Tel Akko, Israel 2016
For the second half of summer 2016, I traveled back to the same excavation I attended in 2012 at Tel Akko, Israel. This time I attended as an advanced student, and therefore was able to act as the assistant to one of the square and area supervisors. In doing so, I learned much more about the way an excavation is run, and the decisions needed to be made in order to do so, as well as having the opportunity to actively participate in the additional measures and roles necessary to have the operation run as smoothly as possible. I also had the opportunity to work with two Israeli metallurgists in order to advance my knowledge of metallurgy, both in historical and archaeological contexts, an area of study in which I have been interested for some time. Throughout the duration of the excavation, I utilized collected sediment samples connected to various squares and aspects of the site which are believed to have been connected to the metallurgy industry on the Tel during the Persian period. In order to do so, I took the raw sediment samples and completed heavy fraction analysis to separate the iron fragments and associated materials from the sediments. I then worked to categorize these materials into separate classes based on morphological variations and completed spatial analysis upon those categories to determine if there were specific concentrations of different materials in certain areas across the site. Hopefully, the spatial and concentration analysis will lead us to better understand which types of metallurgy work was completed in each area of the site, thereby allowing us to add more layers to the understanding and rich history of the site as we currently understand it. In addition, I had the opportunity to observe geological coring procedures at a point lower on the Tel, and see how these materials were subsequently collected for later isotopic analysis.