Work Work Work

Well it has been quite a while since my last post. Be that as it may, there really hasnt been much happening here in England worth writing about. Shift work is thouroughly disinteresting, and it has become a matter of trying to get though the day to day. When we arrived at the Wavendon Arms, the pub was going through quite a tight spot. We have been working extremely hard in trying to turn fortunes around and in this we have been somewhat successful. The front of house service has been completely turned around, but the kitchen still needs a lot of work. We have started to completely fill the restaurant twice over on the weekends, but the weekdays are still pretty quiet. We have a little bit to go, but we are almost there after a month of work.

The people I work with are pretty cool. I live with them and see them almost every day, so its no surprise that we are becoming pretty good friends. The people that live in my house are Dean, an aircraft engineer from Darwin, the twins, Ashley and Danielle who have just completed 3 months at a summer camp in the US, Brandon who has moved here from Cape Town and Thomas from
Slovakia. Along with the locals, Jon, Hannah , Olly and a multitude of others, form the rest of the core group that run the pub. I share a room with Dean and Brandon, but I get on the best with Dean. Needless to say we all have a lot to do with each other and these people form the general social circle with which I hang out.

While working at the Wavendon Arms is quite tough (not so much the actual work that has to get done, but the whole monotany and seeming pointlessness of it all), there are lights at the end of the preverbial tunnel. First and foremost, of course, is the backpacking with Rishi at the end of the year, which is what all this is in aid of financially. It is this that really does keep me going and the prospect of the amazing adventure to come. I will also be travelling to Spain soon to visit Kezia who will be finishing up her travelling in Europe. With these things to look forward to, I am able to push on with the work here at the Wavendon.

I was fortunate enough to make the trip into London to visit the British Museum this week. After a months break from anything to do with ancient history, going to possibly the most prominent of all ancient history museums was a real treat. The whole place is absolutely HUGE. I had no idea how long it would actually take me to get through it. I set aside an entire day, but I only managed to get through about 2 thirds of the Greek and Roman section in 5 hours. It was almost comical. I thouroughly enjoyed being around ancient history again, and returned to Milton Keynes recharged.

I hope to make other trips in and around England soon, as sitting at home here in Milton Keynes is rather pointless (even though it does have the benefit of saving a ton of money). I will hopefully be visiting a number of universities while I am here including Kings College in London, UCL and the University of Sheffield in order to scout out possible post-graduate options. I also want to visit Stone Henge, the Lakes District, Edinburough and Ireland. I probably wont be able to do everything, but I can always give it a go!

Until I have something else worthy to report!

Chris

The Wavendon Arms

The change of lifestyle in the past week has been quite dramatic. I am now working full time in England at a country pub/ restaurant in an area called Milton Keynes, about an hour North West of London. I never thought I would ever do bar work or wait on tables, but here I am working 40+ hours a week doing exactly that at The Wavendon Arms. The place is actually very nice. It is aimed at probably the middle aged, slightly upper class and so we dont have many problems when it comes to bad behaviour or over drinking. People are mostly out to have a good meal with their families, a few drinks with some good friends or conduct some business meetings. The restaurant has a great atmosphere, and is really quite a pleasant place to eat and the bar is very comfortable. I actually wish we had a few more bars like this place around Sydney, as it is really a great place to have a good social drink.

I have had to make a conscious change in the state of mind I have been in for the last 3 months. I am no longer in tourist mode. As a result, I am trying to slip into some sort of routine. The reason I am doing this is mainly to save money. I can't afford to go out and spend money on travelling all around England at the moment, especially considering how expensive everything is over here. This is somewhat helped by a combination of the work at the pub, and a research paper I am in the process of writing for Mitrou.

The work at the pub isn't too difficult. Mostly, it is about customer service and efficiency. I have had plenty of experience in customer service from working at Mobil for 2 years back in Sydney, and the principles are exactly the same. The efficiency however can only come from experience, but I am trying to learn as fast as I can. The most challenging thing is memorizing the entire menu offered at the restaurant, so that I know exactly what people are talking about when they ask me questions. The wines list is also quite challenging but I am slowly getting the hang of it. Needless to say the accent is helping things tremendously. It is a point of conversation with customers, and makes you a lot more interesting. I am milking it to the max!

