By Dr Melissa Rosenzweig

Crops of Tel Akko

In this post I am going to run through some of the most common domesticated plant species that we find in the archaeological record at Tel Akko.  These taxa give us a good sense of the economic plants used at Tel Akko, particularly for food.

The two most prolific crops at Tel Akko, from all the historical periods excavated thus far, are olive (Olea europaea) and grape (Vitis vinifera).  Fun fact: The grape pips we recover occasionally show up mineralized, rather than charred.  This means people ate these seeds, which then calcified as they passed through the human gut (Green 1979).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cereals were also staples at Tel Akko.  We find grains of barley (Hordeum sp.) and different varieties of wheat (Triticum spp.).  Wheat would have been the preferred grain for people to eat, while barley would have been consumed by humans and fed to animals as fodder.

A handful of pulses, which comprise beans and peas, are found in the Tel Akko excavations.  They include lentil (Lens culinaris), common pea (Pisum sativum), and bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia).  Fun fact: Bitter vetch is considered a famine crop because it has to be boiled in order to be safe and palatable for human consumption (Zohary and Hopf 2000: 116).  However, this legume was also a popular fodder crop for livestock, who ate it as-is without any harmful side effects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other plants that round out our picture of cultivated crops at Tel Akko include fig (Ficus carica), safflower (Carthamus sp.), and flax (Linum usitatissimum).  Fun facts: We only have a few finds of safflower thus far.  But these seeds provide tantalizing links to maritime contacts with the Egyptians, who grew and prized safflower for both its oil (used in cooking) and red dye (used in cloth production) (Marinova and Riehl 2009: 345-6).  We have recovered just two (two!) flax seeds so far, but these plants were also important sources of oil (linseed) and linen for textiles.  They are hard to find archaeologically because their rich oil content makes them susceptible to ashing, rather than charring, when exposed to fire.  By the first millennium BCE, safflower and flax were largely (but not entirely) replaced by the red/purple dye of Murex shellfish and sheep wool for textiles.  And as it turns out, we have a fair amount of Murex shells and sheep bones (Ovis sp.) at Tel Akko.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Green, Francis J. (1979) Phosphatic mineralization of seeds from archaeological sites. Journal of Archaeological Science 6: 279-284.

Margaritis, Evi and Martin Jones (2008) Olive oil production in Hellenistic Greece: The interpretation of charred olive remains from the site of Tria Platania, Macedonia, Greece. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 17: 393-401.

Marinova, Elena and Simone Riehl (2009) Carthamus species in the ancient Near East and south-eastern Europe: Archaeobotanical evidence for their distribution and use as a source of oil. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 18: 341-9.

Zohary, Daniel and Maria Hopf (2000) Domestication of Plants in the Old World.  Oxford: Oxford University Press.

By Rachel Strohl

The Joy of Understanding

Its 11:30 up on the Tel and you have found nothing all day. You’ve been beating at the ground only to be stopped by nothing but rocks and soil dumped by another archaeologist years ago, making anything found unusable for contextual information. And then it happens. You find something, perhaps an amphora jar handle, or some ivory carved piece. They say that there is no better feeling than this, uncovering an artefact in the field. However, I would counter that argument. To this amateur archaeologist, there is no better joy than the joy of understanding.

The joy of understanding comes from understanding what you are finding in the field. It’s the joy that comes from correctly identifying the type of vessel that a particular pottery sherd is from, or being able to tell slag, a byproduct of metal production, from plain rocks. Because when you understand, it means that you are starting to gain more and more knowledge in your field. You move from the grunt laborer to a respected person of knowledge.

I have wanted to teach for a long time now. I love academia and school more than anyone else I know. So when people started coming up to me with questions about what they were finding, I was delightfully surprised. People were coming to recognize my ability to identify objects in the field, and I was starting to realize my career dream. To me, there is nothing better than finally achieving something you have worked so hard for. And I believe that I am starting to see the fruits of my labor in school. My love for learning and understanding what is going on around me has come to manifest itself in the field, and my dream of being able to teach others has become a reality. So here I make the argument that the true joy of archaeology is not digging up some long-lost artefact, but being able to be a source of knowledge to those you dig with. The true joy is the joy of understanding.

