Gezer 2014 - Ready to Dig Deep

Day Five

By Gary D. Myers

After a long week of work, we finally cleared the entire causeway early Friday morning. It was great to see this white layer across most of the pool. When Macalister laid these stone across the pool, “He did us a favor,” to quote Dr. Dan Warner. By sealing the pool Macalister preserved critical data (pottery and other material) that may help us date the water system.

In the photo above you can see last year’s northeast probe just behind Amy and the southeast probe to the right. The southwest probe, near the bottom step, is filled with debris and is very hard to discern in this photo. The causeway is clearly visible – in some places it appears as a flat layer of chalky stone melded together by time and pressure, in other spots, you can see the rough individual stones. We believe the causeway that Macalister mentioned is the only possible explanation for this layer.

Once the causeway was cleaned, we took time to photograph it and film the week one video update. Hopefully we will be able to post the video tomorrow (it will take several hours to upload through the wifi at the hotel). After lunch we began cleaning the southwest probe and removing the causeway. Sunday we will begin sifting all the material we remove from the pool in hopes of establishing a date. With the sifting operation running it will be all hands on deck at the dig site. Everyone will busy throughout the rest of the dig.

Health and Hotel News
Many of us are still battling allergy/cold/sinus symptoms, but it seems that most no longer have issues with sore throats. So while there is quite a bit of sniffling and sneezing, it could be worse. The issues this year are nothing like the flu that swept through our group during the 2011 dig. We greatly appreciate the prayers offered on our behalf.

For most of last week more than half of our team had to stay at another hotel (closer to Jerusalem and farther from Gezer) due to a scheduling mix up at Neve Shalom. Friday, we were able to get the whole group to Neve Shalom. We love Neve Shalom and are happy to have the whole team here. Goodnight until the next update.