{"id":3530,"date":"2025-08-03T10:40:49","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T15:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/?p=3530"},"modified":"2025-08-03T10:40:49","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T15:40:49","slug":"wall-fall-all-the-way-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/2025\/08\/03\/wall-fall-all-the-way-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Wall Fall, All the Way Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

More and more, as I look around, I start to see fallen rocks. Spending time doing archaeological work draws one\u2019s attention to things that aren\u2019t the way they once were, like buildings that stood proudly centuries ago but now sag and slump, their stones strewn across the ground. Our trench is no exception: the part of unit that we\u2019ve passed through this week has been a mass of rocks that presumably piled up when part of our building complex collapsed, and so most of our working time has been spent looking at and removing these stones. This might be a second reason why I think I see fallen rocks everywhere! But this repetition has forced me to judge what might be exceptional, to look carefully amid the collapse for things that seem out of place\u2014the packed surface we hit mid-week, which we concluded to be natural, and the plaster surface discovered in neighboring units that we hope to come upon early this week.<\/span><\/p>\n

We haven\u2019t found much more than pottery in our unit, but I think this has made me all the more interested in ceramics. Maybe I would feel differently if we had come across other finds, and I\u2019d be more keen on those things, but that isn\u2019t the case. Something else has piqued my interest: while we were washing pottery this past week, I worked on reassembling a jug that was found in one of the bath complexes. It\u2019s like a three-dimensional puzzle, where you have to pay attention to color, wheel marks, thickness, and inclusions in the pottery to determine which piece goes where. I really enjoyed trying to crack how this cracked pot was supposed to go back together, and I\u2019d like to learn more about how pottery was made by ancient artisans, and how it is now classified and reassembled by archaeologists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of our questions for the week depend on what we see under the rocks we plan to remove. Where does the bedrock go? There are two flat stones in the unit next to ours that seem to extend diagonally to the collapsed walls where we have been digging. Are the stones part of a staircase which could lead eastward to the rooms below the level where we are excavating, one of which is the room with the stone wine press? If no staircase, maybe we\u2019ll find something else, like a kiln.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More and more, as I look around, I start to see fallen rocks. Spending time doing archaeological work draws one\u2019s attention to things that aren\u2019t the way they once were, like buildings that stood proudly centuries ago but now sag and slump, their stones strewn across the ground. Our trench is no exception: the part […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5445,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Iz8A-UW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5445"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3531,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3530\/revisions\/3531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}