A New Perspective

The display of the Parthenon frieze at the new Akropolis Museum

A comparison between the Greek-owned Parthenon marbles and the Elgin Marbles- the white, well-preserved horse is a cast of the original marble, which is housed in the British Museum

Myself, Kenny, and Alice at Sounion (we stopped long enough to jump in the water, dry off, take a picture and leave)

My beautiful Byzantine wall in Beta Theta East

Carter sorting and counting the washed pottery- we lay out all the sherds in neat little rows on the screens so they can be viewed by the supervisors before they're discarded or catalogued

Kirsten, Ingva, and Steve washing pottery (that's right, we use toothbrushes!)

As I started week 5 of our 8-week dig, reality started to sink in. All of a sudden, a light came on for me and my eyes were opened to the fact that I am living in Athens amongst fantastic people, working on a well-funded archaeological dig, and I have less than 4 weeks left in this place. I had thought of all these things before, but I hadn’t yet realized that this experience would really come to an end. Now that I’ve come to think of Athens as my home, and the other diggers as my family, I have discovered just how much of an impact the last 5 weeks have had on me. After having this epiphany, my general outlook on the summer has shifted a bit.
We started our third rotation this week, and due to the amount of people-power that’s needed in Beta Theta, I was assigned to stay in this trench (I was also in Beta Theta on the previous rotation). I was a little perturbed about having to remain in the same area for 2 more weeks, but several of my friends rotated into Beta Theta, so I contented myself with their presence and with a shift from Beta Theta West (where I was digging during 2nd rotation) to Beta Theta East. Due to our 3-day weekend, we only had 4 days of digging this week. During 2 of those days I was on pottery washing duty, and during the other 2 days I worked on exposing a newly-discovered, Byzantine era wall in Beta Theta East. A good deal of the wall (and the room it encloses) are still covered with debris from the demolition of a modern apartment building that had been in Beta Theta East, so we still aren’t sure what type of building the wall belonged to, but we uncovered about 2 feet of it in just a few days! For a while I was working on the wall alone, but then I received some unexpected company. This week we had some visitors from Sweden who volunteered at the Agora, and I was assigned to oversee one of them, Vilhelm, while he learned how to dig. At first I was thinking that it would be a hassle to slow down and train a newby, but then I realized what a compliment my supervisors were paying me by pairing me with someone who had never been on a dig before. After 2 days of working on the wall, Vilhelm was thoroughly exhausted (a sure sign of a new digger), the wall looked stunning (even by our supervisor’s standards), and I had learned a great deal about Swedish culture. It was a very productive couple of days!
During my 2 days in pottery washing this week I worked with both Vilhelm and Johan, another one of the Swedish guys. Pottery washing is a great time to chat with the people around you, so during those days I learned even more about Swedish culture- from the education system to cultural norms to some common Swedish words. Being able to learn so much about a culture I had no previous experience with was really wonderful. Getting to know the Swedes this week has certainly increased my love of Sociology and Anthropology!
This weekend was (again) full of misadventure. In the end, however, Kenny, Alice and I had a wonderful time together. For those of you who remember my second blog post, you’ll know that since my second weekend here I have been on a quest for the perfect Grecian scooter experience. Along these lines, I had planned a weekend trip to the island of Kea, off the northeastern coast of Attica. Kenny, Alice and I had done our research and we were certain that Kea had beautiful beaches, fruit orchards, and of course, an abundance of scooters ripe for the renting. Unfortunately, we were unable to find an adequate ferry schedule from the port of Lavrio (about a 1 hour bus ride north of Athens) to Kea. We e-mailed someone about this problem, but we didn’t receive an answer until late Saturday afternoon, when it was too late to travel to the island. Also, all three of us managed to oversleep significantly on Saturday so we wouldn’t have caught the ferry even if we did have a schedule!
To combat the looming failure of our Kea adventure, the three of us decided to take a bus out to the beach at Sounion (where we spent our first weekend here), just south of Athens. We caught the inland bus, however, instead of the coastal bus, so it took us about 2 hours to get to the beach instead of 1. On the way to Sounion, Alice got a call from some family friends who invited all of us out to a barbeque and sleepover at their house in the Athenian district of Glyfada. We readily accepted the invitation, even though we knew it’d mean that we would only have a short amount of time at the beach if we wanted to be punctual to the barbeque. This was before we realized that we were on the inland bus. Due to our bus miscalculation, by the time we arrived at Sounion we had less than 30 minutes to run to the beach, jump in, dry off, and catch the next bus back home to Athens for the barbeque. Needless to say, we had a very enjoyable 7 minutes in the ocean…
After we returned to Athens, however, our fortune changed for the better. We had a delicious dinner with Alice’s family friends (a family of British ex-patriots who moved to Athens because the father of the family works in maritime law and has many clients in Pireaus, the port of Athens), we were able to stay the night in their cozy guest room, and we were fed an amazing home-style breakfast the next morning! It was a very nice way to escape the bustle of the city for a night.
On Sunday afternoon I was finally able to visit the new Akropolis Museum with my friend Caroline. The opening of the museum has been postponed for several years, so I feel very fortunate to be in Athens and to be able to visit when it’s brand new. The museum contains sculpture and pottery found on/near the Akropolis from the Archaic period through the Hellenistic period, and the museum’s most famous feature is the Parthenon frieze. The Parthenon frieze consists of the sculpture work that used to run around the top of all four sides of the Parthenon, with each side illustrating a different important event from Greek history/myth (the battle of the Lapiths and the Centarus, the Amazonomachy, the Giantomachy, and the Trojan War). One reason the frieze is so important is because of the controversy that surrounds it. The Akropolis Museum boasts less than half of the panels from the frieze, while most of the others are located in the British Museum (thanks to Lord Elgin, who removed them in 1801 and promptly shipped them to London- these are now called the “Elgin Marbles”). The Greeks want the Elgin Marbles back in Athens with the others, and the British want to keep them in London because the Elgin Marbles are much better preserved than the panels that remained in Athens and were ravaged by the city’s pollution before they were removed and put into a museum. The argument is a sensitive subject for many classicists, and doesn’t show any signs of a quick resolution. To emphasize the Greek perspective, the Akropolis Museum has displayed the original Greek-owned panels of the frieze side by side with white plaster replicas of the English-owned panels. This juxtaposition of perspectives was by far my favorite part of the museum because it was clear to see just how damaged the Greek panels are in comparison to the Elgin Marbles, and it was clear to see just how many of the panels are now in Britain, far away from the Parthenon itself.
This week has been a time of shifting perspectives for me both in the trench and outside of the dig. From my teaching/learning experience with the Swedes to the new insight I got at the Akropolis Museum regarding the Parthenon frieze, I have been able to look at my Athenian experience from a different viewpoint- especially in the last week. I am so thankful for the opportunity to be here and to be open-minded enough to take it all in. An international experience should change your perspective and make you think about things differently than you did before, and my time in Athens so far has already provided me with a clearer lens through which to view the world around me.