By Caroline Sausser

It’s Up to You as Nancy Drew

By Caroline Sausser

While walking through the underground tunnel system of the Hospitaller compound in Old Acre, my fellow Miami students began a wonderful rendition of the Indiana Jones theme song. As we scurried through the short and narrow tunnel, it conjured images of a giant stone rolling down to chase us all out again. But while some feel like Indiana Jones during the exploration of new places and the work on the Tel, I feel like Nancy Drew.

The Nancy Drew I grew up with was  the independent and self-relying computer game version rather than her book counterpart. The games featured puzzles of varying difficulty in order to solve a mystery. They took Nancy to locations spanning from the Wild West to Scotland to Egypt. My favorite part was trying to figure out the puzzles, using information I had to gather throughout the story and thinking in different ways than I might initially.

Out here on the Tel, I have a chance to solve puzzles and mysteries every day. Some are a little less brain-vexing, “such as where can I put my feet in this square without standing on a tabun (ancient ovens named for the Arabic word for oven) or a piece of pottery with the least amount of discomfort?” But others are much more complex. For instance, the tabuns in my square were originally dated to the Early Hellenistic period. However, in and near the tabun, we have found pieces from the earlier Persian period. This leaves us with a couple of dating options, as the tabuns may have really been of the Persian period the whole time, or they may have been filled by either those from the Hellenistic period or the past excavator from the 1970’s and 1980’s, Dothan. Now our focus in digging in this area is to try to solve this mystery. And each little pot sherd and piece of tabun helps us move toward a solution to this puzzle: which era is the one “who-dun-it?”

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

By Megan Ashbrook

An Unexpected Combination

By Megan Ashbrook.

Two of my loves are archaeology and horses. Never would I have imagined that thousands of miles away from America I would be using my horseback riding skills here at Tel Akko.

At Miami University, I work at our Equestrian Center and I am the Western team captain of our equestrian team. My job is a lot of manual labor but requires skill and confidence to do a good job. Every day on the tel, I am grateful that I have lifted hay bales and built up my leg muscles already. Digging requires a lot of lifting dirt buckets and squatting all day. I’m also grateful that I’m used to working in the sun because in Israel I spend about 6 and half hours working outside.

The similarities between my work with horses and work on the tel doesn’t end at manual labor. When working around horses, I have to have confidence even when I am unsure or nervous about what is going on. A horse will feel my every emotion and “mirror” the emotion back. Because of horses’ natural reaction I have learned to have confidence even though I might not be comfortable with the situation. For an example, there is one horse at Miami who will sometimes shy away at things if she doesn’t want to work anymore. Though her sudden movements may be startling, I have to maintain a calm composure in order to not amplify the situation.  If I got nervous about her movements she would think there was really something to be afraid of.

On the tel, I also use this skill of assessing a situation and confidently working in it. I was a bit nervous about my first few days of excavation. But with my horseback riding skills I was able to be successful. I didn’t always know exactly what I was supposed to do but I fully embraced the concept of too many questions isn’t a bad thing.

Finally, my horseback riding coach at Miami University sent our team this quote before a show: “Success is not the achievement of perfection but the minimization and accommodation of imperfection.” I worked all of last year to live by that quote in my riding. I constantly remind myself of it before shows, during practice, and after a bad pattern test. That quote has become very important to me and now reflecting back I should remind myself of it on the dig too. I can’t identify every item correctly nor can I perfectly excavate my area. My success on this dig should include the imperfections of life.

Now past the half way point of my first excavation, I’m excited to get back to the horses at Miami. But I don’t want to leave Israel quite yet. I am very grateful that I have been able to combine some of my horseback riding skills with archaeology. Back on campus, I’m sure I’ll find unexpected uses for my archaeology skills too.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

By Dr Melissa Rosenzweig

What is Archaeobotany?

