Rebekah Call, Author at Tel Akko

The Call to Listen

I have heard the Call to Prayer (Adhan) many times in my life. While living in Jerusalem for two years, it was a normal part of my day. I rarely stopped to listen, perhaps because most of the mosques played a prerecorded version of the Adhan over cheap loudspeakers, making the Call a tinny, unintelligible whine. But Al-Jazzar mosque is the largest mosque in the Old City of Akko, and seems to not only use better speakers, but also to engage a real, living Muezzin. I immediately noticed the difference. The Muezzin’s voice is rich and full. I can identify individual words. All of the musical ornamentations are articulated clearly. He has turned the Adhan into a song of meditation. And now, instead of largely tuning it out, when the Adhan starts, I stop (whenever I can) and listen to this beautiful expression.

Since Akko is perhaps the best-preserved crusader city in the world, there has been an emphasis in my studies here on the crusades: what led to them, what happened during the crusades, and their aftermath. The crusades, in all their gory glory, are excellent examples of the danger of harboring fear and contempt toward different religions, races, or cultures. This is not a short-lived danger. True, the crusades ended over five centuries ago. But the effects of the crusades are still shaping our world today. The Crimean War was an ideological continuation of the fourth crusade (in which Western Christianity went to war against Eastern Christianity), and it in turn led to World Wars I and II (which significantly influenced the international scene today). I acknowledge that this is a gross oversimplification of hundreds of years of history. However, the point still stands that we continue to live with the repercussions of the crusades.

Would the tragedy of the crusades have happened if the Eastern and Western churches had really listened to each other? Or if Islam and Christianity had learned to not only notice, but to treasure the beauty of the other? Living in an ancient city and learning its history highlights similar challenges in our own time. But is much easier to identify the mistakes of the past than to create solutions for the future. As I think about the potential trajectories of society, it seems that an important step could be to listen and treasure the “others” among us, regardless of how different their backgrounds may be.

Jul, 2019

By Rebekah Call

One Man’s Trash. . .

“So are you like Indiana Jones?”

This is probably the question people most frequently ask when they discover I’m working on an archaeological dig. In reality, it is not nearly as glamorous—or as dangerous—as a day in the life of Indiana Jones. There are no booby traps, Nazi officers, or pits of snakes. The closest we come to any of that is the (very) infrequent sighting of a scorpion or snake whose habitat we happen to be invading.

So what do we actually do on a dig? Well, we dig. We move lots and lots of dirt. Sometimes it’s a quick process, moving square feet of dirt within minutes by using a pickaxe. Sometimes it requires an eye for detail, taking off millimeters at a time, by gently scraping with the edge of a trowel. And sometimes, excavation happens with the careful strokes of a soft brush. After removing layers of soil, we sift everything, to make sure we didn’t miss any finds as we dug.

What’s the point then, if not to save the world from Biblical plagues?

There are two main purposes that stand out to me. The first is the rare “special find:” items that were not trash, but that still were buried in the soil of time. Finding such an object makes all the sweat, fatigue, and sore muscles worth it. They are reminders that while civilizations may have changed, humanity remains largely the same. This is what could be considered the glamor of archaeology. On the entire dig site, there are anywhere from two to six special finds each day. These could be unbroken pottery jugs, figurines, coins, beads, or other pieces of jewelry.

The second important element is the more mundane, but equally important analysis of the “trash:” things so broken or beyond salvage that the ancients viewed them as worthless, which is saying a lot, considering that they recycled just about everything. The trash could be things like animal bones, pottery shards, or olive pits. These are thoroughly cleaned and examined, and the most indicative pieces are kept. Such items can help with dating the finds from the same level, and can also tell us a lot about how people lived—what kinds of food they ate, whether they had trade with foreign countries, or what kinds of trades were commonly practiced (like blacksmithing or dye production). This can greatly enrich our understanding of the ancient world (and give a unique view into our own time).

And that is how one person’s trash becomes an archaeologist’s treasure.

Perhaps a type of tarantula? Its body was about the size of my thumb.

A metal ring-pendant (a special find!)

A glass bead. It disintegrated almost immediately.

Archive :

The Call to Listen

The Call to Listen

One Man’s Trash. . .

One Man’s Trash. . .