It's All in the Timing

Lisa enjoying her Cretan lukamadas.

The sheer cliff face of the Samaria Gorge, water-stained and beautiful.

Nikos, myself, Alice, and Lisa in the bottom of the gorge.

The Samaria Gorge.

There were hundreds of these little ebeneezers stacked up along the hike in the gorge! I added mine to the collection.

The harbor view of the port city, Chania.

The top view of Beta Theta- the trench extends all the way to the top of the frame.

My plaster-lined pit in Beta Theta.

My roommates Alicia and Kelly and I- dressed in red, white, and blue at the Independence Day barbeque. Yay 'MERICA!

The crowded Odeon at the performance of Don Quixote.

It’s difficult to believe that I’ve already been in Athens on the excavation for 4 weeks! I’ve made some wonderful friends, worked very hard, and explored many beautiful places so far, and all of it has happened in only one month. All of the diggers here believe that we live our lives on “Agora time”. Agora time simply means that although the days can sometimes drag on in the heat and strain of excavating, entire weeks seem to fly by, our experiences from week to week and weekend to weekend continually blur together, and the new relationships we’ve formed don’t seem new at all, but rather we feel as though we’ve known each other for many years. The past week and weekend proved to be perfect examples of Agora time (combined with some serendipitous moments of simple good timing).
This was the second week of my second rotation, which means I was still working in the trench called Beta Theta. As I explained in the last post, Beta Theta is not necessarily the most exciting trench when it comes to archaeological finds, but in the last week we have made great progress as far as clearing out a good deal of modern fill. This week I was mainly working in the western section of Beta Theta with my friend, Kat. A few weeks earlier, some diggers found the outline of a large rectangular pit that had been lined with plaster and was most likely used as a sort of garbage area. Starting this week, Kat and I were assigned to open this area (to start excavating in a new area and continue digging until we find a significant reason to stop, such as a change in the soil color, composition, or content) and dig down inside the plaster-lined walls. Although we were digging in the pit for almost an entire week, we were only able to make a few passes due to the size of the area (a pass is one even, horizontal sweep over an opened archaeological area, usually ranging from 3-10 cm in depth), and we were mainly digging in modern fill. We found a good amount of glazed Turkish and Byzantine pot sherds, and Kat found a nicely preserved fragment of a decorated Roman lamp. Digging in this area got a bit monotonous at times, but our supervisors were well aware of this so they assigned both Kat and I to “pottery washing” twice during the week.
Each trench typically sends 2-5 diggers per day to the pottery washing area where we have several tasks. The first task (you guessed it) is to wash the pieces of pottery that have been found in each area of a trench and keep careful track of those specific sherds. Once all the pieces from a given area have been washed, we sort them into four categories: diagnostic coarse ware, non-diagnostic coarse ware, diagnostic fine ware, and non-diagnostic fine ware. Basically, if a sherd has any glaze or paint at all, it’s considered fine ware, and if it doesn’t, it’s considered coarse ware. Similarly, if a sherd has a definite shape (such as a handle, a rim, or a base), and can be easily classified as a part of a specific type of vessel, it’s considered diagnostic, and if the sherd has only broken edges and is not any specific shape, it’s considered non-diagnostic. After we’ve sorted out the sherds into these 4 categories we lay them out on wire screens and count the number of each type of sherd and record it. Later in the day, the supervisors in each trench come to PW to sort through all the sherds and decide which pieces are important enough to save, and which pieces don’t tell them any new information about their respective trenches and can be discarded. Overall, PW duty entails a good deal of washing, sorting, and counting, but the area is in the shade and the water used for washing is cool, so especially on hot days, getting sent to PW is a welcome reprieve from digging in the sun. The weather all week in Athens was bordering on 100 degrees, so needless to say, Kat and I didn’t mind pottery washing duty twice this week.
As always, my free time this week/weekend was consumed by some super fun activities! We had several group dinners and I had an unexpected visitor. On Thursday I had ventured up to the Stoa of Attolos (where the diggers gather in the morning and afternoon) to fetch water for everyone. I was on my way out of the Agora proper and headed back to my trench when I heard someone call out my name, and who should I see but my friend from Concordia, Megan Dowd! It turns out that she was in Athens on vacation with her family, and she was out exploring with her brother near the Agora when she just happened to look up and see me walking by! I took the two of them around our trenches and gave them the grand tour, and later I was able to hang out with Megan and chat about home and past adventures. It was so nice to see another friend in Athens! I most definitely appreciated the serendipitous timing of our random meeting on the street in Athens- thousands of miles from Fargo-Moorhead, where we last saw each other!
