El Araj Excavations Day 16 (Week 4/Day 2). Today was one of the hottest days of the 2018 season. The heat and the fatigue of excavating 6 hours a day, 5 days a week are setting in. Nevertheless, we are making steady headway as our site expands and deepens. The students from Kinneret College are helping to open new squares and have almost completed removing the Crusader wall. Our work in the Ottoman septic tank continues to deepen. We have gone through the Byzantine level and now are among Roman remains. We are finding numerous white limestone tesserae. In the afternoon we took our final field trip to two towns fortified by Josephus in the first century (Selamen and Beersheba of the Galilee).
