Shortly after 8:00 in the morning, Pedro fires up the air compressor in Soneya’s stern; it coughs and sputters momentarily and then roars to life. Igniting diesel and rotating steel pump air through the large, black supply hose down to the manifold on the seabed below. There it feeds through smaller hoses to five airlifts positioned around the site. Divers open valves at the end of the hoses where they connect to the lower ends of airlift pipes, fan sediment up into the water column with their hands, and watch intently for any archaeological material that becomes exposed. As air pumps into the lift pipes, it rises up the 10-meter-long tubes and exits from the other end in a flurry of bubbles, jetting water, sand, and small rocks and shells like billowing plumes of smoke or steam from so many factory stacks. As the air rises, it expands and loses pressure, generating suction at the mouth of the pipe that pulls the surrounding water and suspended fanned sediments into the pipe and emits them into the upper depths, where sea currents carry the sediments away and deposit them off site.
In short, the team is excavating!
Pedro puts on his hearing protection before firing up the air compressor (photo by S. H. Snowden).
Airlifts spew bubbles and sediment as the team excavates the site (photo by S. H. Snowden).
Another team member joined our ranks this evening: Simon Claeys, an archaeology student at Ghent University in Belgium. Simon is a student of Prof. Roald Docter, a well-known Phoenician/Punic archaeologist who excavates at Carthage and who wrote his doctoral thesis on Phoenician transport amphoras.
With so many team members with little or no underwater excavation experience, I held a briefing in the evening to go over our excavation methodology, to instruct the team on proper airlifting technique and mapping protocols, and to show them what sorts of items they will likely encounter. Laura also reiterated the dive plan and our diving safety procedures. We talked late into the evening, as there were many questions, and it is obvious that everyone is excited and anxious to start excavating and doing some actual archaeology at last.
The evening excavation and dive plan meeting (photos by S. H. Snowden).