Thermopolae

Thank you to everyone who has been commenting on my blogs and also for sending me emails. I may not have time to reply to every one in kind (which is what this blogspot is for) but you can be reassured that I read and love every single one of them. Thank you for keeping me updated on the happenings back home, and please please please continue to do so. I love them.

Now back to the action.....

Things are now starting to wind down. We have started to do that silly little game of 'this is the last time we will etc etc etc..' which is rather depressing. However, with the knowledge of only haveing a few dig days left, a type of energy has creeped into our work and we are moving very fast. We want to get as much as humanely possible done as this is the final year for this season of excavations at Mitrou. What will follow is a research season, and perhaps a few small dig years which will certainly not be on the same scale. After this year, large scale excavations on the island will cease until everything is published.

The mood in our trench this past week has been strained to say the least. We were working towards our primary objective of uncovering the pink marl floor all week long, but it seemed that every single centimeter of soil we uncovered from the trench, something appeared that delayed our progress. If it wasnt a new set of walls, it was a pebble surface (that bane of our trench rears its ugly head all too often). If it wasnt a pebble surface, it was a plaster one (which to be honest was very cool!). We were also affected by external influences, all too often that of a lack of sleep which affected our pace. We have been trying very hard to cram as much into our trip as possible and I think this has now started to take its toll on our bodies. We are always tired. For these reasons I think that we have been a little snappy and strained. The abundant amount of surfaces that have occured within the trench has also made it extremely difficult to understand what exactly is going on. This manifests itself in long periods of us just sitting around staring dumbly at the baulk or trench trying to make some sort of sense of it.

This mood was overcome by the end of the week though. On Thursday afternoon, we FINALLY managed to get down to the level of the pink marl floor. All of a sudden our mood completely changed. We had reached our goal! We started excavating down to the surface, trying to trace it out, and had no trouble finding it. The soil just lifts itself off of it in chunks. I was happily going along when all of a sudden, the soil was no longer behaving like it was before. The surface was gone. The pink marl floor was preserved in patches. Very small patches. It also only extended into our trench about 15 centimeters. If you had to look up anti-climax in the dictionary, you would see 'see LG790-079, Mitrou, Tragana, Greece'. We werent happy, but I dont think anyone really cared. This is what archaeology usually is. A constant anti-climax dotted with a few short spurts of excitement. You live for those short spurts :p

The weekend found ourselves on our final field trip of the season, and for me one of the most exciting ones. We were going to go visit the ancient battlefield of Thermopolae. This was the site of one of the most famous battles in all of history. I can go on about this for an absolute age, but I will just give you the general jist of it. Basically, thsi is the site where 300 Spartans and around 3000 other Greeks made a stand against the hoards of Persia numbering probably around 200 000 (but this is jsut an estimate. The actual numbers range from as little as 150 000 to as many as 2.5 million). Whichever way you look at it, the Greeks were vastly outnumbered. They were sent there to delay the Persian advance for as long as they could. Basically it was a suicide mission. They held the pass against the Persians for 6 days and 3 days of fighting. The Spartans and the Thespians held their ground to the last man and allowed the rest of their allies to get away safely. They also bought time for the Athenians to be evacuate Athens. Leonidas and his 300 became the symbol around which the entire Greek resistance rallied and were able to ultimately drive out the Persian invaders, setting on course history as we know it. The battle and the selfless acts of sacrifice performed there mean many different things to different people.

Needless to say, to visit the monuments there and also see the battlefield itself had a profound effect on me. Not only was I getting the worst case of Ancient History Tingles I have ever had, but I was actually almost choked up as silly as it may sound. It was really awesome to see various dedications and wreaths left at the foot of the statue of Leonidas and at the famous inscription 'Go tell the Spartans, passer by, that here obedient to their laws we lie'. People still remember and appreciate the sacrifice and hardship undergone by those brave men 2500 years ago.