The interesting thing I have noticed about England, is that the english spend most of their time thinking about what they could be doing if they were anywhere except england. Right down the road from where I am staying they have a huge indoor snow slope where you can ski, and also an indoor skydiving centre. There is also, slap bang in the middle of the shopping centre, a large sandbox equipped with umbrellas, beach balls and lifeguards. Incredible.

Well thats all from me right now. I really don't have much to write about as I have slipped into a routine here that doesnt involve much excitement. Im not quite sure what people would like to hear about, so suggestions would be appreciated.

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!

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.

DURfaces, Walls and Delphi!

Things in Greece are coming to a rapid and alarming conclusion. I can't believe that I only have a meagre two weeks to enjoy myself here at Tragana. It feels odd as on one hand I cant imagine that I have in fact been over here for 2 months already, but on the other I am relieved that I am going to be able to take time to recover from the rigours of excavation and the harsh living conditions. This last week has been, as always, both interesting, difficult and incredibly memorable all at the same time. Unfortunately, I find myself at the computer without my USB flash drive so photos will have to wait. IM SORRY I FORGOT!

Excavation wise, we have been chasing a beautiful pink marl plaster floor that we think is just below where we are currently at. Unfortunately, between us and the prize have consistently turned up layer after layer of 'surface'. Surfaces are the most annoying thing in the world to excavate. They are indicated by a slight hardening of the soil, maybe a colour change, and perhaps if you are lucky some flat lying sherds of pottery or a bunch of pebbles. They are very difficult to identify while digging as you are required to feel subtle differences in soil density with your trowel. Even when you 'find' them they are almost always patchy and you loose them within seconds. As they are supposed to indicate occupation of the area, we have to take photographs and everything every single time we come across one. Most of those in our trench are convinced these surfaces are nothing more that phantoms and have so named them 'DURfaces'.

While digging our way towards the marl floor, we uncovered two very substantial walls running on a completely different axis to what we have already in the trench and also quite a bit deeper. This means that they are walls from a different occupational period and are very exciting. They are part of a new building which our trench seems to luckily encompass the inside. We are looking very forward to proceeding deeper to see what we will find inside this new building.

This weekend our trip was to the famous and magnificent site of Delphi. This is the place of the legendary 'Oracle of Delphi' which was world famous all the way from Archaic Greece (c. 800BC) to Roman times. People from far and wide made pilgrimage to the site in order to ask the oracle about what the future had in store for them. Cities and Empires from across the globe also asked about pressing political concerns, matters of war and colonisation. It was indeed one of the most important sanctuaries in Greece. The place is pretty impressive. It is set on the slopes of Mt. Parnassos, and overlooks the extremelly majestic surrounding countryside.

There are remains of a large Gymnasium, a temple to Athena, a large theatre and a huge stadium used for the famous Pythian Games held every two years. The main attractions here though are the large Temple to Apollo (where the Oracle sat and spoke the words of the god to the pilgrims) and the large city treasuries built by many different states across Greece to hold their dedications to the sanctuary.

After our visit to the various sites and Museums, we were encouraged to attend an optional hike to the top of Mt Parnassos directly behind the site. This was advertised as a 'easy walk to the top of the mountain with exceptional views of the bay and site'. As the guide had only done it 18 years ago, things maaaaay have been a little hazy to remember. It was not an 'easy walk to the top' but a veritable bushwhack through rough, thorny scrub that ripped and tore at our legs. We also lost the trail 3/4 of the way up and had to go offroad to find the edge of the mountain. Me and a couple others went on a scouting mission and finally found the place. It was possibly the best view I have yet to encounter in Greece. You had a perfect aerial view of the site and EVERYTHING around it. It was breathtaking. Photo's forthcoming!

I have to dash because my parents have just called :D

Adiossas and Kalispera!

Penguins, Archaeologists and Temples

Finally I have got my computer sorted out and am able to now post photos (I hope). Hopefully this will add a completely new dimension to the posts and give you a little taste of what I am actually SEEING while over here.

This whole week has been very exciting not only for me personally but for the excavation. We started off this week with a trench that was on a million different levels. It was terraced in so many different places that the whole thing looked like a big mess. We decided to clean things up and try level out all the different excavation units to the same place, hopefulyl allowing us to avoid contamination from different periods. This sounded like a very solid idea to all of us sop we attacked it with gusto. Unfortunately, on Tuesday we uncovered a very large and very flat rock just sitting in the middle of our trench. Many expletives were uttered by the trench supervisor, as this kind of stone is the tell tale sign of a cist tomb and involves monumental amounts of paperwork. The rest of us were actually quite excited about the whole thing.