One night, Katie, Lindsey, Caroline, and I went to a play in the Odeon of Herodus Atticus (at the base of the Akropolis). The play was Don Quixote, and unfortunately it was all in modern Greek- but we knew that initially so we were prepared for a language barrier. It was incredible to see the Odeon filled with thousands of people and to watch the play in the same manner as the ancient Romans would have! The play did use lights and microphones, but other than those technological aids the show was very true to the history of the venue. The set and costumes were impressive but simple, and it was easy to imagine that we were watching a play in the same place that thousands of Romans and Greeks watched plays so many hundreds of years ago.
To celebrate Independence Day, we had a big potluck/barbeque in the garden of the American School on Wednesday (which was technically Canada Day, as our Canadian digger, Kirsten, pointed out). We had some of our favorite American foods, listened to Classic Rock, played soccer, and celebrated with each other and the many international diggers from Canada, Australia, Italy, Greece, Britain, Norway, and Sweden. It was certainly the most diverse Independence Day party I’ve ever experienced! Also in honor of Independence Day, we were given a 3-day weekend. The timing of the weekend could not have been better- we were all getting exhausted from digging and needed a break from the trenches and the city. Everyone used the long weekend to travel to their favorite far corners of Greece. One group spent their vacation in Rhodes, one group spent it in Naxos, one group traveled around the Peloponnese, and the group I traveled with went to Crete for 3 days.
There were about 10 people who traveled to and from Crete together on the overnight ferries, but we all split up when we arrived at the island. I spent the weekend with my friends Alice and Lisa and our Couchsurfing host, Nikos. On July 4th, we docked in Iraklio (the biggest city in Crete) and took a bus directly to Chania, which is my favorite port city on the island. Nikos picked us up from the bus station and guided us around the shops and shoreline of the city for the day, and then he took us to a beautiful beach where a freshwater river collided with the sea. That night, we had dinner with Nikos and his friends- we ate a chicken (that the guys butchered for us!) and some traditional Cretan foods such as rice soaked in chicken stock and Greek salad. It was an unconventional Independence Day, to say the least, but it was very enjoyable. The next day, we took a bus from Chania to the top of the Samaria Gorge and hiked the 19 kilometers (about 12 miles) to the bottom. It was such a beautiful place, and I’ve wanted to hike there for over a year. The gorge is one of the largest in Europe- in some places its walls are 500 meters high and in other places the walls are only 3 meters apart! It was absolutely breathtaking and was like nothing I’ve ever seen, not even in the spectacular Rocky Mountains of Glacier National Park. I have to admit, however, that hiking in the gorge made me very Montana-sick! The hike brought us out at the southern coast of Crete and we were able to spend the rest of the afternoon on a black rock beach. It was an amazing day! On our last day in Crete we said goodbye to Nikos, who was an amazing host, and headed to Iraklio. We spent a while at the ruins of the Minoan palace of Knossos and then went to the Archaeological Museum of Iraklio (which was unfortunately still undergoing renovations, so the collections were pretty limited). We spent our last few hours exploring the city and hunting out my favorite lukamada shop (Greek donuts that are deep fried and then soaked in a delicious honey and cinnamon sauce…mmm…tasty). Alice and Lisa enjoyed them just as much as I hoped they would! We then boarded the boat, met up with the rest of the diggers who had had their own Cretan adventures, and prepared for our 9 hour journey home. We arrived in Athens at 6 am and were back in the trenches by 7:00! It was quite the whirlwind trip, but it was an amazing 3 day weekend!
In this last week, the timing of my pottery washing duty, Megan’s visit, and the 3-day weekend was absolutely perfect. After having a break in Crete, I feel totally rejuvenated and ready to finish the last half of the dig with the same energy that I started with one month ago. I also feel the last pangs of homesickness subsiding (thanks in part to Megan’s visit), which will help me to further enjoy the next 4 weeks in Athens with the other diggers. I often think of home, family, and friends, but now I am finally starting to think of Athens as my home-away-from-home. I know the next month will go by just as quickly as the first (especially with the aid of Agora time), and I plan to make the most of the time I have left on this wonderful adventure!

