Volunteer Experience: Using the Past to Decide My Future

A bump in the road wakes me from my early morning daze. I look out the window of the bus and study the sun peeking over the mountains, shedding a golden light on the hills and seemingly dancing waters. I was currently witnessing a sunrise over the Sea of Galilee, something everybody should experience at least once in their lives. I was able to encounter this not only once, but every morning for an entire month. The fifteen minute 5:30 a.m. rides from Kibbutz Ginosar to the Bethsaida Excavation site allowed me this beautiful opportunity. This summer I joined other volunteers in an experience unlike any other – an archaeological dig.

Digging up the past to help uncover my future was my plan for the summer. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin – Madison with a degree in Anthropology and certificate in Classics, I needed some time to explore before choosing a masters degree program. My parents told me of a presentation they had seen about the dig from Dr. Rami Arav, a professor at the University of Nebraska, Omaha and head of the Bethsaida Excavations along with Dr. Richard Freund, a former Omahan. I looked into it and decided it would be a perfect opportunity to gain some insight on the field of archaeology and see what I am truly interested in studying. For four weeks I volunteered on the dig, indulging in an exhilarating, novel experience.

Two kilometers northeast of the Sea of Galilee lies Bethsaida, literally, “House of Fisherman.” This site is mostly referred to in 2^nd Temple Period sources. Bethsaida is thought to be the capital city of the biblical kingdom of Geshur in the Iron Age (~10^th century BCE). It was built with city walls and a city gate (discovered in 1996) to keep the Assyrians out. There is a plaza area with a street and behind the gate are four chambers. In spite of the fortification, the Assyrians did end up destroying the city in 743 BCE. This city was burned with a fire so hot that the rocks cracked, baked, and blackened. The burnt layers allow archaeologists to date areas to this specific year, making the site almost a snapshot in time – the day the city was burned. Though the city was destroyed, the Geshurites were not the last to use of this plot of land. The next most written about use is a 1^st century CE Roman city. Bethsaida is perhaps most popularly known as the site of the “feeding of the multitudes” and the “healing of the blind man.” It was once located on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, or the Kinneret, where Jesus is said to have walked on water. Because this site is so associated with Jesus, many come from near and far to tour the excavation area and to get a little bit dirty themselves.

The volunteers in the group were a motley crew of individuals. The first session I participated in included mostly retired Christians and seminary students wanting to know more about the Bible. I was surprised to be one of only two Jewish volunteers. In my next session, however, the retirees and Christian seminary students were replaced by some Yeshiva students and mostly Jewish college students from Connecticut. There were also photography students and seminary students from Germany, Austria, Finland, and South Africa. Each brought a different element for the group dynamic. Not only was I learning from the actual digging, but also from working closely in the digging pits with all different kinds of people.

Now for a day in the life of a Bethsaida excavator. You must be at the bus by 5:30 a.m. ready with digging clothes, water, hat, sunscreen, and the roll you saved from dinner the night before. Enjoy the moments of sunrise, for it will come up quickly and soon the scorching begins. Now, at 6 a.m., is the best time to dig, still being cool outside. Among some of the areas we dug were parts of the Iron Age chambers behind the city gate, the plaza and areas where the city wall collapsed onto the street, and a 1^st century AD Roman military tower. After someone takes the elevations of the land levels and records details on the area, you are free to take off from where you left off the day before, removing earth and rock that has not been touched for two thousand years. You carefully chip away at the terrain with your pick, or pateesh in Hebrew, keeping your eye out for treasures, filling up your buckets and sifting them. Digging is a tedious process of filling and sifting buckets one after another. It all feels worthwhile, though, when you make a find. At the site, things like fishing hooks and weights, Roman nails, pottery shards, glass, jewelry, coins and tombs can be found ranging from 10^th C BCE to relatively modern times. For instance, I found a Hasmonean, or Maccabean, coin from the 1^st century AD right after finding an old metal spoon from twenty years ago. This is because since the Romans’ demise, Bedouins and Syrian soldiers have taken their turns overrunning the area. Proof of Syrian occupancy from the 1950’s can be seen through foxholes, bunkers, ammunition, shoes, buttons, and cans left behind. Finding a tin can from 50 years ago is not nearly as exciting as uncovering a tomb from two thousand years ago. In the plaza area, a tomb was discovered that housed a full skeleton with his head cocked to the east. Was this a Jewish grave? What was his life like? What did he do? What did he eat? Excavating a tomb is exciting, but hard work. Due to my small stature, I was requested to do a lot of the work in the tiny area. I felt the reality of the situation when I uncovered the lower mandible. My breath was taken away. This was a real person, with a real name. A physical anthropologist came in to look at the remains. He collected samples and will analyze them to hopefully give us insight as to who this person was.

