Goodbye Mitrou!

Leaving Mitrou and Tragana was really really sad. Saying goodbye to all the villagers who had been taking care of us these past 2 odd months gave us a constant desire to just stay one more week. Saying goodbye to the Mitrou crew, however, was much harder and was really actually quite depressing. We have gone through a lot together. We have had to deal with the challenges of archaeology and its joys. We have worked side by side for 2 months to the point where we were literally dropping where we stood to sleep. As a group, we have been baptised through fire (thats not an understatement with the sun the way it was!). Saying goodbye to these people now, many of whom I probably wont see again, was really really sad.

The final week of archaeology was terrifying. A kind of madness gripped the entire camp. DIG DEEPER DIG DEEPER DIG DEEPER seemed to be our mantra. We had to reach our goals. Every trench had to work harder than ever before to get to the point where the site needed to be at the end of 5 years of excavation. We needed to work hard in order to secure funding for another season. We needed to work hard in order to gather as much information about the site as humanely possible. As a result we began staying after hours to work. This gradually increased into some trenches staying open from 6am till 7-8pm almost every day. On top of this, we had our final exams to prepare for and some of us had research papers to work on. Needless to say, very little spare time, and VERY little sleep was available. Especially that considering it was the last week, we wanted to go out many nights just to hang out with everyone.

Through the crazyness of the final week, some extremely interesting finds were made. While these finds were not made within our trench itself, they are very important for the future of the site. Firstly in one of the trenches inside our biggest building uncovered so far, a beautifully crafted gold ring was found as well as links to some sort of gold chain. This was the most significant item of gold uncovered at the site in all the 5 years of excavation and is extremely exciting. It means that wealthy people were roaming around Mitrou 3500 years ago, and is further evidence for the importance of our site in the Bronze Age. Even more exciting was what was excavated in the final 2 days of digging. A HUGE block of stone was uncovered within the same building, standing vertically upright. No one knew what it was. Upon further exploration of the trench, side slabs were also found, and the evidence for a foot slab. The entire structure is very big, almost 5 metres by 2 metres. It is very similar to the smaller cist graves found all over the site, except for its size, and it MAY be possible that this is a giant sized one. What is interesting is that we are pulling a lot of bronze jewelry from this area, and also found a pretty cool gold leaf. We could be sitting directly on top of a HUGE cist tomb. No one knows yet... As for our trench, we managed to uncover another penguin quite deep down in probably Middle Bronze Age levels. ONce again, the Olive Grave delivered on quality and this cist provided us with an amazingly preserved skeleton of a small child, and a beautifully intact pot without as much as a scratch on it!

After leaving Tragana on Sunday, me and 4 of the other guys made the trip into Athens and checked into our hostel. We finally found a place to eat (the place we wanted to go to was closed, or so we found out after trekking halfway across Athens to get to it), and parted ways with Jessen and Josh who had decided to sleep in the airport for their flight the next day. Doug, Alex and I were certainly ready to go to bed but we had made a sacred pact together. We were going to go see 'The Dark Knight', even if we had to die trying. We almost did. Once again the trek around Athens began as we tried to find a cinema. It was raining (very inconvenient when you are walking around), so all the rooftop cinemas were obviously closed. We had to walk all the way into central Athens to find a regular cinema complex. When we finally found one, we were met with the nasty knowledge that the next session was 2 hours away. We were at the verge of giving up and going to bed when we rallied and decided to wait the 2 hours inside the cinema waiting area. Im glad the movie was so good, or I would have fallen asleep :p

In the morning it was time to say goodbye to Greece and head off to England. I travelled into the airport with Doug and Alex and said our goodbyes. I arrived in England, and had to negotiate the underground system with very limitted directions from my pub. Eventually, after a few hiccups, I arrived in Wavendon at The Wavendon Arms and was greeted by some of the staff, given some beer and food, and then given the run down on how the place operated. Ill include more information about the pub after my first shift tonight. After saying hi to everyone, I was taken to the staff house and managed to settle in to a comfortable bed in liveable conditions (much better than I have been coping with recently :p). Seemed like a 5 star hotel I tell you!