Story by Margaret High
Photos by Adriana Diaz
HUQOQ, Israel — Underneath a shade tarp, Andrew Shaw is one of almost 40 students digging where a fifth century synagogue once stood. He’s constantly in motion, swinging his pickaxe with the momentum of his body. It creates a rhythmic beat, like one of Snow White’s dwarfs in a mine getting ready to sing.
The small stereo speaker breaks in with a dramatic glissando. Shaw stops, straightening his back for a second to glare at the two archaeology peers in his square. They grin.
At this point, five weeks into digging, they’ve probably heard ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” 30 times. Their playlist is an impressive 12 hours long, but it only takes three days for them to get through.
He shakes his head as he argues about the music choice, his bucket hat barely visible from ground level. Shaw wins the argument, interrupting the dramatic piano chords to land on the deep thrums of Queen and David Bowie’s “Under Pressure”.
Now he can dig.
Like most things in Shaw’s life, he didn’t necessarily imagine himself coming to Huqoq, Israel, on an archaeological dig for the University of North Carolina. The rising sophomore took a first-year seminar on the Dead Sea scrolls taught by Dr. Jodi Magness because he thought they seemed cool.
“I actually have some Jewish ancestry,” Shaw says. “I’ve always been curious about developing a national identity, like the different things that go around it.”
After taking a vested interest in the scrolls and the professor, Shaw signed up for a study abroad opportunity to dig at one of Magness’ most famous sites.
Finding a fifth century synagogue was Magness’ only goal. She met that benchmark and then some after the second digging season in 2012 when an undergraduate archaeologist found some of the best-preserved mosaics for any Galilean synagogue. Now Huqoq has been propelled from a humble village to archaeological landmark.
As Shaw helps uncover more ancient Hebrew history, he nods his head slightly as he swings with his favorite pickaxe in a section that he feels ownership over.
“When I was a kid, I would play with Legos, right? You start with nothing and you build from scratch. That’s like… my site,” Shaw says about his connection to the archaeological dig. “I don’t want to say it’s my site because obviously there are people that have been here way longer, but still. This is my section, my square. It’s awesome to have that kind of connection to something.”
That sentiment gripped Shaw out of nowhere. At first, he was just digging, mindlessly looking at pile after pile of the sandy, dry desert dirt. But he took a second to look around at the entire site: the massive stone wall on the east side, a water cistern close to him, the mosaics in the north.
You gain perspective, Shaw says. You can see how people used to live there.
“I came in knowing nothing. I knew we were going to dig and that there were mosaics,” Shaw says. “After that first lecture, I had like four or five pages of notes and I was like ‘alright, I need to learn this by 4 a.m. because we’re doing this tomorrow.’ But you live and breathe this stuff for a month. You pick it up really quick.”
The manual labor of digging worked for Shaw. He fell into a natural rhythm, picked up from his love for dancing.
About the time he was 15, and not long after moving from Rochester, N.Y., to Goldsboro, N.C., Shaw picked up hip hop. He didn’t play sports, but didn’t expect to love dancing. It started with a simple class here and there and developed into a 15-to-20-hour week in the studio.
He prefers ballet, but is learning how to salsa.
“I’ve learned boredom is the worst thing for me,” Shaw says.
He explores different cultures through dance, although Israel has had to make up its lack for dancing history with ancient artifacts.
Dance also speaks to his entire family, since two of his siblings are adopted from Ethiopia. His adopted sister is also a dancer, and he spent one afternoon watching her recital recording in the basement of the cafeteria, the only place in Huqoq with accessible WiFi.
It can be tough away from family, entertainment, home. In the unrelenting heat, he finds himself slipping into a “one day at a time” mentality. Other students get sick, he just makes it through that day. Another student gets dehydrated and leaves the square. Just make it through today. Finally, Saturday comes, their one night off, but down time seems fleeting and it’s another week of pre-dawn wake ups and dusty clothes.
Yet there are little gold coins that make the hardships worth it, literally.
“I definitely have a favorite find,” Shaw says. “It was like winning the lottery.”
Shaw was following the normal routine when something stuck out. He called over his site supervisor, who called over another supervisor, who then called over Magness.
Other student’s heads perked up. Magness isn’t called over for just anything. A low buzz quickly spreads throughout the site. Some students stand up, craning their necks to get a look.
“You kind of ride that high for the rest of the day,” Shaw says. “Everyone is looking over at what you found, and they’re just as impressed as you are.”
Like most things uncovered this season, Shaw can’t disclose what he found. Not even to his parents. They’re all waiting for the official academic publication of his discovery for round two of renewed buzz.
Almost as remarkable as Shaw’s find is that he ended up at UNC, and thus Huqoq, altogether.
He was rejected from his dream school, University of Chicago, and accepted by the other 12 schools he applied to. With all his dreams tied up in one university, Shaw allowed luck to decide his undergraduate fate.
In a classroom full of high school seniors, Shaw entered all his university choices in a randomizer and clicked spin the wheel. It was an elimination game, meaning each time he landed on a college, it was taken out of the running.
Somehow, UNC-CH was the last man standing.
The rest fell into place: an interest in his Hebrew heritage, the Dead Sea scrolls class perfectly fitting into his schedule, a study abroad opportunity, the perfect pickaxe and the right digging spot to find a significant ancient artifact.
“Get me into a political science class and I’m way more passionate about that,” Shaw says. “But I love having this as… not like a hobby, but something separate that I can keep coming back to. I would love to go to another dig again.”
Being in Huqoq might seem out of place for the communications and political science double major, yet everything in Shaw’s life seems to have come together seamlessly despite the puzzle pieces.
Shaw says there are times when he considers archaeology as a career path. There was a lot to get used to in the field and lot more he hasn’t yet learned.
“Archaeology is destruction,” Shaw says. “Well, it’s not just destruction; it’s destruction and documentation. If it were just destruction, it’d be way easier. You could just break everything down and be done.”
With the end of the season, Shaw helped backfill the square he spent countless hours in. He’ll leave the site for another group of students to toil next season, or if he’s lucky, he’ll come back.
“We all have a genuine connection to the dig,” Shaw says. “We know it’s not ours to keep, but it somehow feels like it is.”
