Louisbourg, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

At the end of August I was traveling in the Maritimes of Canada with my sister-in-law, Flavia Morden, and we visited the site of Louisbourg on the east coast of Cape Breton. Two days before our visit, Hurricane Bill had pounded this coastline with punishing waves and torrential downpours, but we enjoyed clear skies and a gentle breeze.

The site is a reconstruction of the French fortress of Louisbourg, first established in 1713. It was the third busiest seaport in North America during the 18th century. Because of its strategic importance it was successfully beseiged first by New England troops in 1745 and then by British troops in 1758. It was abandoned by the British in 1768.

The reconstruction of the site was started in the 1960's under Prime Minister Diefenbaker and became the largest reconstruction project in North America, with nearly one quarter of the original walled town having been rebuilt. First the site was excavated as most of the stone buildings had been robbed away, leaving only their foundations. Then by comparing these results with the detailed accounts in archives in France, England, Scotland, the US and Canada, the fortifications and buildings were reconstructed. In many cases, we know exactly who built each structure, have the original architectural plans and know who lived in them.

Today one arrives at the site in buses provided by Parks Canada in order to keep the sprawling parking lots necessary for the hundreds of visitors away from the site. During its heyday, one would have approached the fortress from the sea, like through the seagate, Porte Frederic, seen in the photo above.

Not only military personnel occupied the fortress and the view below shows several houses on the main street leading up from Porte Frederic, including from left to right, the Hotel de la marine, A L'Epee Royal, and the Maison Benoist. Some of the houses are furnished with period furniture, reconstructing the lifestyles of the various inhabitants, while others are fitted with information displays on different aspects of the life of the community: building techniques, trade, fishing, and military life.



During the summer, the town is populated again by reectors who garden, tend livestock, cook, wash clothes, chop wood, tend fires in period dress. So much is known about the original inhabitants that many of the reenactors know not only the names but the lives of the people they are reviving.



Being a fortress, the military had a visible roll to play both in the past and today. Walking through the fortress, the barracks, the military bakery and the smithy, one talks to officers and enlisted men and enjoys accounts of their lives while living here. It is thrilling to be able to watch muskets and cannon being fired. History really comes to life in this amazing corner of Canada's Eastern shore.

Andrea Berlin, Co-director of Tel Kedesh

A couple of weeks ago I talked about Sharon Herbert, one of my directors at Tel Kedesh. Now I have the pleasure to introduce my blog to the other director of Tel Kedesh, Andrea Berlin. Andrea and I were both graduate students at the University of Michigan and she has gone on to fame and glory and is now a professor at the University of Minnesotta in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies. She did her dissertation on the Coarse Wares from Tel Anafa, an excavation directed by Sharon Herbert. Since then she has worked on Hellenistic material all over Israel as well as in Egypt, Cyprus and Turkey, most notably (for my viewpoint as a classical archaeologist) at Troy!

Above you see me and Andrea on the Tel at Kedesh after she gave me an update on the site.

Banias

Last weekend we also went to Banias, another site which is on the slopes of Mt Hermon and is another source for the River Jordan. It has a natural cave carved out of a dramatic rock face. All this natural beauty made it logical that the site should be dedicated to the god Pan when the Ptolemies controlled the Upper Galilee. Pan was the Greek god of herds and wild spaces and was closely associated with Arcadia in Greece. It was usual to chose a cave or wild space in which to worship him, so this cave and rock face with the nearby spring was a natural space.

Above is a view of the spring at Banias.

View of the Temple Terrace at Banias which was built up in front of the cave which one can see in the background. The first temple was built right in front of the cave mouth by Herod the Great (at the time of the Roman Emperor Augustus 27 BCE - 14 CE) and later constructions expanded east across the terrace.

In this picture, Andrea Berlin, our fearless leader explains the excavations of the temple terrace which she participated in for four years during the late 1980's and for which she published the Hellenistic pottery.

Tel Kedesh Group Shots or "Mr DeMille, these pots are ready for their closeup!"

Peter Stone and Meghan McFarlane setting up the shots, observed by Andrew Boos.

A selection of cookware, semi fine and spatter ware vessels.

A group shot of the Semi Fine Wares.

When on an archaeological dig, one can get so immersed in the day to day details of the project that one can lose sight of why we are doing all this... to publish! There are many ways to publish material: preliminary reports, final reports, giving papers at professional meetings and lectures to the general public. One of my professors at Texas A&M, Richard Steffy, said as he wearily prepared for yet another lecture tour, that he would know when his work was finally published when people stopped asking him to give lectures! To that end, one needs lots of good illustrative pictures of the site and its finds.