Archaeobotany is a sub-specialization within environmental archaeology that studies human interactions with plants in the past. There are several approaches to recovering plant remains in archaeological contexts, from the collection of microscopic fossil pollen, starches, and phytoliths (the silicate skeletons of plant cell structures), to the recovery of macroscopic charred seeds and wood charcoal. I conduct the latter, and study carbonized seed remains under a microscope to identify plant species. It turns out that if seeds are fired just right (crispy, but not ashy) they can preserve in the archaeological record for thousands, even tens of thousands, of years. Once I identify these seeds I’m able to assemble information on changes in agricultural production and plant consumption over time (e.g. Did the residents of Tel Akko cultivate different crops at different times?) and over space (e.g. Did the people of Tel Akko use different kinds of plants in different contexts on the site?). Plant remains can also help us reconstruct ancient landscapes; track the use of forage, graze and fodder for livestock; and ask questions about the kinds of social interactions that plants facilitate: e.g. Did food choices distinguish different ethnic or status groups? Did men and women conduct different kinds of agricultural labor? Did people in the past promote sustainable environmental practices, or engage in lifestyles that led to erosion, deforestation or pollution?

 

 

 

When you think about it, most of the artifacts that archaeologists recover reflect only a very small proportion of the material culture that people utilized in the past. We find what endures: stone and mudbrick architecture, pottery, lithics (stone tools), bones, and metal items. But people in the past relied on and made so many other kinds of objects, a great deal of them from plant materials: e.g. timber architecture, wooden furniture and utensils, woven textiles, reed baskets, written documents, and, of course, plant foods. This continues to be the case today, even in the age of plastics. Look around you (and on you), and you will find materials made from plants that make your daily life possible.  Archaeobotany is an attempt to recuperate these hard-to-find but oh-so-important physical elements of human life.

 

Still want to hear more about archaeobotany? Allow me to explain in person

 

 

By Caroline Sausser

From the Farm to the Tel

Digging in the dirt is not an unfamiliar task for me. Having visited my grandparents’ farm throughout my life, I have often plowed gardens, put up fences, and weeded flower beds. And every now and then while digging, I’d find a broken piece of pottery in the fields.

Church at Tabgha

By Rachel Strohl

Bridging the Gap

Walking through a historical site, it is easy to romanticize the past. You see a temple where Jesus worshipped, or a site that was the birthplace of a key character in the past, and you want to imagine a time that is nothing like where we live now.

By Megan Ashbrook

Living My Dream

Before I came to the Tel Akko Total Archaeology Project I thought I knew what archaeology was. Since the 6th grade, my dream has been to be an archaeologist. As a little kid, I would travel with my family to many museums and archaeological sites, and I would read or watch anything about history for fun.  But since coming to Akko there are many things that I have experienced and so much more I have to learn.

Though I have to get up at 4:45am, 5 days a week, I don’t mind because I’m going to do something I love. The first few days this week went by slowly, but it was fun getting to know everyone as we were working to prepare the site for excavation.

I thought the first half of the week was fun, but I didn’t know what I had coming for me on Friday, our first day excavating. Before tel breakfast, I was cleaning a section, but then after breakfast I started excavating in my square. Some may not find digging out dirt just to sweep it up again interesting, but for some reason I do. When the end of the excavation day came I didn’t want to leave the tel. I could have kept working there for much longer.

 

The artifacts that come out of the dirt make the labor worth it because they can tell us about people in the past that lived on the tel. Since taking ceramic art classes and learning about pottery in archaeology classes, ceramics have fascinated me. From pottery you can learn about trade, diet, government administration, and cultural contact among other things.

 While digging and pottery washing, I get really excited about interesting pottery finds. I know others probably think I’m weird and hate pottery washing, but I am living my dream.

I may be living my dream at Tel Akko, but still it is a bit unnerving to make large life decisions not knowing if they are the right ones. Some encouragement has come in the past few days both on the tel and in the labs. On the tel I was trained on two measuring instruments, and now I have been using one completely by myself to take elevation measurements for the square I’m working in. Both on the tel and in the labs, I have been asking a bunch of questions. For example, in one of the labs with Dr. Rosenzweig I asked if a few tiny pieces were bone and it turned out they were! It feels really good to know that my instincts from all those museums and readings are correct.

While I’m at Tel Akko, I hope to be a bit closer to figuring out what I want to do post-college. Right now my love for archaeology is only growing. I hope to make 6th grade me proud of how I am living the dream I have had for most of my life.

 

1 2
Crops of Tel Akko
The Joy of Understanding
It’s Up to You as Nancy Drew
An Unexpected Combination
What is Archaeobotany?
The Magic of Archaeology
From the Farm to the Tel
Church at Tabgha
Bridging the Gap
Living My Dream