Pondering Scapulomancy

Jul, 2016

By Justin Lev-Tov

Pondering Scapulomancy

Some days ago University of Chicago student Gwen Christy excavated a fine example of a notched scapula, that is, a (in this case) cow’s shoulder blade incised with many notches running along one side of it. What was its purpose? These are known objects in archaeological sites in the Levant and Cyprus (mainly) but no one agrees on what their use(s) was/were. The truism in archaeology is that when we don’t know what something is, it must be cultic – and in this case too scholars have assigned the objects a religious function, perhaps divining future events in vague parallel with the use of differently modified scapulas from ancient China, a ritual known as ‘scapulomancy’. Others have suggested more mundane uses: the bridge of a stringed musical instrument (could it withstand the strings’ tension?), separating strands of yarn during weaving (would the notches have been deep enough to hold in the threads?), or making rasping sounds while a stick or bone was rubbed against it, perhaps during a ritual (but the area of the notches shows no where from such repeated actions). Other ideas have come to my mind — maybe the notches were used in accounting or for marking calendrical time. Yet, the notches are quite uniform, which suggests they were all made at once. So, although we now have one of the best-preserved examples of this object, the enigma continues.

Akko, archaeology, bones, israel 2

Jul, 2016

By Darcy Calabria

I’ve Been Really Trying…. To Make a 3D Model

When you think of an archaeologist, what do you think of? A brawny man with a whip? A scrawny professor type? Basically people who are obsessed with the past and are very removed from reality? Not quite. Here at Tel Akko, we are leaping into the future with some cool tech that will not only benefit our search to understand the past, but will also lead to other applications in fields completely unrelated to archaeology. For the past few weeks I’ve been working on 3D photogrammetry. Every morning, before sunrise, a few of us go out to the tell to take pictures. Each day, we will be assigned a square which we then take pictures of from all angles.

We then take the pictures and put them into a program called AgiSoft. In this program, we take all of the photos and cover up all of the elements that we don’t want in the model, like shades, poles, or rope lines. The program then takes all of the photos and aligns the common features that it can then make a three dimensional model of.

Honestly, the computer does most of the hard work, but there is a little human effort that goes into making 50-some photos become a 3D representation of one of our squares. Most of my personal struggle comes from orienting the model. You would not believe how often I orient a model completely upside down and think it is right side up!

While the struggle can be somewhat frustrating, learning this program has been a lot of fun and given me a lot of opportunities that normally would not have happened. Seeing the sun rise up over the Mediterranean is one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. I may have to wake up a littler earlier and my day might be a little longer, but the mornings are peaceful and the results of all of our efforts are amazing. Like many things, it takes a village, and making these 3D models is no exception. It takes a lot of effort from our tiny team, and I really am trying.

3D photogrammetry, Akko, archaeology, israel, tel akko, Total Archaeology 2

Jul, 2016

By Lalita Limpichart

Akko rap

Breakfast on the tell is scenic and it gives me energy

They say don’t sit down in the squares, the scorpion is your enemy

I’m sweeping dirt under the sun until I get the tan on me

Because the soil scientist dig to find out the history

but the archaeologist digging to solve a mystery-

Akko, archaeology, israel, tel akko 1

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.

Akko, archaeology, conservation, israel, square, SURVEY, tel akko, Tel Napoleon, Total Archaeology 1

Jul, 2016

By Mark Van Horn

No Slacking on Slag

At Tell Akko, any square or area supervisor will be able to tell you that one of the ubiquitous finds is iron slag. Most squares that are undergoing excavation have at least one bag of slag coming out per day. Certain squares from seasons past, such as MM20, RR3, and most recently RR19 have been notorious for their ability to bring up kilos of slag or quintuple the amount of hammer scales that one might expect in a day. This isn’t just metal trash, however. When any object is created, there is a certain waste that is given off. While iron slag is by definition waste, by understanding the amount of slag that is given off we can attempt to gauge how much iron was being processed at the site and where it may have been coming from. In order to give insight to this process, we can track the story of an average piece of slag being recovered in a day of excavation on the Tell.

The first thing that a piece of Akko slag goes through (in the modern period, that is) is its excavation and discovery. Uncovering slag in situ on the Tell is always an exciting experience, because in many cases you are the first person to interact with it since it was deposited there almost 2,500 years ago. When students are digging, we give them a few pointers to help them identify slag accurately and effectively in the field.

The first key to field slag identification is the coloring of what otherwise looks like a normal rock. Although slag often acquires a very rocky look over the years, clear points of oxidation and rust will be apparent around the surface. These bright orange spots are dead giveaways to the true nature of what this so-called rock actually is. If it is not entirely clear by sight alone, and the slag has already fallen from its initial position, then weight is the next major hint. Slag, being comprised significantly of iron, is extremely dense. This means that relative to a rock of the same size, it should weight much more – unnaturally so. If both of these methods still leave the discoverer uncertain, there is one final test: the break test. True iron slag will not break in half from a hand-held breaking attempt; the metal is too strong. Many types of rocks or ambiguous materials will crack under this sort of pressure, however. Given a combination of these three tests, slag can be accurately diagnosed in the field.

