By Caroline Bass
HUQOQ, Israel — “Eureka!” Rachel Carter shouts as she picks a piece of crimson pottery out of thick layers of dirt and clay.
With a shovel in one hand and shards of clay in another, Carter stands in the middle of an archaeological dig in Huqoq in Galilee pursuing what she affectionately calls a “science of disruption.” Carter sees archaeology as the disruption of what is to find the art of what once was.
As the sun rises over the Sea of Galilee on a warm June morning, Carter scrapes and picks at the rigid rocky walls in search of something that will allow others to learn from a specific period in history. It’s not for credit and not for glory, but it’s for the benefit of scientific advancement.
The first excavation at Huqoq began in 2011 under Jodi Magness, archaeologist and religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Carter is spending her summer under the direction of Magness as this team unearths 1,600-year-old mosaics that depict biblical stories vastly different from other archaeological discoveries in the Middle East.
While the excavation site in Huqoq might not look exactly like the set of an Indiana Jones film, Carter’s happy-go-lucky disposition makes her corner of the dig feel like it is.
As she sifts through debris and rotates between pickaxes of various sizes, Carter, a 23-year-old Foothill Ranch, Calif. native, thinks back to her childhood where her desire for disruption began.
Growing up just outside of Irvine, Calif., Carter remembers the constant need for time outside. As a child, wearing a sparkly pink princess gown, Carter happily played in the dirt. Curiosity was a driving force behind everything she did as a child, just as it remains a driving force as she pursues an ancient near eastern studies degree at Brigham Young University.
Whereas all rocks can look the same to the average eye, Carter’s summer is spent learning the differentiations between rocks, bones, pottery and mosaic tiles. While many college kids can be found sitting on a beach in June, Carter sits feet deep in archaeological pits discussing the relative thickness of columns. Through remains of artifacts found within the dust and stone, she can discover where buildings were positioned and measurements of ancient architecture through details others might miss. From disruption with pickaxes and shovels, Carter and the team break through the modern era to the fifth century. She feels like a time traveler.
Curiosity brought her to Huqoq where she has learned by doing. It seems as though that same little girl in a pink princess dress still exists as Carter grins, dumping buckets of sand, dirt, and silt into the rock sifter.
Magness points out that her team is not a team of “treasure hunters.”
