Others don scuba gear and plunge into the Mediterranean Sea, using an air bag the size of a Volkswagen Beetle to move rocky rubble from a site so it can be explored. During the summer, the peak dig season, volunteers can find work on 24 archaeological sites in Israel. These include Canaanite ruins near Ashkelon, Roman and Byzantine remains on the Dead Sea, and a Bronze-age site at Megiddo, the Biblical Armageddon. Most of the digs are sponsored by U.S. universities, and most of the volunteers are American college students. Seymour Gitin, director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, says that over the past two decades digs have increasingly become outdoor classrooms, and as a result the quality of the volunteer workers has improved.
Archaeological expeditions fund part of their field work from fees paid by student volunteers.
The students get college credit for their work in return. The student archaeologists also have to write two research papers based on their work. Not all the volunteers, however, are students. Okla. Stanley, sporting a red bandanna and a wide-brimmed straw hat, is top kick on the Caesarea Combined Expeditions, which has used 1,800 volunteers over the past nine years to explore a temple built about 22 B.C. by King Herod to show his loyalty to Augustus Caesar. Sister Laurie Brink of Chicago, Ill., left her habit behind this summer to dig in khaki shorts and Birkenstock sandals at the Caesarea excavation where ruins of an ancient church sit atop the Temple foundation.