This past week Peter Stone who is publishing the pottery, prepared with conservator Meghan McFarlane, a series of group shots of material which was excavated by Ameera Elrasheedy in 2008 from an important context in the Hellenistic Administrative building at Tel Kedesh, but only repaired in 2009 by Meghan and Suzanne Davis.

Safet, Capital of the Upper Galilee

On Thursday Miriam Segall suggested an excursion to Sefat (or Safed)as she had visited the city on a tour of Israel 2 years before and wished to revisit a silversmith who she had met then. She invited Bonny and I to accompany her and we took off after lunch.
The drive from Ramot Naftali is beautiful in the hills of of the Upper Galilee. Safet is the hometown of Jewish mysticism or 'kabala' and was an important centre of learning in the late Medieval Period. Now the old city has become a centre for art and handicrafts.
The old city occupies the high ground which is capped by the Citadel whose ruins are set in a wooded park. Miriam, Bonny and I wandered through the old city and soaked in the atmosphere of the narrow streets. We visited a few artists studios and Bonny and Miriam both bought works by Simon Schlutskin.

A door transom decorated with two symmetrically placed lions with three doves flying above.

Another door in old Safet with the same heraldic lions with doves flying above.

View into a courtyard in old Sefat.

Visit to Tel Dan

One of the joys of being on an archaeological dig is the possibility of visiting other sites on the day off. Andrea, one of the co-directors of the Tel Kedesh excavations, loves to tour around and take her students to some of the points of interest in the Upper Galilee. This week she lead the group to Tel Dan and Banias (see the next blog post).
Tel Dan is situated at one of the springs which feeds the Jordan River on the southern slopes of Mount Hermon. It has been occupied since before the impressive Middle Bronze Age arched gate was constructed, and has impressive finds of both the Middle Bronze Age and the Early Iron Age. The archaeological ruins are situated in a lovely National Park and the nature trails wander through a wooded park and criss-cross over the streams. It is a lovely place to spend a hot summer day!
One of the important parts of the site is the High Place. When Jereboam led a group who dissented with Solomon's son Reheboam and came to the Upper Galilee, he had to solve the problem of where his followers would worship now that they were cut off from access to the Temple in Jerusalem. He established two cult centres, at either end of his territory. Tel Dan was the northernmost one.


The Tel Dan High Place is pictured above and you can see the area of the altar on the lower level to the left and the temple proper on the podium to the right. There are two main architectural phases with the early Iron Age construction and then a Hellenistic refurbishment.
Also dating to the Early Iron Age is the citadel gate. As you enter the city gate, you may have been confronted with a judge or dignitary of the city who would monitor who was coming and going. The evidence for this is a dais which was protected by a canopy. There is a foundation and carved stones which would have supported wooden posts. larry Staiger, excavator of Ashkelon has suggested that this foundation may merely be a olive press, but what an olive press was doing right in the passageway of the main gate is a mystery.

Undeterred by the controversy, Meghan, Hannah and I, The Shed Folk, are posed in the picture above on the judge's dais and are looking suitably snooty and judgemental!

Belle Voir Crusader Castle

Andrea Berlin and Richard Redding led our little band of intrepid tourists to see a couple of sites on our drive from Jerusalem to Tiberias where we were to spend the night. By far the most spectacular site was Belle Voir. Andrea drove Richard's car up the many switchbacks to the plateau on which the castle is situated overlooking the Jordan Valley. Here you see Andrea and Richard in one of the castle's remaining doorways.

The castle is well preserved with the outer wall rising obove the moat. Below you see me posing with Miriam and Bonny at the southeast corner of the castle where it rises above the moat near the cliff dropoff.

The picture below shows the situation of the castle perched on the cliff face overlooking the Jordan Valley. Across the valley you see the Golan heights and Jordan and Syria. At the north end of the Valley, Kinneret or the Sea of Galilee is visible in the haze.


Below is a view of the castle and the moat. The excavation of the moat provided building material for the construction of the castle. the dark stone is volcanic basalt and is the natural bedrock. The moat protected the castle from attack from the plateau and would have been crossed by means of a drawbridge.

The wind was blowing strongly on the beautiful sunny June day when we visited, giving us respite from the heat, but it must have been different story and not as pleasant for the crusader knights who had to man this stronghold in winter!

The Jordan Valley

During the mid-dig break, I had the opportunity to drive up the Jordan Valley from Jerusalem and visit the Crusader Castle at Belle Voir. As beautiful as the castle is, the reward for driving up the switchbacks is the breathtaking view of the Jordan Valley and the Sea of Galilee. Here is a picture of me at the lookout point. Later we drove on to Tiberias on the Kinneret and had a lovely dinner of St Peter's fish while watching the sunset turn the Golan fiery red.