Yuki finds a piece of slag in the field. See if you can find it just above the bucket!

A piece of freshly excavated slag. Small pockets of orange and an irregular shape are noticeable.

After the slag is identified, it is collected as excavation occurs around it. It is important to not to get too excited and dig a hole around the slag; rather, natural excavation should occur around the piece. The slag will always come out when it is ready.

From here, it is bagged and tagged for processing in the Small Finds area of the office, located at the academy where we are staying. While living in the pottery office, the slag is documented in our site wide database. Here, anyone working at the site is able to access information about any slag that was collected on any day, since the first day of excavation in the 2010 season. The Tell Akko database is what makes projects like mine, where the goal is to document and map all the slag found on the Tell, feasible.

A cross section and piece of slag in the pottery office. The coloration and porous structure characteristic of slag is clearly visible.

After this, the slag is taken across the Bay of Akko, where it is stored at the University of Haifa and can be accessed in the coming seasons. These store rooms hold information from the current Akko excavations, and even material dating to the excavations in the 70s and 80s. One of the main components to my project is poring over previous slag from other seasons and getting direct quantities and weights for the material coming from certain regions of the Tell. Once these weights are collected, there is one more (digital) step to the process.
GIS, or Geographic Information Systems, are incredibly important in conveying information from a variety of disciplines. Archaeology is no exception. After creating artifact maps for Iron last season, my project this season is to map a slag distribution from this season and all previous seasons. These maps allow a comparison of various regions of the Tell extremely quickly, and gives a compact visual display to represent the incredible amounts of slag that we excavate from the Tell. With an easy to read format, these maps can be examined to determine relationships that might otherwise not be immediately apparent, and they help to increase our understanding of ironworking and production across Area A at Tell Akko.

GIS map showing Iron Artifacts found from stratum A-4 (Persian Period)

In addition to my work on macro-metallurgical remains, we are also conducting analysis of the elemental composition of soils across the Tell. But that is a blog for another time…

Akko, archaeology, Archaeometallurgy, Iron, israel, Metal, Perisan, Slag, Tell 1

Jul, 2016

By Jennifer Munro

Thursday 21st July

archaeology, israel, SURVEY, tel akko 0

Jul, 2016

By Dylan Ingram

The side of ceramics you may not know

By Dylan Ingram…

Everyone at the Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project has some experience with pottery washing: You grab a bucket of sherds from the previous day at the tel, scrub off the dirt, and you end up with a clean basket like the one pictured above. But relatively few of the students here know exactly what happens afterwards with the pottery. Fortunately, I had the opportunity July 18 to sit in on a session of pottery reading, and it provided a completely different perspective on the role of ceramics at Tel Akko.

Pottery reading begins with square and area supervisors presenting the washed pottery from their area’s loci to Martha Risser and Jolanta Mlynarczyk. Both of them work through the pottery from the crate they were given, inspecting a couple of sherds more closely. Unsurprisingly, they mostly use the diagnostic pieces such as handles, rims, bases, and painted or stamped sherds, which are kept a few inches apart from the non-diagnostic body sherds.

Occasionally they come across a particularly interesting piece of pottery, such as very nice black ware or East Greek pottery (identifiable from the almost glittery appearance of the fabric). One piece that I saw Martha and Jolanta get interested over was the toe of an amphora, which they identified from its fabric as being of Attic provenance. Although Attic imports are relatively common at Tel Akko, they said that it is much rarer to find Attic amphoras. (Sadly, the context where this toe was found was extremely disturbed, likely due to agricultural tilling of the land.)

After Martha and Jolanta have checked out the sherds they’re given, they determine when this pottery was made. Certain sherds can be dated very precisely—Martha once showed me a piece of a cup the size of my thumbnail with an incised palmette black glaze design, which she said was at the time the single most precisely dateable sherd in the entire pottery lab—but most of the chronological conclusions Martha and Jolanta made during the reading I watched were a bit broader. Sometimes they would date a box of pottery to the 7^th or 6^th centuries BCE, other times to the Persian Period.

What most struck me about pottery reading was the pace at which it proceeds. Each box gets read in the span of only a few minutes; Martha and Jolanta don’t waste any time when they inspect a sherd. For example, they are so experienced with pottery that they can determine the stance of a piece just by looking at it, whereas I for one still need to use the “smile-frown test”: rolling around a rim against a flat surface until it lines up flush.

As we have all heard, things are useless without context, pottery sherds included. Because of this, the square and area supervisors present top plans and give brief oral descriptions of the loci in which they found each box of pottery. Although this helps Martha and Jolanta to get a better idea of the source of everything they look at, there is still some ambiguity. That’s why they both went up to the tel July 19: to see where all these sherds have come from personally, so as to get a clearer picture of the type of soil in and layout of the various squares. Martha mentioned to me that she wishes she were able to visit the tel more often in person, since it’s so helpful to her.

Beyond the obvious archaeological significance of pottery reading, I found my experience sitting in to be sort of exhilarating. There is something really amazing in how quickly Martha and Jolanta can work through a crate of pottery and make a declaration about its origins. Moreover, I gained a valuable appreciation for the significance of pottery—plainly demonstrating the utility of everyone’s favorite time of the day, pottery washing.