Digging at Gath

Some pics from the dig at Gath. First, me digging, second me and sometime controversial archaeologist, Israel Finkelstein, and last a group pic of the Australian team for 2010. Check out this pot I excavated here. I haven't dug up an Ashdoda figurine however, but I have dug up a lot of sherdy floor. Hm, I wonder who it is that Aren Maeir on the Gath blog is talking about in regards to being excited about Finkelstein's visit? Could it be me the shameless groupie?

I dig Ashdoda

I want to dig up an "Ashdoda" figurine at Gath (see above picture). Or an Astarte plaque, that would also be good. Or... perhaps I'll just have to settle for seeing them at a museum, I know Ashdoda is in the Rockefeller Museum in Jerusalem. I could spend ages writing up stuff about Ashdoda on this blog, but it's really easier for me to point you in the direction of Aegaeum 22 "Potnia: Deities and Religion in the Aegean Bronze Age" and its free pdf's, one of which is "The Mother(s) of All Philistines? Aegean Enthroned Deities of the 12th - 11th Century Philistia." which will give you more information on Ashdoda than I could. Now... back to pre-dig reading.

Off to the Monotheism Theme Park

Well, it's that time of year again - digging season in Israel. I'm off to work at the site of Tell es-Safi/Gath, which is the Philistine city of Gath, for a month. Not only will it involve incredibly strenuous manual labour in the form of digging up pottery and bones and lugging rocks, causing one to have to eat halva for energy (see the above pic), but there will be some respite in the form of afternoon pottery washing and nightly lectures. Plus, field trips to other sites. Weekends will no doubt be spent recovering, then browsing the antiquities market in Jerusalem, which, from what I can gather is almost entirely looted or fake, bustling amongst the monotheistic religious sites, visiting other ancient (monotheistic and pre-monotheistic) sites in regional Israel, and eating. After the dig I'm spending five more days in Israel, during which I'll hit the museums - particulary the Israel Museum (if the archaeological wing is open) and the Bible Lands Museum, possibly the Eretz Israel Museum, then five days in Jordan. Then back home to icy winter.

O Mighty Isis, I've been tutoring

I haven't been able to update my blog - not that I'm a very frequent blogger anyway - because I have been FLAT OUT doing nine tutorials per week in first year Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Not only do I take nine hours of tutorials, I have to correct Two Lots of 1000 word essays from all those tutes. Plus assess class presentations. (Ha ha, my friend Jason is tag-teaming me to correct the next lot of assessment. Wonder if I'll get roped into that as well?) I think I've marked more than 140 essays so far, and there's still more to do. I quite like marking, because it seems like editing to me. However, such an enormous load starts to make one occasionally nauseous - unless one has sufficent rest from it occasionally, like daring to have a one-day break from marking to refresh one's brain before getting back into it. Tutoring, by which I mean 'facilitating discussion by the students' is sort of interesting... Of course it is much more interesting for all concerned when the students actually do the required reading which would - if they did it - provide something to talk about. Otherwise I just can't stand the silence and tend to fill it myself with, well this week, stories of how Aphrodite was responsible for the Trojan War, to a large extent. This led into comparing the Aphrodite in the Iliad with the one in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, as well as highlighting links suggested in the Hymn, to Anatolian Kybele. Sure, I was veering off into Classics when I should have been in archaeology discussing the mound of Hisarlik (pretty much believed to have been Troy) and its layers, but hey... it's really the students who should be filling the void, not me! Today I made them get into groups, read the reading that they hadn't read, and then answer the question "What were the relationships between the Greeks, Trojans and Hittites?" It wasn't that successful because that was one of the most complicated sections of the reading, but if I had not done it, they'd have all stared at me expecting me to answer it. As it was, I put it back on them... Ha. I might try that again tomorrow. I am starting to see how students at university can be of interest to Romanist academic blogger, Mary Beard. In a previous comment to one of my blogs I was saying how I liked her blog but not the bits where she discussed how students can get into Cambridge... now that seems more interesting to me, seeing as I am dealing with the cream of school-leavers in my own tutes. Pity some of them don't realise how special a place at our university is and that they shouldn't slack off and waste it. Many of the students are brilliant, for what must be 18 year olds, I'm constantly astonished at some of them. Some of the work I am marking is extremely sophisticated. I can only imagine where they'll go with such brains!

