First day at Humayma!
What an exciting day! We started the morning at 7am for breakfast, before heading down to the bus to the site. It's an hour East-ish of Aqaba (I think!), beyond a military checkpoint and about 1000 m above sea level, where we were at. On either side are old mountains, hazy with dust and dark against the sky. As we went higher up, the temperature change was noticeable - I had chills for the first time since we arrived! An hour later, we were at the site, climbing out of the buses and getting set for a hike. It's a lot more sprawling than I'd expected - the fort is off in the distance, with a number of other buildings close at hand. Some are many hundreds of metres apart. We climbed first up to Nabatean burial area, with several tombs carved into the rockface as well as the remains of water collection systems. It was incredibly cool, with a 360 degree view. Unbelievable. After some exploring, we did a tour of the site. We'd already seen the bathrooms (aka the remains of camel stalls - great fun.) but looking around was incredibly neat, especially seeing ancient cisterns still in use. There were also tons of cool lizards creeping around - the bedouin call them "araboon."
After a second breakfast and the conclusion of the site tour, we marked off some dig squares and prepared to leave. It was wonderful, and the bus ride back extremely fun as well. Unfortunately, getting closer to Aqaba the humidity is UNREAL - we started sweating everywhere, but it's been surprisingly easy to acclimatize.
When we returned for lunch, we learned who we would be digging with - our two squares, supervised by Chris (YAY!), are made up of two sets of partners - I'm working with Meaghan to uncover the aqueduct and outer wall of the bath house, while Mike F and Darcy uncover the road connecting the bath house to the brothel and another outer wall of the bath-house. It's extremely cool, and a really great group to work with. We had our first meeting and briefing, and then did some prep work for the dig and had dinner. It's amazing how quickly time passes, especially in the heat. Our squares have never been dug into before - unlike some others that have been started and now contain backfill, these ones will involve breaking ground - it's harder work, but any finds will be completely new to everyone, which is pretty cool. However, to prepare for the digging for everyone, we'll start by removing backfill from all the other squares begun in other seasons - that means we won't actually start our own work for a few days. The anticipation is a little overwhelming.First glimpse of the dig site, first hike, first day out in the desert. Lots of new experiences, adjustments, and discoveries. Time to start digging!