Needless to say, this diverted attention completely away from our original plans, and work was now focussed on clearing the trench around the grave so that the mortuary excavators could come in and open the grave. Curiously, code words have to be employed when we are not at site and talking about graves because we do not want the locals to think we are finding gold or anything of value. It would lead to looting and crowding of the sight and ultimately damage to the archaeological record. For these reaosns, we call graves 'Penguins'.

This was started on Wednesday afternoon, and things quickly became interesting. The tomb was intact, but the bones were pretty badly preserved. The Mortuary people could tell that it was the grave of a 6 or 7 year old, but gender was difficult to be sure of. Amongst the bones we found a number of really amazing grave goods. About 7 completely preserved pottery vases and jugs were found, all beautifully decorated in very good condition. On the actual body itself were found a bronze ring, two bronze bangles and two bronze pins to either hold hair or clothing in place. The date of the grave is from the Protogeometric period, the period directly after the Mycenaeans starting from about the 10th century BC. All in all we are told that it is one of the best preserved graves from our site, and it is very rare to find one that hasnt been robbed.

We also went to a site called Kalapodi, jsut down the road from Tragana. It is being excavated by the Germans and is alarge temple complex ranging in use from the Mycenaean period all the way through to Roman times. It is quite an impressive site and very well preserved. The Germans are CRAZY. Their baulks look like they have been cut by a lazer. They are so smooth and sooooo clean that you could literalyl eat off them. You can see everything with regards to the different soil layers and layers of occupation. I was quite jealous and will now strive to be German.

The weekend was planned to be very exciting. I was to meet up with some of my university friends who are digging at the Isthmia at Corinth. We were to rent a car and drive all over southern Greece visiting Sparta, Pylos and Epidaurus. Unfortunately, while we did manage to meet up without amny problems (a monumental achievement), our plans were cut short when we could not find a single place at the airport which had the right kind of car we needed. THis put our entire plans into a tail spin as we had to now rely on public transport, which we had NOT been planning on. We had to wing it. After much deliberation and trudging all over Athens, we eventually found the bus stop to Sounio, a little town on the southern coast of Attica. Its claim to fame is the majestic Temple of Poseidon, poised on a cliff face overlooking the Aegean sea and the island of Aegina. The whole setting was incredible, and the view spectacular. I am sure that even a god must have been pleased.

We made our way back to Athens and I showed my friends around the Plaka area (I swear I know Athens like the back of my hand now), before heading to the metro station to make the long trip to Corinth via train. We arrived quite late and managed to have an amazing meal right on the water front. The next morning we decided to head into the Corinth markets which are pretty much jsut the weekly farmers markets. We managed to grab some amazing tasting fruit for breakfast (not to mention the GLORIOUS home made turkish delight). The markets were busy but very charming. We enjoyed them immensely. The plan was then to head to Loutraki, famous as one of the prettiest beachfronts on the entire gulf. We managed to figure out the bus routes there and arrived without much hassle, but found that the whole place was much to busy to be enjoyed and returned soon after. We also found out that it would be impossible to go to the Theatre of Epidaurus later that evening to watch a play because some famous French orchestra was playing there and the tickets were completely sold out. I was very dissappointed about the whole day but it was amazing to hang out with Rennie and Jennie again.

Today has been quite low key. After a big night last night durting which much Beer Pong was played and alcohol consumed, Rennie and Jennie decided to take me around Ancient Corinth, and we managed to get permission to go behind the barriers into the Peirene Fountain because 'they were doing research'. One of the greatest moments of my life was when we were stopped and asked what we were doing. We jsut looked at each other and replied, 'We are Archaeologists with the American School and we are doing some research on the Fountain.' they let us pass immediately. The great thing was. It wasnt a Lie. We are archaeologists :D:D

Halfway (and a bit) Point Already!?

After the adventures of Napflio last week, it was always going to be hard to come back to the routine of dig life. This whole week has been quite the struggle for me personally. The mind is willing but the body seems to be in a state of revolt. I ahve been trying to go to bed early enough that I get decent amounts of sleep, but I am quickly discovering that getting anything more than 5 hours and less than 9 is a death sentence. When you wake up you feel like death. Every single muscle in your entire body screams at you and it feels like you are trying to pull yourself out of a bath of honey (not that I have ever had that experience......). It took what felt like an iron will and the strength of ten men to pull myself out of bed and into a breakfast chair in time for some tea and yoghurt.

