Monday, May 19, 2008

The Adventures of Brad Part II

19 May 2008

So, the work continues in Wadi Mataha (the canyon where we’re digging). The crew working in front of the monumental tomb is uncovering large cut-stone walls that are extremely straight and perpendicular along with a large doorway and interior platform area made of fitted sandstone slabs. They’re also finding broken ceramic sherds literally by the thousands, but that is to be expected with Nabatean sites. Another crew is starting up work at a small shrine of some kind. I’ll pass on more info when I figure out exactly what they’re doing there.
O ur crew is about halfway done with our 12-cist tomb. All of the cist graves, so far, have been filled with scattered bones of multiple individuals, from infants to the elderly. We found a fragment of an upper jaw in one cist that only had one only well-worn tooth left, as all the other incisors and premolars had fallen out and their sockets had grown over. Other than the skeletal remains, nothing too special has been coming out of the graves, though—only a few ceramic sherds here and there, the rocks that once covered the bones, and fragments of wood on which they were probably laid. However, there is one cist that has shown some exceptional preservation, where we’ve found a large textile fragment (probably a burial shroud) with blue dye, a small blue glassware vessel (probably from Egypt), wooden planks with remnants of wooden pegs, rope, and a large portion of a body that had its decomposition arrested. We lovingly call him Mr. Fleshy, and he and the dirt around him smells like death. For some reason he wasn’t allowed to completely deflesh and was buried with some soft tissue still attached to the bones.
Other than the work in the field, I’m kept plenty busy supervising the analysis of all the human remains we’ve uncovered so far. Every cist is excavated by a pair of students who are then responsible for the analysis of its artifacts. Some cists only have 100 bones, others over 1000, but all of them need to get analyzed here before we leave the country. Speaking of which, tomorrow we’re busing down to Ma’an, the district (state) capital to extend our 1-month visas. In the past we’ve been able to send our passports to the police station in Wadi Musa (the tourist town outside of Petra ), but since the US has required fingerprinting of foreigners, other countries have retaliated with the same. Apparently Ma’an isn’t a happy tourist town, either, so we’ll see how it goes.
PS--The good news for the week is that we've found a wireless internet signal on the roof of our house, so that has automatically become the new hangout. So much for going incognito in third-world countries. Oh, and I'm growing a mustache for fun. I'll keep you updated.


mustache after 2 weeks

3 comments:

Aimee said...

nice sanchez
chris-

Dad Risser said...

Good start on the 'stache. Take it from me, it takes at least 6 weeks to get completely used to one. After you've had it for a while you may never want to get rid of it.

You must have a gps system there. What are your coordinates so we can look it up on Google Earth?

Chelsea's Uncle Gordon

Jennifer said...

I think is is one of those guys that can pull of the stash. He looks like he should be in some Indiana Jones movie.