Dimitri Nakassis – Page 4 – Western Argolid Regional Project

June 9, 2014June 9, 2014

Field trips

Real archaeological projects in Greece go on field trips. Lots and lots of field trips. This involves waking up earlier than we want to on the weekend (or on religious holidays), driving in caravans of small rental cars that can’t both run the AC and go up mountainous roads easily, getting lost, taking the wrong turn, doing a crazy three-point turn, then finally reaching the destination, traipsing through overgrown archaeological sites that are seldom visited but extremely important, and standing around in the sun while one person talks. Then we scramble over the site, get back in the cars, and start all over again.

Our normal time for field trips is Saturday morning. That gives all of us Saturday afternoon and most of Sunday to do some paperwork, go to the beach, and recover from the week. (Different members of the project do different proportions of these activities; I haven’t been to the beach yet, unfortunately). So this Saturday was our first field trip. We also went on a field trip today (Monday), because it is a religious holiday and we can’t work without our friendly supervisor from the local archaeological office.

On Saturday, we stayed local. First we went to the site of Lerna, famous for its Early Bronze Age corridor house, commonly known as the House of Tiles but as an “Early Helladic palace” on the on-site signs (left). Lerna allowed us to show the students what saddle querns look like — there’s a whole stack of them near the House of Tiles — and to introduce them to the Early Bronze Age, and at a site that is almost literally spitting distance from where we eat dinner every night.

Next was the theater of Argos (right), where Scott ably summarized a millennium of Argive history and archaeology, followed by a tour of the agora of Argos. Unfortunately we then made the decision to go to the Larisa (the acropolis of Argos) through downtown Argos, which was at the time holding its laiki (farmer’s market). That was a bad decision. Stuck in traffic, I convinced Bill to jump out of the car to buy donuts at a local shop, but at that point traffic starting moving quickly enough that our donut plan was thwarted.

Next, we hit the Larisa and the Aspis, the two acropoleis of Argos (Livy 34.25: nam duas [arces] habent Argi). From the Larisa we had beautiful views of the Argolid:

Here, Bill briefly reviewed the history of post-Roman Argos, picking up where Scott left off. (Notice that we are all standing in the sun). Conveniently, a Byzantine chapel formed the backdrop to his talk.

We ended the day on the Aspis, where Bill got really excited when he started talking about the early Christian basilica (left) next to the sanctuary of Apollo Pythios.

Monday we headed north and into the mountains. First we hit the remains of the Hadrianic aqueduct that brought water from Stymphalos to Corinth. There are seven arches just outside the village of Gymno, where I presented a short report summarizing the high points of the excellent article on the aqueduct by Yannis Lolos. (That part of the trip involved crazy three-point turns and people getting lost, which was mostly my fault).

From Gymno, we proceeded to Aidonia, the site of an important Mycenaean cemetery with a controversial past. Fortunately, we ran into Kim Shelton, who’s beginning a project to salvage the rest of the cemetery, which is now being looted (again). After a quick tour of the site, we moved onto the main show: Stymphalos.

Sarah, standing next to the tower she helped to excavate.

Here, Sarah presented on the history and archaeology of the city. (Like WARP, the Stymphalos excavations are a project of the Canadian Institute in Greece). Sarah is herself a veteran of the excavations, and although back then (in 1999) she considered herself a prehistorian, she’s since become an expert on the Hellenistic period in the northeastern Peloponnese: so Stymphalos is now squarely in her wheelhouse!

We then went to the Cistercian monastery of Zaraka (below), where Bill presented on the architecture of the monastery and the history of the Frankish Peloponnese.

From Stymphalos, we drove back home via Nemea, past the Ayia Sotira excavations in which I participated as an excavation supervisor. I had hoped that we could visit the tower above Kephalovryso and the fortification walls of ancient Alea, but alas, time is limited. Next week: Tiryns and Nafplio!

June 8, 2014

Some reflections on Week One

WARP has just finished its first week, and although it was a short one — our first day in the field was on Wednesday — it was exhausting. Results have been encouraging, however. In only three days of survey, we have surveyed 177 units covering 0.435 square kilometers (these figures were kindly calculated for me by Sam Walker). If that doesn’t sound like much, it’s worth noting that we only started work on Wednesday, the first several hours of which were taken up by training exercises. We’ll get faster. We’ll need to become faster and more efficient with experience if we’re going to cover most of the 10 km² that constitutes our study area for 2014, but I’m confident that we will. Our team leaders and student field walkers are excellent.