My Favourite Sanctuary Model

Isn't this the most gorgeous, evocative little sanctuary model? When I first saw it, in an archaeology class, I found it compelling. It is Cypriot, from Kotsiatis, dates to the Middle Bronze Age, and basically depics a female figure and a large jar in front of triple bucrania (bull's skulls) erected upon some sort of probably wooden pillars or structure. There is at present no evidence out in the landscape for this sort of structure, probably because it disintegrated, being wooden and bone - although it may have had a paved floor (or simply beaten earth) - but this is a type of ephemeral cult structure that would have been erected within the landscape or else possibly within a chamber tomb. It seems easy to envisage how it was constructed, and I can't help but think that structures such as this add historical authenticity to some of the imagery of Traditional Witchcraft, such as the stang. It's such a simple little shrine, as is the stang when embedded in the ground (but with a skull attached, not naked). I like that sort of minimal but evocative outdoor temple. Images of a mask of Dionysus and simple garment on a pole, as seen in Classical vase painting, are also in this vein. Although this Cypriot example looks a little more permanent than a single-pole version, but only just a little. Oh, and another thought... Wasn't Wiccan founder, Gerald Gardner's, novel "A Goddess Arrives" set in Cyprus? (I haven't read it). Not that I am suggesting any connection really... Just doing free association.

Once Was Tarot Reader

Yes, Once Was Tarot Reader! I'm referencing the New Zealand film title "Once Were Warriors". Trusty Facebook has materialized an ex-boss and long lost friend, Nigel Cooper, who employed me as a Tarot Reader in his shop Mythical Moon back in the very early 1990s. Today he posted this photo of me onto his and my Facebook pages. It comes from newspaper coverage of his shop from back then, but I've never owned a copy of it and had only seen it once before in a tiny newspaper version several years after it was taken. I like it because it brings back memories of my life then - before I was a Tapestry Weaver, a job I took up straight after the Tarot job and which I've only just left in order to do a full time PhD. I'm also quite fascinated by the way I look so skinny in this photo. Not that I am saying that skinny is great, I'm just interested in how the older you get the fleshier you can also get - but not always and not everyone - apparently it's our metabolism... Not that I'm phat now, but I am rather... embonpoint. Sorry if all this mirror-gazing comes across as plain vain, I do admit to being quite interested in my own life - which doesn't mean that I am not also interested in others, I am!

I Love Roman Frescoes

Reading Mary Beard's blog It's a Don's Life, has encouraged me to blog about whatever I want and throw a bit of my university life in there too - seeing as I'll be intensively involved in that realm for the next three, if not more, years. So, while I'm formally studying - and love - prehistoric Aegean religion(s), mainly Crete but also Greece, Cyprus and the Levant, my secondary interest, or my back-burner interest, is Roman Religion. It seems fitting then to post an image that is Roman, yet that harks back to the Greek Bronze Age through the Trojan Epic, Homer's Iliad, intended to depict events in the Bronze Age. The Romans liked to claim Trojan ancestry, maybe that's why the sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis featured in this Roman fresco. This version of the story - the sacrifice bit - does not actually feature in Homer, but in the Epic Cycle which are later compositions designed to 'fill out' parts of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Remember when the Greek fleet wanted to set out for Troy there was no wind, in some versions because of the anger of Artemis. Various reasons for her anger are proposed: either Agamemnon (father of Iphigenia) had illicitly shot a stag within her grove; he had boasted that he was a finer hunter than the goddess; or he had broken a vow to give Artemis the most beautiful thing born the year of Iphigeneia's birth - which had been the girl herself. Anyway, whatever the cause of the deity's wrath, it would only be appeased by the sacrifice of Iphigeneia. She was therefore summoned to Aulis on the pretext of marrying Achilles, and then sacrificed. In some versions of the story Iphigeneia is substituted at the last minute for a deer - as in Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis - which is what this fresco depicts: Iphigeneia escaping. I just love the colours and I love the scratchy appearance of most Roman frescos. Roman Frescoes = Big Fan. [But please excuse the excessive use of wikipedia in my links! To tell the truth, all this text is simply an excuse to post this beautiful fresco!]