24
Jul, 2019

By Casey Sennett

Finding My Home at Akko

I have always struggled with homesickness. Whether I am away from my parents for a night or a month, I typically suffer from separation anxiety. I thought, however, that I had outgrown that anxiety when I spent spring break this year studying abroad in Paris. Since I suffered no separation anxiety in Paris, I thought I could manage a longer study abroad experience this summer.

I managed to fly to Israel with no problems and spent hours in the Ben Gurion airport with no signs of anxiety; however, when I arrived at the Nautical Academy, I began to feel the separation and struggled to suppress my anxiety. I spent the first couple days at Akko missing my parents and American food dearly. I was not optimistic about my stay at Akko, I wanted nothing more than to go home to my parents and my cats. I knew, however, that I could not leave. I had committed to the program and I knew that I would never be able to travel the world and pursue my career aspirations if I could not spend time away from my parents.

I began to cope with the distance with long phone calls home and promises of taking me to Chili’s and to see Spiderman: Far From Home when I got home.  As the days went on, I began to feel more comfortable with the other students, participants, and faculty at Akko. I had been worried about coming to Akko and not knowing anyone, but most of the students and participants were in Israel for the first time and did not know anyone else in the group prior to coming to Israel.  I met a majority of the group at the airport, but I slowly began to meet and interact more with others at meals, on the Tel, during pottery washing, and on excursions in Akko and Israel. When you spend six hours a day in a square with someone or at least two hours a day washing pottery with someone you tend to learn a lot about them.

I was worried about not finding my place at Akko, but it found me. After the first couple of days I had not anticipated to be comfortable at Akko. I thought I had resigned myself to counting down the days until I could go home. I, however, reached outside of my comfort zone and began to meet and learn more about the other people in the program. Those interactions slowly began to make me feel less lonely and foreign. Although I do still miss home on occasion, I have become comfortable with everyone in the program and feel good about being away from home.

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24
Jul, 2018

By Quentin Stickley

The Living City: Old Akko, Conservation, and Gentrification

The old city of Akko is unlike any other historical site I’ve visited in that it is a place where people are still living and making history much like they did in the past. It has not been roped off and sterilized for easy digestion. When you walk into the old city, you will encounter people selling fruit on the street, feeding stray cats or shooing them from their doorsteps, and going to and from their places of worship. Colorful street art decorates walls and doors. There are shops and attractions catering to tourists, certainly, but the old city is also a place where people make their homes, raise their children, and practice their religions. It is a delight to visit, but I am always concerned with the fuzzy line between visiting the city and encroaching upon the lives of Akko’s residents. Gentrification as a result of tourism is a grave threat to historic neighborhoods, especially those like Old Akko which are populated mostly by minority Arabs who are also relatively less wealthy. Since UNESCO designated the old city as a World Heritage Site. Building codes meant to preserve the historic structures have made it more expensive for residents to improve their homes, making life in the old city less feasible for many people who live there.

The nearby site of the ancient harbor, Caesarea provides a good example of a gentrified historical site. In addition to its ancient Roman and Byzantine remains, Caesarea was a Crusader site, and later historic buildings still stand, such as the “Bosnian Mosque” built by immigrants from Bosnia who founded a fishing village there in the 19th century. Today, however, the Crusader city at Caesarea feels empty. The buildings have been turned into restaurants and souvenir shops; the people there are all either tourists or people whose job it is to cater to them. Caesarea is a wonderful site with a lot of historical value, but seeing the old city there after coming from Akko made me feel sad. How many people did gentrification displace there? I say all of this aware that I am myself a tourist, and as a student of archaeology who is passionate about preserving historical and archaeological sites. If there is a healthy middle ground between preserving ancient structures and preserving the lives built by the people who now occupy them, I certainly couldn’t tell you where it might lie. But visiting Akko has impressed upon me the importance of seeking such a middle ground, and the fact that historical sites are not frozen in the past. As long as people continue to occupy them, those people will continue to add to the rich legacy of the place.

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21
Jul, 2016

By Anna Bidstrup

A Squareless Beginning

My expectations for this dig, and Akko in general for that matter, were completely wrong. I thought that archeology in Tel Akko would mirror my past archeological experience at the San Martino Archeological Field School in Torano di Borgorose, Italy. I expected hours of troweling, sweeping and finding artifacts alongside close companions in a square that I would know like the back of my hand. Last summer, I spent every day in the same square, learning all of the unique features the architecture had to offer and intimately understanding the strata and history of my square. I got attached to that square—and I looked forward to having a square to call home again, but this time in Akko, unfortunately for me, I didn’t find a home for the first week and a half.

The first few days on the Tel were hectic to say the least. Whether we were moving sandbags or cleaning the Tel, it felt chaotic and almost foreign. Rather than a square, I was assigned to an area in which I floated between the squares, only changing course when my area supervisor told me to go somewhere else. As people started to excavate in squares that would become their own, I was still meandering around the Tel, doing odd jobs to seemingly pass the time. I found myself feeling jealous of my friends who were learning the intricate details about their respective squares; while I barely (and literally) touched the surface of the squares that I worked in. Even if I did feel connected to a square, like when I found a worked bone in NN20, it was fleeting since I would never return the following day. In reality, everything I was doing was important or at least a necessary step in collecting the data that allows us to understand what life was like thousands of years ago.

Even though I did not enjoy my time as a nomad on the Tel, there are definitely a few positive things that came along with the job (or lack there of). First off, I occasionally was filled in with brief histories of different squares. These short descriptions gave me a semi-solid background of the Tel, but even now my understanding of the Tel is far from complete. Another positive aspect of the floater life is having the ability to sample different activities, like learning how to trim a bulk or participating in survey. I’ve done survey for the past two days, and it is incredibly rewarding but exhausting (you essentially dig an average of six 40 by 40 by 40 cm holes throughout the course of the day under the hot Israeli sun). Now I know this last one is quite cheesy, but I met a lot of different people and made some great friends and memories through my various squareless adventures on the Tel.
Now I have found what I would call a “half-home” in the sense that I dig in PP19 that I eventually joined later on. However, I’m not expected to go there every day since I also participate in survey and conservation. I don’t get that exciting yet familiar feeling when I’m in the square about to start excavating, but I still enjoy it nonetheless. I love getting updates from my fellow square-mates at the end of the day, but I don’t feel the same square attachment as I did with my square on my dig last year.

It is okay that things are different here and I’m so fortunate that I have the opportunity to experience another archaeological dig. Overall, I cannot recommend the floater lifestyle but I can’t NOT recommend it either. All digs are different, so you will never know what you like until you get out there and try it. 10/10 would recommend going on an archaeology dig.

 

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Finding My Home at Akko
The Living City: Old Akko, Conservation, and Gentrification
Studying conservation in old Akko
A Squareless Beginning
Students of tel Akko with local kids - learning to conserve Akko
Thursday 14th July
Tuesday 12th July
Tuesday 12th July