The Half-Full Glass

The section of Beta Theta East where I worked this week

Kenny and I on our Delphi misadventure

The best view we could find of the valley in Delphi on our random hike


Kenny and I in the amphitheatre in Delphi

The valley at Delphi with the Temple of Apollo in the foreground

Akropolis at night from Mount Lykavettos

Sunset over Athens from Mount Lykavettos

The new Akropolis Museum at night

As I got comfortable with my second rotation this week, some things have started to become routine and have started to lose that “new-car” smell and feeling. The homesickness I was feeling during the first few weeks has also started to subside, which is very welcome. I’m getting closer and closer with the friends I’ve made here, and I’m getting more and more confident in my abilities and judgment as a field excavator. I’ve even started to get some new ideas for what to do with myself after graduation next year! But along with this new sense of normalcy comes the discovery of some unexpected personal struggles.
This week, I started working in a trench called Beta Theta. Unlike my last trench, BZ, Beta Theta was just opened recently. In fact, up until 2 seasons ago there was a 5 story apartment building standing right on top of the soil we’re excavating. Last summer the excavators spent much of their time removing the rebar and cement remnants (left over from the apartment building’s demolition) from the trench, and this season we’re just starting to discover the history of the place based on what we’re finding. Beta Theta is the largest and newest trench of the project, so there is a great need for people-power to assist with moving a lot of soil to get down into the desired archaeological levels. The trench is divided into East and West sections, and there are about 15 diggers split up between these two areas. Both sections are still in fairly “modern” levels, so we’re finding a lot of Turkish and Byzantine era glazed pot sherds. This pottery looks like typical glazed pottery that you could find in a store today, but typically the Turkish pottery we’ve been finding is green or yellow and the Byzantine pottery we’ve been finding is brown. We’re also starting to find more and more walls that can give us clues as to what the area(s) may have been used for. The ultimate goal, however, is to dig down several more meters and get into Classical levels- although this goal won’t be accomplished until next season, at the earliest. The reason we want to get into Classical levels is because we have reason to believe that the Painted Stoa (or the Stoa Poikile) is buried directly beneath the Turkish and Byzantine levels in Beta Theta. The Painted Stoa is one of the Agora buildings that has yet to be discovered (for certain) and it is one of the most important buildings of the ancient Agora as described by numerous ancient writers. It is very exciting that we are standing directly on top of it (at least we hope we are) every day! As I said before, however, we probably won’t get down into the levels of the Painted Stoa for many dig seasons.
In the meantime, we are excavating a lot of modern fill (dirt and artifacts from only a few hundred years ago that have been used to create steady foundations for modern buildings) which has a smattering of very random pot sherds from multiple periods. One of the biggest personal struggles for me in this second rotation has been getting used to the shift from Beta Zeta- where I was finding amazing Classical period artifacts such as the face and the lykothos- to Beta Theta- where I’m finding random Turkish and Byzantine sherds, most of which will be recorded and then discarded. The up-side of working in Beta Theta, however, is that because I’m digging out the modern fill this season, other excavators in future seasons will be able to excavate the Stoa Poikile. I’ve learned that archaeology doesn’t happen overnight, and the quality of the work done by one season’s diggers will affect the excavations of multiple future seasons.
