This morning we went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. It was very sobering. It is a very well set up museum, and they have so much documentation of and material from the genocide. It was different than other Nazi Germany exhibits I'd seen, because it hardly talked at all about the allied forces and the end of the war, or people within Germany who resisted the regime. It was specifically to remember the Holocaust and the victims it claimed. Although it was very heavy and tragic, I really am glad we went. It is important to remember those sorts of things. While we were there, the museum was filled with IDF (Israeli Defense Force), probably a couple hundred of them were being lead through in groups. You can tell that the hard past Jews have had is important to their identity toady.
I made it to Tell Shimron! Today was our third day of Surveying. Our first day was a bit rough, we ran into multiple problems. For one, all the "benchmark" markings from last year had worn off, so we had to try and set them again with the GIS Station. That allows us to know right where we are on the tell, and set up an accurate grid. Now that we are in the swing of things, we are able to survey quite a few of the grids in a day. Each grid is 20x20m, but we only do reconnaissance survey on 10x10m of each grid. This means that for 10 minutes we walk over the area and collect any pottery on the surface. We begin at about 5:15, and take a breakfast break at 9:00. After lunch at 1:30 we wash pottery, and the professors and archaeologists read it. Reading pottery means they go through and determine what time period is prominent etc. It is amazing to see how well they know pottery, and how they can tell from a tiny sherd what it used to belong to. Our first day was extremely h...
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