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- Jul 29, 2013
- 2 min
The Israelites Worshipped Other Gods??? Really?
It probably isn't much of a surprise to you or me, but the archaeological record shows an Israel that wasn't exactly up to par when it came to worship. Not too surprisingly, there are quite a few "less conservative" scholars who try to make this into a big deal. In his book, _Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From?_ (http://goo.gl/AgMMmH), Bill Dever describes an Israel that didn't leave Egypt in an Exodus but who were just normal Canaanites who wanted a c
- Jul 18, 2013
- 3 min
How Old Are You?
This is a dear friend Audrey. She is 83 years young, and she has been digging for I don't know how long. Audrey is my inspiration. In 2009, I was standing next to her (looking the opposite direction) when she was bitten by a camel on her arm. One of the teeth went clean to the bone. She let out a little squeal, and I turned to see what was wrong. There she was standing there a little shaky and she said that she had gotten bit by the camel ... I was shocked, until I saw the bl
- Jul 16, 2013
- 2 min
Writing!
It isn't every day that we find things with writing, but when we do, we get quite excited. Back in 2009, a friend of mine (Erica, pictured here covered in dirt [she is going to kill me for posting this, lol]) found a very small, clay bulla, what most people call a "seal." The difference is that the seal is the object used to make the impression in the clay - the bulla. As you can see in the picture, she is extremely happy (this was her last day in the field, as she was headin
- Jul 15, 2013
- 2 min
Hey now ... those are men's clothes!
I wrote a paper (http://goo.gl/xJISa) not too long ago about a Super Bowel advertisement attempting to convince men to "wear the pants" once again (it was a Docker's ad). This was one of those highly controversial but at the same time not too controversial advertisements that turned a lot of heads. What were they trying to say? Was Docker's trying to convince the world that only men should wear pants, that pants are somehow inherently masculine? Well, no, actually they were j
- Jul 14, 2013
- 2 min
Translation of the gods
I mentioned before the "translation" of the gods in the ancient world, but I never really explained what that was. The idea is that all over the ancient world, one culture would translate another culture's deities into their own deities. The Egyptians would make a treaty with Hatti, and in the treaty would call on both sides' gods to make the pact (they believed in both sets of gods), and often they would compare their gods (Shemesh the God of the sun is the same as Re in Egy
- Jul 11, 2013
- 2 min
Daily Life
People don't often think of life in ancient times. How did they live? How did they manage? How do we manage? lol. Life, in general, was tough. What you see here is a grinding stone and hand grinder. This one has been worn almost all the way through. We walked onto a Bronze Age (prehistory) site in Cyprus to explore a bit, and I found about eight or nine of these. It was quite interesting, really. What would you do with these once they were "finished"? Well, I found two set as
- Jul 10, 2013
- 3 min
Making the leap
Every once in a while it is fun to just let yourself go ... in this case, I am jumping off a cliff (that's the Mediterranean Sea in the background). No, I was not jumping into the sea fully clothed, but I did walk into the sea fully clothed (boots and all) just for the fun of it ... but I need to get back to the story. A lot of people are interested in archaeology, and in my case Biblical archaeology, but they don't have how to get started. For me, it started when I was still
- Jul 4, 2013
- 3 min
Patriotism
Well, to be a little more patriotic today, I am uploading a picture of the grill we used while I was stationed in the Anbar province of Iraq. Isn't she a beauty? One of the guys in my platoon would make deals with people from some of the smaller Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) around the province, and we would trade whatever we had on our base for things like lobster tail and steaks (the smaller FOBs got great meals like this as a way to equal out the fact that they didn't hav