Our average unit size is just under 2500 m², which is slightly smaller than we’d like it to be, but our survey units are largely based on modern agricultural fields, and many of these are very small, narrow fields that are very different with respect to the factors that allow them to be effectively surveyed. For example, survey archaeologists often focus on a field’s visibility — that is, the percentage of the ground surface that is visible to field walkers. Obviously the higher the visibility, the more likely it is that field walkers will be able to see and collect artifacts. We therefore break up fields with different visibilities into different survey units. If we don’t — if we lump them together — then it becomes very difficult to unpack the processes that shape our data. For instance, in an area full of material, one field yielded no pottery. That might be a meaningful pattern, but in actuality that field’s visibility was extremely low, suggesting that we’re simply unable to see artifacts in that field. So, unless the fields become larger and more uniform in size, we’ll probably be stuck with relatively small units. One the one hand, this gives us greater spatial control; on the other, it does slow us down.

On a personal note, I continue to be overwhelmed by the non-archaeological tasks that remain to be done. On Friday, Sarah and I spent a good hour or two waiting for the technician from the phone company to install the phone line in our storage facility, only to be told that the phone line couldn’t be installed because (a) the phone company’s line to the building was faulty, and (b) someone had cut the phone lines within the building, so that even if their line was functioning properly, we would need to get the phone line repaired on our end. We’re still waiting for security measures to be installed and for electricity, in addition to our phone. We’ll also spend much of Tuesday attending to similar administrative issues.

Tomorrow is a holiday, however, so we can’t work in the field, or deal with administrative tasks, because offices will be closed. So we’ll take the students on a trip to some archaeological sites that are always open to the public, supplementing our usual Saturday trips to local sites of historical and archaeological significance.

June 5, 2014

Day two: here comes the sun

It rained again last night, but the day itself was sunny and warm. We just had a touch of mist in the morning on the mountainside:

The weeds and grain were still wet from last night’s rain, though, so my shoes and pants quickly became really wet:

But the sun came out and it felt like a regular day in June in Greece: sunny, clear, and beautiful.

And here’s a dead almond tree from an abandoned field that ended the day:

almond_tree

June 4, 2014

A very muddy first day in the field

Last night’s rain made our first day in the field a very muddy experience. That isn’t normal for Greece in June. Mud caked the bottom of our shoes, making them heavy and unwieldy. At some point I tried to kick mud off of my shoe and the entire shoe came off my foot, flying across an olive grove. (At another point I was also successfully kicking mud at Bill, which amused me and annoyed him). It was also unseasonably cool and overcast:

But it didn’t rain, and that allowed us to stay in the field. After a training session on survey methodology (run by Bill) and identifying tile (run by Sarah), we began walking units. Between our five field teams, we managed to cover over 40 survey units, even though some of them were difficult to walk and others were full of surface material (both of which tends to slow walkers down).

The team leaders and field walkers all did an excellent job. You never would have know that this was entirely new to almost all of them. All in all, it was an extremely good, productive, and tiring day. This afternoon the teams will start entering their data from their field forms.

May 30, 2014

More than just a mascot

Our pet dog and project mascot has been helping out in the afternoons:

Working hard on the computer — Holly, working hard on the computer

May 30, 2014May 31, 2014

A clear day in the Argolid

Yesterday’s cloudy weather yielded a remarkably clear day. I took a couple of pictures of the Argolic Gulf from the town of Myloi. First, looking east towards Nafplio:

And later in the afternoon, looking north towards Argos:

And in the evening:

May 28, 2014May 28, 2014

Starting up

This week has been the first official week of the 2014 WARP season. Beginning on Saturday the 24th of May, graduate students and senior staff gathered in the village of Myloi, our base of operations. It affords us wonderful views of the Argolic gulf, the town of Nafplio across the water, the acropolis of Argos, and gorgeous sunsets (at right).

This post is also an introduction of sorts to this blog, which will attempt to document various aspects of the project, from serious archaeological and historical issues to the silly. In this we’re following in the footsteps of other projects that we’ve worked on. We’ll hopefully be cross-posting from Bill Caraher’s blog here. Those of you who are in need of constant updates can follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.

Thus far, things are going well. Much of my own time has been spent moving between, and waiting at, busy offices (right). We are renting a space for storage and study of the artifacts we gather from the field, and that has meant getting a lot of paperwork in order. I’ve quickly become much more familiar with Greek bureaucracy, and it with me — I am now a recognized figure at the local tax office, and I now have an accountant in Nafplio. I’ve translated two official letters from Greek into English, and then paid a lawyer to translate those same letters back into Greek, and taken those letters to the courthouse to have them stamped and authenticated by the local bar association — an example of a typical morning activity.

It’s been a fascinating and exhausting week (plus, as I’ve been here in Myloi since the 15th of May). It’s also given me a lot of appreciation for all the work, most of it behind the scenes, that directors of archaeological projects do!