The Foreign Service Journal, February 2010

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 0 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 33 in terms of time (one- to four-week stints), calendar (the archaeology season in Israel is normally during the dry season, April to October) and degree of difficulty in terms of physical labor. How I Got There What brought me to swing pick- axes and lift rocks with other ama- teur enthusiasts throwing in their efforts with professional archaeologists and hopeful stu- dents? After I retired from the Foreign Service in 1994, my wife, Patty, and I made our home in Louisville, Ky., until she passed away in 2000. I then began spending some months of the year in Jerusalem as a volunteer at a museum run by an archaeologist I had met some years earlier. While traveling about the Holy Land in my spare time, I came across the site at Kursi on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and read that they were recruiting volun- teers. Kursi was the traditional place where Jesus of Nazareth, according to the New Testament, had cast out demons into swine, who then rushed into the sea. When the Kursi expedition got under way in 2001- 2003, it was almost entirely staffed by American volunteers under the direction of American and Israeli archaeologists. At the Kursi dig, I was bitten by the bug of digging up sites of the Biblical era. I learned the basics of using the archaeologist’s tools while helping uncover a Byzantine-era pil- grims’ village there. Although professional archaeologists are often pictured with small brushes and tiny picks working on delicate finds, most of the work is done with pickaxes (Tip: don’t put your back into the swing; let the weight of the metal head pull your swing down), hoes, wheelbarrows and even sledgehammers. When activity at Kursi paused a few years ago, I used the Internet to find information on other opportunities and discovered the efforts at Hippos/Sussita. Back home, I have been teaching in an Elderhostel (now Exploritas) pro- gram at a local university every spring, and have taught political science at a nearby campus of In- diana University. I have also lec- tured on foreign policy at various local programs. Kursi was not my first exposure to archaeology, for I have always been fascinated by the subject. In fact, I saw teams at work on digs during my Foreign Service tours in Israel (1967-1969) and (1977-1981), where archaeology is part of public life. I recall meeting famed Israeli archaeologist Dr. Yigal Yadin when he was deputy prime minister in Menachem Begin’s govern- ment. The Israel Museum and its well-known archaeol- ogy collection were often on the itinerary of our visitors. Eventful Years The past few years at the Hippos/Sus- sita site have been eventful. In 2006, not long after the dig season started, the Is- raeli war with Hezbollah began. Hezbol- lah’s shelling of Israel’s northern cities, including nearby Tiberias across the Sea of Galilee from Ein Gev and Hippos, led to embassy travel warnings and the deci- sions by the teams from Poland and Con- cordia University to evacuate their stu- dents. The remaining foreign volunteers affiliated with Haifa University and I stayed on, occasionally pausing in our work to watch Katyushas hitting the city. A couple of rockets even landed on our side of the lake below. The seasons at Kursi and Hippos/Sus- sita have been rich in terms of experience, friendships and unearthing valuable finds. For example, while working along the southern defensive walls of the city cling- ing to the cliffside above the city’s ap- proaches in 2007 and 2008, my team dug below the Byzantine walls at Hippos to the well-engineered Roman defenses, then to the original Greek walls on bedrock. Working with Dutch, Spanish, American and Israeli volunteers, we came F O C U S My seasons at Kursi and Hippos/Sussita have been rich in terms of experience, friendships and unearthing valuable finds. Ken Stammerman digs an ex- ploratory shaft ... ... and holds a pottery shard he’s just unearthed at Hippos. Photos courtesy of the author