by Stacey Mleczko
Features Editor
Leaving one’s immediate environment is never easy. Your home, family, friends and routine disappear completely. Your comfort level, gone.
Eight University of La Verne students accepted this challenge when they embarked on a journey that turned out to be ruins.
On May 24, the students, accompanied by ULV faculty members Jonathan Reed, associate professor of religion, and Jay Jones, professor of biology and biochemistry, left their somewhat complacent lives on a trek to the Holy Land.
Israel welcomed the archeologists in training with early sunrises and long days of dirty work.
ULV joined a consortium of six universities including Converse College, Duke University, Huntington College and the University of Tennessee.
La Verne has participated in Israel excavations since 1988. The Sepphoris Acropolis Excavations began this summer in search for a distinction between the residential and industrial divisions of an ancient city.
Students were divided into groups of 10. For five weeks, they shared and discovered bits of history as they skillfully uncovered the broken relics of lives of people they would never know.
Christopher Arbizu, a junior planning to major in music, traveled to Israel and returned with a newfound realization. “When you are trying to deal with a people that is already dead, you’re trying to piece together a culture based upon destruction.”
In and out of the field, students had training in archeology. After doing field excavation, they were instructed on the proper ways to catalog artifacts and analyze data.
Reed said that Israel has felt the benefit of the American system of digging. “Using student volunteers you get a more motivated excavator rather than paying someone $5 an hour who will resent that. We get a motivated excavator, someone who is curious and someone who does the job very well.”
A second site was also included in the excavation for select students. Junior anthropology major Heather Baxter was the only Leopard sent to the site of Ein Zippori. Students from the consortium universities helped to create part of her team.
Aside from the dirty work, students were given the opportunity to travel with the group during weekend visits to Jordan, Jerusalem and select regions of Northern Israel.
Reed spoke of how hard the students worked and how tired they were near the conclusion of the trip. “We got to Petra in a four star hotel with a swimming pool and it was a nice reward and beautiful site.
“The most significant [event] to me is somewhere in the second or third week when you see something click in the students where they have gone from having you teach them to having them question you and having them redirect themselves. They go from students to fellow archeologists,” said Reed.
Instructors classified students as fellow archeologists but the most convincing aspect of their promotion was from the tourists. Arbizu said he found the digging funny at times.
“There was this wire rope that would hang and tourists would walk by as we were digging and say ‘There’s the diggers!’ We were actually workers; we were the people that others came to see. ‘Those are the archeologists.’ I am in countless home videos, we would freeze for pictures and it was a lot of fun.”
The trip was said to be an overall success. Reed extended his stay to contribute to further analysis while ULV and consortium students returned to the United States on July 2.
Ajit Purewal, a junior anthropology major, assures future diggers that there will be more trips in the summers to come. “There is so much more to find, if I had the resources and the opportunity, I would love to go back. I could have stayed longer.”
Those interested in uncovering the history of humanity during summer 2001, contact Reed in Miller Hall. Qualifications for the 10 openings are two recommendation letters from ULV professors and a grade point average of 3.0 or above. Applications are due Jan. 12. The cost is $2,250 plus airfare. Fellowships are available. Scholarships may be available for students with greater needs.
For additional information and pictures from Israel 2000, log on to the website www.ulv.edu/sepphoris.
Stacey Mleczko
