We were on our way to see how Jerusalem's buried past is being protected from the engines of progress - in this case, from a construction crew laying a sewage pipe - when the car phone rang.
Archeological dig [illustrative].
Photo: Ianir Milevski, PhD
"I think I've found something. Do you have a camera with you?" asked Shimrit Elia on the other end of the line. Elia is an Antiquities Authority archeologist whose job for the last two weeks had been to monitor the construction crew's work in Nahal Tzofim near Mount Scopus.
"No, all I've got is my video camera. What did you find?" asked Semyon Gendler, the authority's roving field archeologist in the capital, driving the work van.
"I'll tell you when you get here," said Elia.
"Good for you," said Gendler, perking up, impatient now to get around midday traffic to the construction site.
Entering a pine forest, we drove along a dry river bed where the tractors were digging up the earth for the sewage pipe. We passed a configuration of stone blocks sticking out of the dirt. Elia, 27, dressed like your classic archeologist in hiking boots, T-shirt, khakis and floppy hat, led us up the hill to what looked like a cave covered by a slab of rock.
"It's a cistern," she said - basically a huge bowl to catch rainwater. Gendler thought it might be from the Byzantine era, and by the plaster he scraped off the sides, he figured it might have been in use until sometime in the 19th century.
"Very nice," he told Elia. She'd found the cistern while hiking around. Otherwise, she'd been sitting on a chair under the trees watching the crew at work, making sure nothing emerged from the ground that might have archeological value.
The configuration of blocks further back was a stone-cutting instrument probably from the Second Temple era, said Gendler. Since it lay beyond the route of the sewage pipe, as did the cistern, it would not be harmed by the construction crew.
Additional antiquities - such as wine presses, olive presses, wells and ceramic pieces - were expected to turn up before the construction crew was finished, which is why Elia was there. Whatever was found would be documented and thus added to the store of knowledge about Jerusalem's ancient past.
Elia recently completed a diving course and plans to become an undersea archeologist off the coasts of Jaffa, Ashkelon, Acre and other ancient port cities. Of her current job, she said: "It's boring sitting out here day after day. But when you finally find something interesting, it makes all the boredom worthwhile."
Elia and Gendler work in salvage excavation, the branch of archeology that just about every construction worker, contractor and developer - especially in Jerusalem - is familiar with. The Antiquities Authority inspects most construction sites, public and private, in the country to try to make sure that the treasures of the past are preserved.
"We try to be involved in every project that cracks the ground," said Jon Seligman, the authority's Jerusalem regional archeologist. Archeologists accompany construction projects throughout the country, but they are ubiquitous at projects in the capital, whose underground, in Seligman's words, is "essentially one big antiquities site."
(However, salvage excavation, Seligman said, has nothing to do with the two major controversies involving archeology in Jerusalem: the dig underneath City of David/Silwan, which local Palestinians say endangers their homes, and the claim by Israeli Islamic leader Ra'ed Salah that "al-Aksa is in danger" due in part to supposed excavation underneath the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. The dig underneath City of David/Silwan isn't meant to salvage antiquities uncovered by construction workers, but rather is meant directly for archeological purposes. As for digs underneath the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif, there are none, said Seligman.)
In the last year or so, salvage excavations in Jerusalem have turned up such extraordinary finds as a Second Temple pool in Silwan, which was uncovered during the laying of a sewage pipe in an open field, and a Middle Bronze Age cemetery, uncovered during work on the Holy Land housing project.
The Jerusalem Light Rail project has recently yielded some important discoveries, including a Byzantine monastery near the Mandelbaum Gate, and near the central bus station, a Second Temple village, a Roman legion camp and pottery kilns.
The Silwan pool will become a tourist site, necessitating the rerouting of the sewage pipe. In the case of the Light Rail discoveries, Seligman said: "We can't force the Light Rail to detour around every antiquities discovery we make, so we documented these findings and had them covered up with gravel. The idea is to preserve them, and then, say, in 200 years if someone decides they want to extract these pieces from the ground, they can."
ANOTHER FERTILE site for antiquities discoveries is Har Homa, the hilly region at the southern edge of the city where a gigantic new neighborhood has been under construction for many years.
Amid the new buildings, scaffolding, bulldozers and concrete dust, two Byzantine monasteries excavated several decades ago stand untouched, off-limits to construction crews. In fact, one tractor got too close to the wall of one of the monasteries, damaged it, and as a result will have to pay for a salvage excavation at the monastery, said Gendler.
These archeologists have become a huge expense for developers since 1990, when the Antiquities Authority began charging for its services instead of picking up the tab itself. An on-site archeologist such as Elia at Nahal Tzofim costs the government NIS 900 a day if it's a public works project, or, if it's a private project, costs the developer NIS 400 a day.
If the archeologist sees evidence of important antiquities becoming endangered by the bulldozers and tractors, he can order the project stopped for further archeological inspection. If the Antiquities Authority then decides that the site must be excavated to identify and preserve antiquities, it can order a full-scale excavation - at the developer's expense.