Although digging this week has been more challenging than my first rotation, there have been many fun activities during the evenings and over the weekend that have helped to give me motivation. The new Akropolis Museum in Athens has recently opened, which means the city has been buzzing with famous Greeks and interested tourists. Although I haven’t had the chance to get inside the museum yet, I have gotten a sneak peak from the street. On Tuesday night, several of us went to the museum for a special slide show that was being shown on the outer walls of the new building to promote the opening. It was very cool to see some of the artifacts as they came to life in the slide show, and I am especially anxious to see the Greek half of the Parthenon frieze, (the other half is housed in the British Museum where they’ve been ever since Lord Elgin took them off the Parthenon- a subject of great controversy between Greece and Britain). As soon as I find a spare moment when I’m not digging or sleeping, I’ll be touring the new museum.
I also had a few friends from Concordia visit Athens on Wednesday and Thursday! Suzy and Dana were on week 7 of a 7-week tour of Europe, and they asked if I’d be willing to show them around the city for a few evenings. We toured the Agora and I showed them the trenches in which we’ve been working, we had some authentic Greek meals, and we watched the sun set over the acropolis and the city from the top of Mount Lykavettos. It was so nice to act as an Athenian tour guide and to spend time with friends from home! I really enjoyed having them in the city. Their presence also made me realize just how much of a home Athens has become for me since I studied abroad here 1 ½ years ago, and especially how much I’ve come to love the city in the last few weeks.
This weekend, my friend Kenny and I traveled to Delphi, one of my favorite ancient Greek sites, with high hopes. Unfortunately, the excursion turned out to be one of absolute misadventure. We had both been to the site and the museum in Delphi on previous trips, so while it was great to revisit them, the main reason we traveled to Delphi was to hike to a lookout above the village to get the best view of the amazing valley. After we finally found someone who could tell us the location of the trailhead, we stocked up on water and cookies (to fend off the wild dogs we were warned about by the locals) and started climbing. After about 3 kilometers we had hiked up and out of the village and we ran into a locked gate across the trail! It turns out the mountain is closed in the summer due to fire danger, so we were unable to hike to the top. Not to be discouraged, Kenny and I followed some goat trails above the village in an effort to find our desired view- but then the goat trails disappeared and we were forced to backtrack into the village. Along the way, we had the brilliant idea to rent scooters in the village (which I still have not been able to do) and just spend the day exploring the area around Delphi. When we ventured back into the city, however, we discovered that there are no scooter, ATV, car, or bicycle rentals in Delphi! With that unfortunate news, Kenny and I just started to walk down the highway out of the village in search of either a gorgeous view or some other form of entertainment. We ended up at a random backpacker’s campground several kilometers outside the village where we parked ourselves and enjoyed the much deserved cookies. We then realized that we had been walking downhill for almost an hour, thus in order to reach the village to catch the bus back to Athens, we would have to walk uphill for the same amount of time. Our hitchhiking attempts were futile, to suit the theme of the day, but we finally arrived back in Delphi and stumbled upon a great looking restaurant where we could have dinner and enjoy our last few hours in the village. We soon realized, however, that the last bus to Athens was leaving in a few short minutes and we wouldn’t have time for a meal at the restaurant! In the end, Kenny and I caught the bus to Athens and had a wonderful dinner in the Thissio district to treat ourselves after our “Delphi misadventure”. I’m very thankful I was with Kenny, however, because the day could have been very discouraging and frustrating, but we laughed the entire day about our small misfortunes. Surprisingly, it turned out to be a very enjoyable Saturday.
Overall, this week has been full of challenges. I’ve realized, however, that I wouldn’t have my Athens experience any other way- especially because I have such wonderful people in my life (both here and at home) to help me along the way. What would a summer abroad be without some misadventure here and there? After all, I am blessed to be spending my summer in such an amazing place! This past week and weekend have taught me to take what I’m given and make the most of it, and I’m looking forward to many more adventures (and mishaps) in the weeks to come.