Story by Rachel Ross
Photos by Adriana Diaz
HUQOQ, Israel — At an archaeological dig site in Galilee, a student handed Daniel Schindler a piece of broken pottery no larger than her fingernail. He examined it briefly and told her the time period in which it was made, what ship it came to Israel on and from where, and exactly what it was used for.
Schindler, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has worked as the ceramics specialist at the dig site since it began 2011. He chose to do his graduate work at UNC because he wanted to work with Jodi Magness, a world-renowned archaeologist and the director of the excavation. Since Schindler began working at the dig, the team has uncovered a fifth century synagogue with mosaics depicting biblical scenes such as Jonah and the giant fish, Noah’s ark and the Tower of Babel.
When Schindler emailed Magness asking for a position with the excavation, she thought he was an undergraduate. He paraphrased her emailed response: “Yeah just apply, whatever.” Minutes later, Magness emailed him again, saying “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize you were a graduate student. Please come to my office we’ll have a meeting.”
In their meeting Magness said she was putting together the team — in an “Avengers assemble” manner, Schindler said — but still needed a ceramics person. Schindler had done work with ceramics as an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota on a dig in Tel Kedesh, also in the Galilee, with a colleague of Magness’s. After their discussion, Magness decided to bring him on board.
Schindler originally hated ceramics. While on the dig in Tel Kedesh, Schindler’s team was excavating an early administrative building. It was “a place for items to be collected and then redistributed,” Schindler said. “So basically, they had lots and lots and lots of jars, and pottery and things like that.”
He and his teammates excavated 90 kilos of pottery shards each day. But none was intact.
“It was literally just garbage,” Schindler said. “I hated it so much.”
But Schindler eventually grew to like studying pottery because it “tells you a story about the people that lived there.”
With pottery, Schindler can create an image in his head of what life was like for the people who worshipped at the synagogue.
“I can tell based on the types of types of cooking vessels that they have, that they enjoyed both stewed meats (and) basically sort of what we call in Minnesota hot dish, a casserole,” Schindler explained. “And they would eat together. There’s a lot of the cooking vessels, but there’s only a few of the serving dishes. So that implies that they ate together sitting around these bowls, and I could just imagine them sitting probably on like a reed mat on the floor, just talking, you know, sitting together and talking. And it gives you a sense of…families lived here.”
Back in Chapel Hill, Schindler and his wife have three cats. But they usually have more cats, as Schindler and his wife rescue them. Just before coming on the dig, they adopted out three cats that they rescued.
Schindler likely feels at home in Israel because the kibbutz where the team stays during the dig season brims with cats. He leaves out food for them and everyone on the site agrees that he is their favorite human.
“I know that they all have personalities,” Schindler said of the cats. “They all meow to me in different ways. You know, they actually do listen to me.”
Though he loves all of the cats, Schindler has a favorite that he endearingly calls “Mama” because she has had two litters of kittens since he met her in 2016. People usually catch, spay and release the cats that venture onto the kibbutz. But Mama has deflected every attempt to capture her to be spayed.
“She’s very wily,” Schindler said. “But she’s a good mom.”
Schindler wishes he could take Mama and a few of the other cats home. This move would not be unprecedented, as Magness fell in love with a cat on the kibbutz in 2016, purchased a cat visa and flew her home.
With Magness’ busy schedule on the site, she didn’t have much time to take care of a cat named Zoe that she planned to adopt. So during the 2016 season, Schindler cared for Zoe.
“She basically just lived on my pottery tables,” Schindler said.
Schindler fondly remembers Zoe with a photo from the 2016 season. “She’s sitting in the remains of the base of an Ottoman period, big basin. She used that for her bed for a big, big chunk of the season.”
Schindler’s colleague Shana O’Connell was less than enthusiastic about Zoe’s free reign in the lab. O’Connell is the plaster specialist for the excavation.
“Her stuff is incredibly fragile, especially once it’s been washed and dried,” Schindler said. “And Zoe, like any typical cat, immediately migrated to it and wanted to jump around and just step on it.”
O’Connell, “incredibly frustrated” with Zoe, suggested that Schindler sleep in the lab to keep an eye on the cat and make sure she did not break anything. Schindler said that a few seconds after O’Connell’s proposition they burst into laughter at the absurdity of the situation.
“This doesn’t happen on a dig,” Schindler explained. “You don’t have, like, an adopted cat…that the director is going to adopt and it’s going to fly back to the United States.”
O’Connell said that she and Schindler have similar trails on the site, in that students will ask them about pottery or plaster fragments that they find. But, O’Connell admitted that Schindler is “much cooler” than her because “he’ll actually go dig.”
The students on the dig loved Schindler, whether it was because he would jump in and get dirty with them or because he would amaze them with his quick knowledge on tiny pottery shards. They lovingly referred to him as “Dan the Pottery Man.”
