Today was an exceptionally special day, and I was able to do something I'll never be able to do again. In my Archaeology class we got the opportunity to spend the day at Lachish. Our professor is Dr. Gabriel Barkay who is one of the most famous Archaeologists and well known for his discoveries. Dr. Barkay is probably the most intelligent man that I have ever met. He spent 15 dedicated to excavating Lachish which is longer than I have been in school, kind of a weird thought. Anyways, we spent the entire day observing the various pieces to the site and it was really cool.
We started at the bottom of the site, and to be hones it was brutal, we sat in the dirt, on rocky ground for almost 2 hours while he lectured on the History of Research on Lachish, and the History of Excavation at Lachish. So after a couple hours at the bottom, we finally began moving to the site itself. As we moved up he showed us the different layers to the walls of the city, which part was original and what had been built up later. There was a distinct painted line on the build of the wall indicating where the original wall stopped. Moving farther up the site we came to the gate to the city which was pretty cool, we could see the sewer system dug into the ground, and what remained of towers at the entrance to the city. What was really cool was seeing how the mud brick had been preserved from fire destruction. The city was destroyed and then burned, but the fire hardened some of the mud brick in the wall which remained in tact. We spend alot of time learning about the layers to the excavation. for instance, there was a palace at the high point of the city, the lowest layer was layer A, then layer B, and then what we could see was layer C. For each of these layers a palace existed for a period of time before being destroyed.
Another cool spot we got to see was a well that was excavated. The well was actually completely covered before it was found, which is kind of scary considering it was 45 meters deep (hopefully no one fell in while digging it up). The well was discovered in the 1930's during a British excavation. It was later, about 1970, that Dr. Barkay began his excavation of the site. The coolest part of the day was hearing the little tid bits from Dr. Barkay and all the stories he had to tell.
All in all I was very happy with how the day went, and am thinking of going for my P.H.D with all the information that I learned today, well not yet but maybe some day.