As it turns out, it seems that the reason for this horrible siutuation was that I was sick. This came to full fruitation on Tuesday night when while lying in bed, I was shivering with cold. I looked around and noticed that everyone in the room had not even bothered to put on their sheets and were jsut sleeping in boxers because of the heat. I rolled over and muttered to myself 'this cant be good' and proceeded to pull on a blanket and a jumper. I woke up in the morning with a monumental effort and immediately rushed to the bathroom. I wont go into any details but suffice to say, bad diahroea is just not pleasant in any way. I was in no state to go to breakfast let alone to the site, as my brain was feeling like it was going to explode out of my head. I called the field school director and was told I could stay home for the day. I proceeded to get to the local pharmacy, got some meds and then collapsed and didnt move for most of the day. It proved an absolute blessing. The next day I was feeling a million times better, and was pushing very hard to go to the site. Nick relented but put me on flotation duty to make sure I was ok. I didnt mind as we had a good team there that day and got through a lot of work.

The reason for me wanting to get back to digging so soon was due to the amazing things we have managed to pull out of our trench this past week. Not only have we come up with gigantic remains of storage vessels and huge pieces of pottery, but we have also found a beautiful phi-figurine (the best found on site so far). Enough about ceramics though! Much to everyones excitement we have also managed to pull out a bronze dagger, almost fully intact with a point. It is very well preserved, as usually when these things come out of the ground they are badly damaged and shattered. It is probably about a foot long. The best find of the week, and indeed probably of the entire season so far, was a beautifully engraved seal stone. These stones acted as administrative seals or signatures left on clay seals on pottery vessels. More importantly, is that the one we found is in context which means it is infinitly more valuable than other seal stones found on the site so far (which are only 2 or 3 and all found through sieving). Needless to say, the moral in our trench is sky high and we can't wait to get back to digging deeper. The mantra of archaeology and indeed the answer to almost all our questions seems to be: 'dig deeper, we will see..'

The weekend trip this time was around Boetia, which is pretty much within a 50 km radius around home, so it was jsut a day trip. We started out visiting the Mycenaean fortress of Gla which was very impressive in both size, architecture and use. Around Gla is the famous Kopaic Basin, which was completely and ingeniously drained in Mycenaean times by diverting the flow of six whole rivers into surrounding fissures in the ground and forming a gigantic and extremely fertile plain. Gla was probably used to guard the surrounding countryside. We visited one of these huge fissures in the surrounding mountainside, and were suitably awed. We then made our way to the town of Orchomenos, which may very well be the controlling centre which had power over our own site of Mitrou in antiquity. There wasnt much to see there as the modern town is over much of the site itself, but a very large and well built beehive tholos tomb is still around, which I must say seemed to me to be of much better quality than even the ones at Mycenae. We then made our way to the site of the battle of Chaeronea. *insert MAJOR Ancient History Tingles*. Charonea is the place where Philip of Macedon and Alexander the Great (in his first battle) defeated the combined forces of Boetia and Athens and gained a measure of control over Greece. It was also here that the fanatical courage of the Sacred Band of Thebes was displayed as they stood firm against Alexanders charge and were killed to a man. I love it! :p

I then decided to stay on and join in some of the optional trips as we went to Thebes and Leuktra. Thebes had nothing to display as the entire city is lying directly over the citadel. It is a shame because what has been gathered by rescue excavations suiggests that it may have been Thebes and Not Mycenae who was in charge of the entire Mycenaean world. It would answer many huge questions if Thebes could be partially excavated. Leuktra was jsut as amazing as Chaeronea, if not more so. It was there in 371BC that the Thebans inflicted on the Spartan Army its first ever complete defeat and shattered the aura of invincibility that surrounded them up to that point. It also marked the end of Spartan domination, and the beginning of Theban leadership over Greece. I lvoed it, even though it was only an open plain and a small monument.

The trip was the longest we have been on so far, even if it was only locally, and we only got back around 8:30pm. I went out to the butcher shop for a well earned meal and then retired to bed for some more sleep.

PS> GO THE SPRINGBOKS! We shall not speak of the cricket.