Happily we are back! Sorry to have disappeared on everyone for a couple of days.
It was a busy week in Grid 47as we finally returned to the sewer. On Thursday we started excavating its roof in the hopes we would find some ceramics that would help us date it. Unfortunately, we only recovered a small piece of glass but we did make another interesting discovery. While cleaning the sewer Busby and crew found a feeder channel which we will start excavating tomorrow. It was a very interesting discovery that may explain some walls we can see running through the orchestra of the odeon.
Work also continued in Probe #1 as we continue to hunt for the Hellenistic period under the Roman period buildings in Grid 47. Patrick has excavated it from the beginning and beyond. Daniel challenged us to go down 75 centimeters on Thursday and the crew worked hard in getting down over 80 cm. What are we finding in the probe? Iron Age pottery. Very interesting and quite surprising.
Grid 51 has continued to excavate the floors in their Persian period building and to move Big Dirt.
Grid 38 took a photograph of all of Shimi's square and is now prepared to float the entire square first thing tomorrow -- that's right, the entire square which consists right now of either walls or floors.
It was a long weekend for us this weekend. Yesterday the volunteers headed off on a field trip to Masada, Ein Gedi and Qumran.
We're in the home stretch now. Final photos are on Friday!