Week two is complete and as the mornings feel earlier and get darker the team is demonstrating their dedication to archaeology (or coffee!). With some serious soil being moved bucket chains are becoming a regular feature at Tel Lachish but with all this practice the buckets are flying high and fast, not unlike our drone! We use a drone on site to capture aerial footage of the Tel which enables us to better understand features within our squares and help with our interpretation of the site as a whole. We are fully underway with the use of photogrammetry and photoscan to create 3D models of the site which are then imported into AutoCAD in order to provide our team with updated plans of both areas as the season progresses.
It has been a busy week in Area P with the appearance of a possible Iron Age retaining wall in one square, the opening of a probe to try and reach earlier strata from underneath the palace in another and the appearance of Middle Bronze Age palace walls across three squares. Area S has been focusing on excavating Late Bronze Age phases in all their squares which is providing invaluable data that is helping to elucidate the greater chronology of the southern Levant.
We were fortunate to host several distinguished visitors this week. Visitors included Ido Koch and Yuval Gadot from Tel Aviv University, Saar Ganor from the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Hillel Geva from the Israel Exporation Society.
This week we handed out our 2019 Tel Lachish project shirts to all volunteers and staff. This year’s design features a drawing of a chalice found in Area P last year and was drawn by Area P square supervisor Mirek Pleska. This post marked the end of the first half of our 2019 season in the field and we are happy to be making lots of progress.
As this season is following a digital trend we decided now was the time for us to join Twitter so follow us @TelLachish and don’t forget we are also on Facebook!
Tracing Transformations 