El Araj Excavations Day 13 (Week 3/Day 4). The pictures are from our work on Wednesday, July 4. Our days are full and in the evenings fatigue sets in - thus the delay in this post. We rise before the sun and are digging by 6:00AM. Our site continues to develop on various levels. It has taken an enormous amount of effort by our dedicated team of student volunteers. Everything must be measured and documented. Elevations must be taken to record where artifacts are found. Large stones and tremendous amounts of dirt are removed. Today was the final day of preparations before we dig down through the level of the bathhouse mosaics which were at the center of the news last summer. Tomorrow we will remove the mosaics as we continue lower into the earlier Roman period remains. At the other end of the site, we removed the broken pieces from a large grinding stone, which was pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle. A team of architectural specialists came towards the end of the day to examine the unfinished Corinthian capital. It seems the builders began to make it as a capital and then decided to use it instead for a column base.