Tel Kedesh and the Shed Folk

When most people think about archaeology, they focus on the fieldwork, the digging and the finding of artifacts in their context. But for me as registrar, my work starts when the artifacts come in out of the field and the process of recording continues. At Tel Kedesh this post excavation life of the artifacts has a team of people involved and below is a group shot of this group which I like to call the Shed Folk as we work in a converted garage shed!
In this picture I am on the left and as registrar, all non-ceramic finds pass through my hands when they come out of the field. Pottery has a different route and comes into the shed once the ceramicist Peter Stone, pictured kneeling on the right, has decided that they are worthy of inventory. I then pass these registered pots on to the conservators Suzanne Davis, standing on the right, and Meghan McFarlane standing in the middle. They mend the pots and treat the objects requiring specialized care. Once they have been cleaned and mended, they are ready for their closeup, and are photographed and then drawn by our artist Hannah Schnobrich, pictured standing second from left.
A special class of finds are the huge volume of animal bone which is studied by Richard Redding, pictured standing second from right. He washes and analyzes the huge quantity, which second to pottery is our most ubiquitous find from the excavation. This year he is teaching Emily Kaspari, pictured kneeling on the left, the ins and outs of bone identification.

It gets pretty hot in the shed and we keep ourselves going with music! I have been able to make a list of music which I have been introduced to from other people's ipods. This year I forgot my speakers and so the shed folk would like to thank Charlotte Maxwell-Jones for lending us her speakers.

Sharon Herbert, one of the Directors of Tel Kedesh

At the end of last week I visited the site for the first time since I had come to Israel. Up until then, I had been dealing with the backlog of registry as I had arrived late. I love to see the site and see where all the objects are coming from which cross my desk.
Sharon Herbert, who is one of the co-directors of the Tel Kedesh excavations, is an old friend of mine and is the one who invited me to participate on the project back in 2006. Three years later she is back at it again for the last field season in this publication cycle and I am back to assist.
Sharon has dug in Israel since the 1970's when Saul Weinberg invited her to participate in the excavations at Tel Anafa, a small tel across the valley at the foot of the Golan heights. She took over that excavation and published not only the years when she directed the project, but the previous 10 years when Saul Weinberg directed. She then went on to co-direct the survey and excavations with henry Wright at Coptos in Egypt. then she came back to israel to dig her in 1997.
We are standing on the edge of the site, on the north side of the Persian and Hellenistic Administrative Building. I am the one wearing a Tilley hat on the right, Sharon is in the baseball cap on the left. Andrew Ossi took the picture with my camera.

Week Two and the Case of the Strange Find

Last week I started this blog with the help of Meghan McFarlane, one of the conservators on the dig this season. Today I had the help of Victor Morgan when I was trying to place a photograph behind my blog heading. I took the photo this afternoon of the discard sherds in oneof Ameera's trench units. It sums up for me the reality of digging as this is the kind of material that archaeologists mainly deal with rather than the golden statues of Holywood imagination!



But speaking of Victor and vivid imaginations reminds me that I should tell you about a strange find which crossed my desk as registrar last week. A bag arrived in my in-box with a weird tag as you can see on the left. What was stranger was the contents of the bag, seen above on the right. We are digging in the Hellenistic levels of the site and so turning up a Chalcolithic Mother goddess figurine would be highly unlikely. Of course this is Victor's creation with the goddess sitting on her base with two "offering" vessels in front of her. It seems that the goddess was not amused for the day after her false image was created, Victor fell backwards into a trench and sprained his wrist!

If you wish to get the real scoop on the excavations at Tel Kedesh, check out the dig blog at University of Michigan Kelsey Museum website . The Tel Kedesh blog was the brainchild of the chief conservator at the Kelsey Museum, Suzanne Davis, and has entries on all aspects of the excavation.

Week Two at Tel Kedesh, Israel 2009

This is my second day off on the Tel Kedesh excavations in Israel and Meghan McFarlane has just helped me set up this blog. Since she has experience with blogs (visit her blog at Involving the Senses), she has volunteered to initiate me into the joys of blogging!

This is the third season I have been involved in the Tel Kedesh excavations, serving as registrar. I came first to Tel Kedesh in 2006 and then again in 2008. These excavations were the first time I was stationed in the lab rather than working in the field and it was a great transition for me. But now I love working in the registry and seeing all the finds cross my desk from the entire site. I also love working with the conservators and artists as I feel we are a team which prepare the objects for their debut on the world stage of academia!

In coming blogs I will be sharing my experiences on the dig while I am here, and later stories of my past experiences in the field as well as my adventures guiding tours for the travel company Odyssey Adventures in Archaeology, a company for which I am a partner with Willie Rowbotham and Gayle Gibson.