Randy and I are busier than we thought...more team members this year, meaning more squares actively excavating, and more artifacts to catalog and store!  It's a good thing, but the wifi is not very dependable.  Right now, we are in Haifa for the weekend, so I am hoping to get a postcard/blogpost out later today or tomorrow morning.  We'll see.  Randy is also drawing a lot of items, and they seem thrilled to have a real artist on site.  Suzie is fitting in here and there, but she tends to hog the computer time when it is available. 

People are probably feeling about the same re: situations over here, at least that's a quick summary.  And, we're hoping to work in a visit to Tent of Nations on July 1, but suddenly, everybody has great ideas for inviting us here and there and everywhere in our very limited free time after the dig.  All in all, things are going well, though my lower back is reminding me I will need to see the neurosurgeon when I return for another nerve ablation...almost needed a walking stick/cane to get around a site we visited this morning!

We're having an amazing good time, and can't believe we're actually doing this!  Yesterday, 12 coins came in, so I'll need to measure them and register them on Sunday, when our weekend is over.  We have only had 12 coins up until yesterday, and only 18 for all of last year's season, so we're excited about what we are coming down upon.  We're getting lots of fascinating artifacts, most exciting are the tesserae, which are the little stone cubes that are used in mosaic floors.  We are finding handfuls of those in the fill above the synagogue floor every day, as the area was reused and rebuilt upon in later ages...possibly some crusader?  Or Islamic period?  Anyway, we've started finding chunks of the tesserae still in their plaster, and possibly part of what looks like an inscription, so there is great anticipation about what we will find when we get to the actual floor level of the synagogue. 

We have lots and lots of adventures to relate, but we need to find some lunch, and hopefully we'll get something posted later on this weekend. 

Much love,
Mary