Of biblical proportions

From The Hawk Eye:  Of biblical proportions

Despite majoring in history and anthropology, 21-year-old Sarah Nevling never has watched an "Indiana Jones" movie in its entirety.

She doesn't have to watch a Hollywood movie about archaeology for a vicarious thrill, though. Nevling just spent a month digging through the remains of an ancient Jewish village and synagogue in northern Israel, and the wonders she found far outweigh any fiction she could watch.

A Burlington native who graduated from Burlington High School and attends the University of Oklahoma, Nevling grew up wanting to be an archaeologist - ever since she saw a video about ancient Egypt in middle school.

"I thought that was so cool," she said. 


Nevling, who now makes her home in Norman, Okla., just returned from a college-sponsored archaeological dig in the ancient Jewish village of Huqoq, which lies in Israel's Galilee region.

"It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," Nevling said. "It's definitely an experience I'll never forget."

The dig site has been making a lot of news this week, and for good reason. Experts from the University of North Carolina and the Israeli Antiques Authority recently discovered a synagogue in the village dating back to the fourth century, which has a mosaic floor depicting the biblical figure of Samson lighting torches between the tail of two foxes, as described in the book of Judges - the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible.

That makes it a monumental find in the world of archaeology.

"I actually heard about it from my Hebrew teacher, and I thought, 'I'm an archeology student, and I'm Jewish. What better place is there for me to be,' " said Nevling.

Archaeologists came upon the ancient Jewish village while digging through the remnants of a Palestinian village that was abandoned in 1948 and later bulldozed. The first excavation of Huqoq happened last year, and when Nevling found out college students were needed to aid in the ongoing archaeological dig, she jumped at the chance.

"I never just wanted to study history. I wanted to find it," Nevling said. "You get this rush when you're hoeing, and you find a coin."

During her dig, Nevling found several ancient, dime-sized coins that turned green after years of corrosion. Once Nevling and her fellow volunteers found the coins, they immediately stopped hoeing and started sifting through the dirt so they could find more.

"We couldn't touch those with our bare hands because of the oil on our hands," Nevling said. "We had to pick them up with trowels and put them in baggies, and they were sent off to be studied in a lab in Jerusalem."

Nevling was joined by about 40 other student volunteers who broke into groups and concentrated on individual grids within the site. Diggers were divided between the village and the synagogue, and Nevling was assigned to the village.

It wasn't an easy job, but Nevling counts it as a fulfilling one. She left on a 10-hour plane ride from New York to Israel on the last day of May, and the first thing she noticed upon on her arrival was the heat. Iowa has been extremely hot over the last week, but Israel was even worse.

"It was at least 100 degrees every day, and we had 50 to 80 percent humidity," Nevling said. "We were blessed with two days of complete cloud cover, and that dropped the temperature six or seven degrees."

Armed with picks, hoes and trowels, Nevling and her fellow students dug through layers and layers of earth, starting at 5 a.m. every day (except Saturday) and finishing up at noon. At night, they stayed at a nearby hostel and even got to take a few trips to other archaeological sites around the region.

"We found pottery, animal bones, jewelry, glass," Nevling said.

Not all the artifacts Nevling found were from the same era, either. By the time she dug all the way into the Iron Age (which is from 1200 to 550 B.C.E.), Nevling had to use an industrial-strength ladder to climb out of the 9-foot-deep hole she was in.

"We had to look at the changes in the dirt. You would be on one time period, and you would hit a plaster floor, and then the foundation. When you pull that up, the dirt is completely different," Nevling said.

The village of Huqoq is mentioned in the biblical book of 1 Chronicles as part of the inheritance of the Tribe of Asher, and is said to have flourished throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods.

Digs will continue at the site next year, and Nevling, who still has a couple of years left before she graduates, plans on going back then.