Plow Zone, Pottery and Pizza

The rest of the first week of work at Mitrou went by very smoothly. We continued to take out all the remaining backfill and expose the trenches. We were all suitably exhausted by the end of the week, but the good thing about backfill is it exposes the hard workers and the slackers. It sort of serves as a bonding experience (Baptism through fire if you will). I actually quite enjoyed it despite all my grumblings. It is quite mindless work, and is extremely good exercise. You can just zone out and enjoy the workout. At the end of the week we had exposed and swept out most of the trenches on site. FINALLY our islet was looking like a functional archaeological site rather than a quarry.

Friday night was reason enough for a mini-party down by the beach, and almost everyone turned out to bring in our first weekend. We enjoyed ourselves suitably, as only University students can, and got to know everyone on a different level away from the dust and grime of the site and the mugginess of the Apothiki. Conveniently one of my roommates, Doug, has some sort of psychological problem. If he has had enough to drink, he will compulsively buy beers and alcohol for almost anyone around him. Needless to say, I figured this out very early on in the night and proceeded to act appropriately. It was a good night.

The weekend was spent travelling to the nearest town, Atalanti, and visiting a couple of interesting mini-sites and the museum. The museum houses the most important finds from the entire Ephoria (or archaeological district). It was really good to check it out. I have forgotten how much of an absolute nerd I can be when it comes to museums. I can get lost in them for hours and hours.

The rest of the weekend was free time, so I enjoyed the break and spent most of it hanging out on the beach and reading/researching for a paper I want to write while I am here. The break was much needed and welcomed.

The second week of archaeology was extremely exciting. This was not due to many significant finds or anything like that, but mainly because of the novelty of actually starting to excavate for real. A couple of students and I were assigned to a trench with Dave, Ainsley (both trench assistants) and Beth (our supervisor). We started with a detailed surface survey, and finally broke ground for the first time. That first pick axe swing was magical. If it was in a movie, it would have either a) been done in silhouette or b) been done in super slow motion with inspiration music playing in the background.

Unfortunately, the novelty pretty much wore off very quickly. We were digging through a layer called 'plow zone'. This is the entire layer of soil that has been ridiculously disturbed. Almost all of the things we find in this layer are tiny little sherds of pottery, ranging in size from a pinky nail through to palm sized pieces. As in archaeology, context is almost everything, these pieces are pretty much useless to us even if they are good quality. Pieces of shell and bone are also found, highly disturbed and because of this, we tend to try go through this layer quite quickly. Unfortunately it can be meters deep at some points, so it is extremely frustrating.

A couple of interesting things did come up though that I was very proud of. On the first day of excavation I managed to spy a piece of really high quality painted Mycenaean pottery that my trench assistant had compeltely missed. As a result I was named Eagle Eyes for the rest of the day. The next day, I was taking out some stones that we had determined were jsut floaters (big stones that werent part of anything significant), and was picking underneath one when I discovered almost half of a really large bull figurine. As our dig supervisor is making a particular study of these figurines I received massive browny points, further cemented my status as Eagle Eyes and received a free beer in the process. Unfortunately that also marked the end of my good fortune, and I did not find anything really special for the rest of the week. Worse still, we soon lost Beth and Ainsley to a more "important" trench, and Dave was left in the deepend trying to supervise a trench. He hasnt had any experience doing this, so he is struggling. I enjoy working with him though and I am learning a lot from his mistakes (which to be honest have been few and far between).

That weekend we went on a weekend trip to Athens. We were shown around the sites of the Agora, Acropolis and Keremaikos (ancient cemetery) of Athens by the actualy archaeologists who are the dig coordinators for the respective sites. As a result, we were allowed behind locked gates that usually bar the public, and into the actual trenches to have a look see. It was incredibly exciting as these guys really put the history into perspective. One of the best moments was standing in the middle of the 'Stoa Basileus' and realising that almost everyone I know from Greek history had once had office there and administered the city of Athens, or visited on some sort of political business. The same was true for the Parthenon. It was truly spine tingling stuff. Some of the greatest and most ingenious men to have ever lived had stood in exactly the same place as I was standing. *insert ancient history tinglies here*

The rest of the Athens trip included a visit to the National Arhcaeological Museum. Naturally I spent about 5 hours wandering around the different rooms and I loved every minute of it. That Saturday night, while some were preparing to hit the clubs in Athens, I decided to have a low-key night with some of the guys and we went on a search for some form of Pizza. You do not understand the craving. We have had ham and cheese for breakfast, second breakfast, and lunch for almost 2 weeks in a row. I was ready to KILL someone for something that tasted good. We eventually found a great pizza place (intriguingly, Pizza Hut here in Greece is a posh restaurant complete with wine lists, appetisers, deserts, music, candles, everything. It was amazing) and proceeded to really splurge. I think we ate enough to last us for a couple of weeks :D.

We would need it.