Story by Rachel Ross
Audio by Ashley Mills
HUQOQ, Israel — A computer scientist, a sailor, a hip-hop dancer, a middle school Frisbee coach and a university tour guide walk into an archaeological dig site in Israel. It sounds like the start of a bad joke, but it’s not. Those all describe the same person the same person, UNC-Chapel Hill junior computer science major, Sophie Swift.
In Israel’s Galilee, Swift, 20, worked on the excavation of a fifth century synagogue in the ancient village of Huqoq. The dig, led by world-renowned archaeologist Jodi Magness, uncovered a mosaic depicting biblical scenes such as Jonah and the whale, Noah’s ark and the Tower of Babel.
A religious studies minor, Swift learned about the dig in Magness’s introduction to early Judaism class at UNC. Though Swift did not plan to pursue a career in archaeology, she wants to use her time at UNC as an opportunity to get an interdisciplinary education.
“I’m never going to have a chance to do this again,” Swift said of her decision to go on the dig. “I might as well come see it.”
With no previous archaeology experience, Swift walked into her first day on the dig site fearful that she would “mess up” something of historical significance. By the end of the day, she felt like a “badass” wielding a pickaxe and moving rocks that she first thought she was not strong enough to lift.
Swift also helped with a major discovery. She and her teammates were working to uncover an ancient kitchen. They knew it was a kitchen because they had uncovered three ovens called “tabuns,” which Swift related to pizza ovens. But they wanted to know more, so they kept digging.
One day, they removed a large rock. But after continuing digging, they did not find the compact layer of earth they were expecting.
“There’s just dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt,” Swift recalled. “And so as we kept digging, we realized that we were digging under the rocks…then eventually we hit like a plaster ground.”
The plaster was shaped like a boat and led from a cistern to the kitchen. They had uncovered a water channel that supplied the ancient kitchen with water.
When they realized what they had found, Swift, a member of UNC’s competitive hip hop dance group, Kamikaze, broke out into a jig. The sight of Swift dancing while digging was common, as the appointed DJ in her area of work played a wide array of music from hip hop to old sailor tunes to the “Lord of the Rings” soundtrack. Swift says she never broke out into full Kamikaze moves, she did more of a “little cabbage patch.”
While Swift danced celebratorily, Magness called everyone at the site to gather around the channel to explain its importance. It was a window into the daily life of people living in ancient Galilee.
“Finding the channel was super cool,” Swift said. “You start to kind of piece it all together.”
Despite the thrilling feeling of unlocking a bit of history, Swift’s favorite day at the dig was when three kids visited the site.
“They were just taking their tiny pickaxes and like digging holes everywhere which they totally are not supposed to do,” Swift recalled. “It was just absolutely hysterical.”
Swift also coaches a middle school Frisbee team in Chapel Hill. She describes coaching as her “soul coffee” because the kids make her so happy.
“They’re spunky, and they’re fiery, but they’re also young enough that they’ll sometimes listen to you,” Swift said. “I wouldn’t trade those kids for the world.”
After the kids left the dig site, Swift found herself reflecting on her experience as she walked to the latrine. This latrine was no regular latrine. It was encompassed in a breathtaking view of the Sea of Galilee, surrounded by mountains dotted with Judas trees and covered in golden grass.
As she looked at the view, Swift thought, “I’m in the middle of Israel digging an archaeological site, digging up ancient historical finds from people that were here like 1,000 years ago. It’s just the weirdest combination of stuff that I would have never seen myself doing…I think I had a moment of like, ‘I’m very content here.’”
Swift’s roommate in Israel, Connor Henderson, a junior at Western Carolina University, said Swift, “loves everyone” and “always has a positive energy.”
Though she enjoyed working on the site, Swift does not plan to go into archaeology. But she did learn that there are opportunities for computer scientists in archaeology. She previously thought of archaeology solely in terms of “digging up the past” and that “it has nothing to do with current time.”
After a discussion with Brad Erickson, the 3D and photogrammetry specialist at the dig and a Ph.D. candidate at UNC, Swift learned about the roles a computer scientist can play at a dig site. Like Erickson, Swift could work with photogrammetry to turn photographs of sites into 3D maps. She could also work to create virtual reality technology that would restore ancient synagogues to their original brilliance through VR goggles.
“It is kind of nice to know that I have enough background that maybe I can go to a site and say ‘Hi, I’m a computer scientist, and I’ve been on a dig before, if you want me to help design a database,’” Swift said.
When the dig season is over in Israel, Swift will return to Asheville, where she hopes to get a job and go to Lake Wanaka in Tennessee where she can feel the rush of sailing.
