Kristina Johnson’s journal begins with descriptions and contains a timetable. But this trip became more than a sightseeing journey for both Kristina and her mother, Liz Johnson.
It was a time of discovery and adventure for both.
Her story opens with the words: “So I’m leaving tomorrow for Israel to participate on a dig in Tel Dor. It is a beautiful place right on the Mediterranean coast. I will be there for five weeks digging and another week to explore the Holy Land!”
The trip was an opportunity to visit an ancient land, explore the depths of an ancient city and to contemplate the next step in life journeys. The word “Tel” is a term archeologists use to describe the mounds of rubble that dot the ancient near east. They represent layers of by-gone civilizations and careful examination of each layer leads to new information and to confirmation of what was only suspected. The ancient seaport of Dor was first referenced by a contemporary of Ramses II. The area of Dor that the Johnsons helped excavate is an “Iron Age Site.” David was king of Israel during the Iron Age. When King Herod the Great built the artificial harbor and city, Caesarea, a few miles north (during the lifetime of Jesus), use of the natural harbor at Dor declined.
Kristina and her mother set off together from Omaha on June 29. Liz majored in art at Dana College with an emphasis on ceramics. Shards of pottery are rich in information archeologists need to place a site in time and they tell much about the inhabitants.
“Three thousand years ago someone touched these pieces and they haven’t been touched since. It’s been in that earth,” Liz said, still in awe of the experience.
Kristina is a fifth-year senior at Pacific Lutheran University majoring in classics and Biblical studies.
“I’d been thinking about doing something in the field of archeology,” she explained.
They stayed at Kibbutz Nahsholim, a few minutes hike from the site. The weather was warm and the Mediterranean sun was hot. Wake up call was at 4:30 a.m. as the day’s work at the site began at 5 a.m. There were breaks scheduled throughout the work day which ended at 1 p.m.
Huge screens shaded the excavation from the worst of the sun’s rays. The Johnsons worked in an area called D-2 (for Dor) 2.
“D-2 is the ancient storehouse area of the city where food and wine were stored. We found grape seeds lots of pottery shards, beads, bones, pieces of iron, and flint,” they reported.
Each area of the site had buckets in which to toss their finds. Their leader was Liz Bloch-Smith, who instructed the diggers on her team where they were to work each day.
“We’d all be in our own loci,” Kristina explained. “I worked under the ladder all the time I was at the site. Digging away! I loved my locus! I’m digging up a baulk (it’s like a dividing wall between areas) that is right next to the ladder.”
When the digging is over for the year, the excavated areas are “dressed,” that is they are covered with a layer of plastic, then a layer of soil, to prevent looters.
“We had to bucket up all that extra dirt and plastic before we could actually dig up history,” Kristina wrote in her journal.
“Bucketing up” is hard work, lifting buckets full of dirt and passing it to the next person higher up the ladder. All excavated material is removed from the digging area in this manner.
Tuesday and Thursday afternoons were devoted to Pottery Reading. Experts in pottery would examine the materials excavated at the site, explaining different aspects of their composition, methods of construction and firing and design in an attempt to age the shards. Both Johnsons found that very interesting -- to see the material they had excavated evaluated and catalogued.
“We found a lot of animal bones, but not any human bones,” Liz reported.
She also noticed Israel is full of cats.
“In India, there are lots of cows. In Israel, there are lots of cats,” she said.
On the first day they arrived, Katrina met Philip Eubanks a seminary student from Nashville, Tenn., who was also on the dig.
She reported: “We finally found the place (the Kibbutz) and met Philip who we were actually supposed to meet yesterday at the airport before we were delayed. We talked a bit about our schools, etc. He studies religion at Vanderbilt in Tennessee. It’s awesome to be around people that like the same things I do -- even though I’m going to veer off from Biblical studies. - Liz (the director of the dig) was really nice and down to earth -- I think it’s going to be a lot of fun working for her.”
Philip and Katrina are now dating seriously.
On weekends Liz and Katrina traveled, either with each other or separately.
“We went to Jerusalem this weekend (July 12),” Kristina reported in her travel blog. “It’s about 2 hours away from Nahsholim, I think. Our group took a taxi there. We were dropped off at Jaffa Gate. We stayed at a really awesome hostel in Old Jerusalem ” our room reminded me of the dwarfs’ house. While we were there, we walked around all the market areas in the Old City, saw the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock, walked around in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and other sites. Philip and I went to Gethsemane outside of the Old City walls. It was so peaceful and moving.”
Soon afterwards, Liz returned to the United States.
“We felt pretty safe in Israel,” Kristina said. “I didn’t mind saying I was from America.”
She felt safe enough to take off on her own to explore the country for a week after her time at the dig was finished. They were warned that if they went into the disputed areas (Gaza, the West Bank and Palestinian Territories) they would be “terminated.”
Both women loved the food. It was fresh with lots of olives and figs, seafood and falafels. There was fresh bread every day, lots of humus and fresh, unusual vegetables. Everything was kosher.
Post graduation plans for Katrina are ambitious.
“I am planning on going into art conservation,” she said. “Archeology is a subfield in that career path. I will be taking pre-requisite classes for the next two years in order to get into art conservation. There are only a few schools in the United States who offer this program and three of them are on the East Coast.”
It was Kristina who asked her mother to go with her.
“It was the experience of a lifetime,” Liz said.
“Oh yeah, I want to go back,” Kristina added.
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