Happy 2016 everyone! Hope all of your New Year celebrations were joyous and exciting. Mine was relaxing. I didn't do anything special, and was asleep well before midnight. Classes are still moving along, with one more week left in the semester. The semester break is going to be very busy, with papers and traveling and fun, and I'm excited to reach it.
The past two weeks have been pretty normal. Every week we go to classes, occasionally one of them gets cancelled which gives us a respite. However, this also means that we now have to be worried about needing make-up classes. Sunday, for example, we will be having a make-up class for our Classical Period history course, since we missed the last class as a result of a field trip. While the class is sometimes very interesting, I'm not looking forward to having class on Sunday.
This past Thursday we had a field trip to Tel Megiddo, also known as Armageddon. The site of the Last Battle between the army of heaven and the forces of evil, the site is a major tourist location for people from all over the world. Our professor Israel Finkelstein is the director of the current excavations there, and guided our tour. Being able to visit the site under his guidance was a dream come true for many people in the program, including second-year students. He is an expert in his field and one of the most well-known Israeli archaeologists of the last fifty years.
Since he is teaching a seminar on the Megiddo excavations, the tour focused less on the history and information about the archaeological remains and more on specific details or interesting stories. Much of the tour involved identifying and seeing first-hand the features and locations that we had talked about in class, as well as putting the site into a broader, geographical context. The weather wasn't great, but visibility was good enough to see Mt. Tabor and Mt. Gilboa in one direction and Mt. Carmel in the other direction. The major importance of Tel Megiddo comes from its location at the opening of a path through the Carmel ridge that links the coastal plain, known in antiquity as the Via Maris, with the Jezreel Valley. This route is the easiest and most direct route from Egypt to Damascus and Mesopotamia, and was valued by every major Near Eastern civilization from the Pharaohs to the kings of Babylon. It is even mentioned by name in inscriptions dating back to Pharaoh Thutmoses III.
The importance of stratigraphy and archaeological method is greatly important to Israel Finkelstein, and much of the tour was devoted to identifying and explaining these concepts through the use of the archaeological remains. While it is commonly known that the deeper something is in the ground or the lower its elevation is the older it is, sometimes this is not the case. On Megiddo, for example, the original hill slopes asymmetrically, causing certain areas to be higher than others. When this is combined with building patterns, it is possible that remains on the surface in one area do not always correspond chronologically with remains in another area. For example, there is an area near the gate where the remains at the highest point are in fact older than structures a few meters away and lower in elevation. Without being able to correctly identify and distinguish pottery and architecture types, a completely wrong picture could be assumed based solely on the elevation. Details like this become much more poignant and understandable when viewed in the field and by an expert.
Visiting Megiddo, while an exciting opportunity in its own right, was made even more beneficial to our studies with the presence of Israel Finkelstein. I cannot emphasize enough how much of an educational and significant experience it became for all of us through his unique insight into Megiddo, where he has worked for the past twenty-plus years. No other person in the world knows more about the archaeology and history of this place than Israel Finkelstein, he has given tours to presidents, prime ministers and celebrities, and he took us on a tour of his baby. It was for this opportunity that I came to study at Tel Aviv University.
One more week of classes. We have another tour planned for next Thursday, which will end the first semester. Hopefully they don't pile on too much work for us to do over the six-week vacation! Until next time!
Attached here is the link to all of my photos, for those that don't look at or don't have Facebook. It includes all the photos I've taken while I've been here in Israel, including some of the less spectacular ones that I choose to omit from publishing on Facebook. The link will work no matter how many photos I add, so saving this link will always show you the most up to date files.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rzg8dgcag9yjjx7/AADeP0ft-J6r_xxApFqm7p1xa?dl=0
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