So this is the Journals section. Huh 
(yes, never written here before, besides commenting on occasion).
I had a great day yesterday and wanted to share.
As some of you may know, I'm going to Bar-Ilan University next year to study archeology and another subject that I haven't decided yet. A friend of mine who just finished his BA in Historical Geography, which is also studied in BIU's archeology dept., sent me last a flier that said that the archology dept. is organizing a fieldtrip for tour guides and other people. For those who don't know (myself included, until last week), in Israel tour guides need to have a license, which is earned after taking classes in tour school (yes, this is a thing). To maintain the license, they need to go on such guide-specific fieldtrips every now and then. So this was one such trip, which the BIU archeology dept. decided to organize.
I'm not a guide, but I checked, and they said that people who are signed up to the department may also sign up, so I did.
The trip was archeology-oriented (duh?). We went to Tel Safi, which is biblical Gat, which some of you may recognize as one of the chief five Plishti (Phillistine) cities. Tel Safi is in its last year of excavations, after having been dug for 25 years now by Prof. Aren Maeir. They haven't managed to uncover everything yet, but Prof. Meir said he wants to take time off to properly record all of the findings.
In the tel, we had lectures by Prof. Maeir and Dr. Amit Dagan. Gat was not only the largest of the five Plishti cities, it was also quite likely the largest city in the whole Land of Israel during the Iron Age, with the upper city covering about 170 acres and the lower city about 400-500 acres. It's believed that about 5000 people lived there, making it an ancient-world megapolis. Gat was destroyed around 830 BCE by Chazael, king of Aram (a key player in the time of Eliyahu and Elisha and maker of the famous Tel Dan stele). After visiting some of the areas currently being excavated, we were split up between three areas and joined the diggers. I myself happened to be with a group of non-Israelis, including the archeologists who were in charge of that specific area. The lead archeologist in that area was Prof. Jeff Chadwick.
Here's one of the pottery shards I found:
Afterwards, we went to eat lunch in the nearby kibbutz and then we helped wash some of the pottery shards:
After arriving back in Bar Ilan, I went to meet a friend of mine who's about to finish his BA there (not in archeology). Last time I was there, the library wasn't open to non-students due to Covid restrictions. Fortunately, now it is, so he gave me a tour of the library, which to me was exciting. For over a year now I've wanted to visit the National Library of Israel to check some hard-to-find books, but either I didn't have time, or wasn't able to, because of Covid. A downside of the NLI is that to access the books that I wanted to see, I would have had to ask for them to be brought from storage. And that's what's great about the BIU library, because they have copies of the books I wanted and they aren't in storage - they're right there on the shelves! So I plan on heading back there at least once next week.
And that was pretty much it.
(yes, never written here before, besides commenting on occasion).I had a great day yesterday and wanted to share.
As some of you may know, I'm going to Bar-Ilan University next year to study archeology and another subject that I haven't decided yet. A friend of mine who just finished his BA in Historical Geography, which is also studied in BIU's archeology dept., sent me last a flier that said that the archology dept. is organizing a fieldtrip for tour guides and other people. For those who don't know (myself included, until last week), in Israel tour guides need to have a license, which is earned after taking classes in tour school (yes, this is a thing). To maintain the license, they need to go on such guide-specific fieldtrips every now and then. So this was one such trip, which the BIU archeology dept. decided to organize.
I'm not a guide, but I checked, and they said that people who are signed up to the department may also sign up, so I did.
The trip was archeology-oriented (duh?). We went to Tel Safi, which is biblical Gat, which some of you may recognize as one of the chief five Plishti (Phillistine) cities. Tel Safi is in its last year of excavations, after having been dug for 25 years now by Prof. Aren Maeir. They haven't managed to uncover everything yet, but Prof. Meir said he wants to take time off to properly record all of the findings.
In the tel, we had lectures by Prof. Maeir and Dr. Amit Dagan. Gat was not only the largest of the five Plishti cities, it was also quite likely the largest city in the whole Land of Israel during the Iron Age, with the upper city covering about 170 acres and the lower city about 400-500 acres. It's believed that about 5000 people lived there, making it an ancient-world megapolis. Gat was destroyed around 830 BCE by Chazael, king of Aram (a key player in the time of Eliyahu and Elisha and maker of the famous Tel Dan stele). After visiting some of the areas currently being excavated, we were split up between three areas and joined the diggers. I myself happened to be with a group of non-Israelis, including the archeologists who were in charge of that specific area. The lead archeologist in that area was Prof. Jeff Chadwick.
Here's one of the pottery shards I found:
Afterwards, we went to eat lunch in the nearby kibbutz and then we helped wash some of the pottery shards:
After arriving back in Bar Ilan, I went to meet a friend of mine who's about to finish his BA there (not in archeology). Last time I was there, the library wasn't open to non-students due to Covid restrictions. Fortunately, now it is, so he gave me a tour of the library, which to me was exciting. For over a year now I've wanted to visit the National Library of Israel to check some hard-to-find books, but either I didn't have time, or wasn't able to, because of Covid. A downside of the NLI is that to access the books that I wanted to see, I would have had to ask for them to be brought from storage. And that's what's great about the BIU library, because they have copies of the books I wanted and they aren't in storage - they're right there on the shelves! So I plan on heading back there at least once next week.
And that was pretty much it.
