real purpose for being here, other than the fact that all I had ever really wanted was to travel, and I had said that I would do anything to get to. I guess this was my anything!

Agatha Christie

     The dig would last eight weeks, plus we wanted to take some time on the return trip home to break our flight and tour around Western Germany and Austria for another week or two. My girlfriend, Cindy, agreed to keep Christie during the time we would be gone, as she had a son Christie's age around whom Christie had spent most of her life up to that point. (She and Shaunn were both 12, and while I do vaguely remember life becoming very awkward for boys and girls at that age, I expected that they would just play together as they always had. Unfortunately, she says that they hardly even spoke! Sorry, Christie! :)) So, that would take care of one problem. Still, the money would be tight, but Dr. Mare had agreed to waive my dig fee. (I can't remember about the air fare.) We would just need to live frugally.
     Being the literary person that I am, to offset my fears about basically being on survival mode for eight weeks, I read up on the life of Agatha Christie. Already a very famous mystery writer, she met her future husband, Max Mallowan, while she was traveling in Turkey, where he was digging at Ur, a site thought to be the capital of Mesopotamian civilization. He worked there from 1925 to 1931; they were married in 1930. It was then that her books started taking on Egyptian and Middle Eastern themes, as he later dug in Aswan, Egypt, among other places. I particularly loved the pictures I had seen of her sitting under an umbrella in a comfy camp chair out of the fullness of the desert sun, all dressed up in a long white Victorian dress, writing witty thoughts in her journal (this part I am conjuring). Interestingly, rumor has it that she would order everyone around to get her this and get her that. She was already so famous that everybody was intimidated by her, and so jumped at her every request! Also, keep in mind that archaeology was done very differently back in the late 1800s and early 20th Century. Then, it was much more of a treasure hunt, and the European archaeologists oversaw the digging, which was done by the local men (not themselves, of course, as they didn't want to get dirty unless something spectacular was discovered, for which they would then take all the credit!), and so with all the mystery and adventure that had surrounded the archaeologists of those early days, combined with the Indiana Jones of the movies, who wouldn't prefer the myth to the reality? Of course, I too, prefer myth, and so I easily pictured my own husband beckoning me to come look at what amazing find he had uncovered, and then me scurrying over to gaze in wonderment, agreeing with him that this would, indeed, secure for him a better, more prestigious university position! (Whoah! Cut! I must have been making a Victorian movie in my head. Reality check, please!) Back to Max, he was a Professor of West Asiatic Archaeology and the Director of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq for a couple of decades, and while they were happily married for the first several years, she unfortunately had to endure Max's many affairs (which didn't keep him from being knighted), most notably his affair with Barbara Parker, whom he married (get this!) only a year after Agatha died (in 1976). He died a year later, so he only got Babs for a short little while (I'm happy to say!). I was paying more attention to what Agatha Christie had said about liking to be married to an archaeologist, saying, that the older things got the more he liked them! Ha! (He was also 14 years younger than her, and, again, she was probably desperately hoping this would indeed be true!) I wondered if maybe she traveled with him, not so much as fodder for her imagination, but more to keep her eye on him! I already knew that my own J had fallen for a girl or two while away for summers at Abila, as only a year before a letter had been sent to my house (by mistake?) pleading for J to understand that she was already engaged to another guy! (This had caused another blow up between us, but still I married him amyway. And my J never promised faithfulness, only loyalty.) Ultimately, though, I had to prepare for the reality of things, not the way I dreamed them up, but the way they would be. And so I prepared my packing list for the items we would need to take with us for our eight week stay in Jordan. This was the late 20th Century, after all, and archaeology had changed.