We break at 9 a.m. for breakfast that undoubtedly includes Turkish coffee, affectionately called “pottery shard coffee” referring to the massive amounts of dreg and bitterness to get people going. After breakfast, we dig again until 11 a.m. which is when we get our popsicle break! This refreshment was the highlight of most people’s day. We then resume digging until we clean up to get back on the bus at 12:30 p.m. Now we have time at Kibbutz Ginosar to have lunch and take a dip in the Kinneret or that much needed nap. We reconvene at 4:30 for the pottery reading. This is where we go over finds from the day before after they have been washed by the poor soul who had to scrub buckets and buckets of mostly tiny shards of pottery. The volunteers sort the pottery into rim and handle pieces, bone, flint, body, and a separate pile for pottery with special markings or different objects. Dr. Arav then goes through the pottery telling us what they are. Whether it is a Galilean Bowl or a Roman casserole dish, he always seems to know exactly what it is. We then mark the pieces and record them in the journal.

After a delicious dinner at Nof Ginosar, the hotel on the Kibbutz, we usually have a lecture by Dr. Arav, Dr. Freund, or another one of the professionals on the trip. They are always enlightening and range in topics from Bethsaida itself, Israeli history, Dead Sea Scrolls, to Nazareth. I have been blessed to have such an educational opportunity. It is amazing to learn how digging up the past can help us uncover not only what happened in days gone by, but also gives us insight into what is happening in our present times and what is to come in our future.

-- Joanna Jaffa Kay (2005 Dig Season Volunteer)

For further information and pictures on the Bethsaida Excavations, go to: www.unomaha.edu/bethsaida.

The Spirit of the Dig

Following is an excerpt from a lecture delivered years ago at Hendrix College in Arkansas by Dr. Nicolae Roddy, Assistant Professor, Old Testament, at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. Having participated myself in the excavation at Bethsaida, I believe Dr. Roddy does a splendid job of relating the very essence of what drives many of us to dig...........


. . . part of discovering what it means ultimately to be human is to confront humanity not as a mere observer, but in an active and participatory way. Digging at Bethsaida in June of 1997, one of my student volunteers who had come along to dig with his girlfriend, suddenly ran up to me with great excitement over having turned over a basalt stone and discovering a bull’s head carved on its downward face. Drew did not want to touch it again. What Rudolph Otto had termed the mysterium tremendum et fascinans—the awesome mystery of the sacred—had actually prevented this young business major from being able to treat this stone like any other stone. I encouraged him to overcome his sense of awe and retrieve the object from the soil. By the end of that day of digging we had recovered not only the three other basalt stone fragments that completed the stele, but had uncovered the basin where it had once stood. We knew from the context of destruction that the once complete bull-headed stele, which once served as an altar for a Mesopotamean moon god, had been cast down by the conquering Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser III sometime around 732 BCE and that its pieces had rested exactly where we found them some 2,730 years later. You could almost run the tape backward in your mind to see exactly how the stele had fallen. Also significant about the configuration of debris is that it indicates that no one was present to pick up the pieces before the dust of time came to cover it over until that exciting afternoon in June. From his experience of coming into contact with the Mesopotamean moon god, Drew not only learned that what it means to be human is to worship, but found out first hand what it means ultimately to be human by experiencing for himself the awesome and transforming power of sacred experience. When Drew goes on to become the CEO of some major corporation, who he is and how he conducts business will be positively affected by his unforgettable, extraordinary experience of disturbing a sleeping god.

By digging in the earth, then, we really encounter a kind of mirror reflection of ourselves. Kneeling there in the dirt and retrieving human artifacts compels one to think about them, and think about the men, women, and children who relied upon them. Like the Great Passing Sights that compelled Siddartha Gautama Buddha to set out in search of the true meaning of reality, we too come around to asking ultimate questions. Can you imagine what society would be like if we could find some way of attracting large numbers of people young and old into doing something that is not only exciting and entertaining but compels them to think about ultimate questions and not rely on the pat answers so many of us are given? Having supervised hundreds of Bethsaida volunteers already in my short career, I have received a great many appreciative cards and letters that speak of enriched lives. Their words serve to remind me of why it is I keep going back and evidence the kind of positive personal transformation I am here to tell you about. . . You see, adventures such as these cannot be so easily dismissed as peak experiences, or mere “nice times.” Journeys are in a sense pilgrimages toward the center, the axis mundi, and it is through pilgrimage that we find the center in ourselves, bringing us into a fuller and more authentic existence. Experiences such as these help make us truer to what we essentially are so that we may be truer in what it is we ultimately may be. Digging in the earth and handling the rubbish of people who are in every essential way just like us, we cannot help but be faced with the paradox I described earlier. You see, it is the journey that really counts, for if your ultimate desire is goodness and you tend only to today’s leg of the journey by doing the good, then the goal will take care of itself.
Ashley, a young volunteer who has traveled with me twice now to Bethsaida once sent me a note that says it best:

"Working in the dirt in places that no one has seen for thousands of years I gained an incredible sense of history. I see just how small I am. We are all just tiny specks of dust in something so much bigger and complicated and integrated than any of us can imagine. We all stand on the earth, but under us is everything that ever was. Someday our children will stand over us."


Excerpt from the lecture, "Recovering the Past; Discovering the Present: What Really Happens on an Archaeological Dig", as posted previously on the weblog, "Archaeological Digs".