Over the past several months, a couple of different people have asked me why I like survey. My initial response is always intellectual. I talk about the importance of understanding the countryside, about the urban bias of our texts and excavations, the approach of books like The Corrupting Sea, and so on. In both cases, that wasn’t the… More Why I like archaeological survey
The preliminary program of the 2015 annual meeting (in New Orleans) of the Archaeological Institute of America is out, and our talk is scheduled for a Friday morning session called “Reports from The Field: Greece.” The name of the session is boring, but the content should be fascinating: the audience will hear about the exciting work of our… More WARP at the 2015 annual meetings of the AIA
Every real archaeology project needs a t-shirt for every field season. Experienced archaeologists collect these shirts as a living symbols of their archaeological prowess. (And I mean living literally. After a few days or weeks in the field archaeology t-shirts come to support a thriving ecosystem of bacteria, funguses, and tiny insects). On WARP we… More Western Argolid Regional Project T-Shirts
The end of the season, that is. Tonight was our last regular group dinner at Γραμμές, after which we took a group photo with the Argolic gulf as our backdrop (we’ll post that later). Bill told everyone to pick up a rock, and that led to skipping stones. Even Lena gave it a go. It… More The end is nigh
Yesterday was the last full field day with our field teams on the Western Argolid Regional Survey. So I thought I should do a traditional “Good, Bad, and Ugly” post from our field season. I should emphasize that the project was pretty remarkable. We covered an amazing amount of territory (almost 5.5 sq km), our… More The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on the Western Argolid Regional Project 2014
Today was our last day in the field. We ended our fieldwork on the slopes above and below the acropolis site above the village of Lyrkeia that was, in many ways, the epicenter of our work in 2014. Alyssa and Melanie led a team in a ravine below the acropolis and right next to the… More The last day
Every archaeological project experiences a crisis at some point. Fortunately, the Western Argolid Regional Project managed to avoid all serious crises until the very last week of intensive field work. Over the last week or so a dog and her puppies has been hanging out at the church of Ay. Eleni and Konstantinos in our… More Western Argolid Regional Puppies
Now, I’m almost entirely sure that there is only one more week of full on field work. This past week was cooler and slightly less exhausting, but we still have two weeks to go before we wrap up the first season of the Western Argolid Regional Project. This morning, I did some field walking for… More Photo Friday on the Western Argolid Regional Project
Bees! I hate bees. I’m partially convinced by the position of the environmentalist lobby that bees somehow contribute to the good of all humanity. That being said, we should recognize that pollination but like global warming, evolution, and gravity, is a THEORY meaning that it may or may not be true. Consider the lilies of… More Bees and Marginal Landscapes in the Western Argolid
We have an apotheke now. Apotheke (αποθήκη) is Greek for storage facility, but for most archaeologists working in Greece, it means a place where you store and study the artifacts that you collect from the field. Up until today, we were getting the apotheke ready. That meant renting the space, having security measures installed, getting electricity, water, and… More The apotheke