The geology of Beit Guvrin is fascinating. The ground has a 3-foot deep crust, beneath which there are dozens of feet of very soft chalk. The people who lived here long ago had houses on ground level and then dug caves in the chalk for storage, oil pressing, and water retention.
One of the reasons that tourists are allowed to work here with only a few minutes of training is that this site has objects from only one period, so there is no concern about objects being confused.
We were a small group on this day. All four of our return customers decided to do some exploring on their own. Allie had a lunch date with cousin Shoshana, and so only 8 of us made the trip to Beit Guvrin. It was certainly worth it. The caves that have been completely excavated and are now open to the public are amazing. After seeing six or seven of them, we went to work. The first stage was to loosen dirt on the floor of a cave, look for artifacts (including pottery, bones, and shells) to put in the "finds" bucket, put all the dirt in a different bucket. It was great to see CJ and Tamara collaborating so well together. And they were really successful, finding several pieces of pottery with "profile" (a rim, a base, or a handle).
The second stage was to bring our buckets of dirt out of the caves, and then to shake it out on a sifter. It's amazing to see how much we could find in the sunlight that we missed in the cave. During the sifting, one group even found a shiny coin. Too bad it was a 10 agorot piece (circa 2004 CE) planted by Muki to see if we were paying attention.
At the end of our time at Beit Guvrin, we saw some of the more impressive things found there and had the chance to take souveniers from the discard pile. Then it was back to meet the rest of the group in the Old City.
1 comment:
Bravo Rabbi Sirbu, you gave us a wonderful "blow-by-blow" description of your trip. It was almost (almost) as good as being with you. Welcome Home. Peter.
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