Western Argolid Regional Project

This summer the six survey teams on the Western Argolid Regional Project are working with clock-like efficiency. They churn through units at a remarkable pace and with a remarkable consistency. The good cheer, competence, and general responsibility of our graduate team leaders is amazing. The rest of the team, field walkers, project directors, and our faithful automotive transports have struggled a bit this week to keep up.

So, three quick consideration that have shaped my week in archaeological survey:

(1) Age. Survey archaeology is a young person’s game. This week kicked my ass. I mapped for four days straight, demolished my poor feet, tripped over a terrace wall, dehydrated myself, and got grumpy. Our routine has become that one team leader and I map ahead of our ravenous survey teams trying to keep enough mapped units on the board to keep our fast moving teams busy.

On a good day, the team leader (with my help… cough, cough) can map about 100 units or so and that represents about a day worth of survey work for the teams. This is exhausting work, but it gives me a change to look at almost every survey unit  at least in a superficial way.

The downside is that by the end of the week, I’m completely wrecked. This is despite having exercised systematically over the past 12 months in preparation for the season, almost two decades of field experience in the Mediterranean, and careful precautions against the sun, dehydration, and little injuries. There is nothing more that I can do to keep in the game. Mother nature is taking is pound of flesh. Survey archaeology is a young person’s game.

(2) Fieldwork is all about priorities. For our project that means figuring how when to diversify from the hard work of intensive pedestrian survey and deploy resources to do other important tasks.

There is an overwhelming temptation to revel in the efficiency and steady growth of our fine-grain survey grid across the arable land in our study area. In fact, our methodological predilections eschew more intensive sampling of higher density scatters (places formerly known as sites), and have resisted the temptation to lay out grids, create total collection circles, or indulge in unsystematic grab sampling.  We’ve even gone so far to encourage out team leaders to mark units for revisit (especially units with higher density and lower visibility), but we’ve yet to shift the resources to revisiting or recollecting sites.

Next week, some of that might have to change. We’re going to have to start slowly shifting resources to documenting buildings, walls, features, and unusual artifact scatters. This not only breaks our routine, but also forces us to make difficult decisions about what is more important. Do we document an early modern farm house, first, and then a Venetian fortification? Do we do some more intensive sampling as a way to understand that small scatter of Medieval pottery or do we focus on a partially hidden landscapes from the Early Bronze age?

(3) Cars. The final challenge to a well run survey project – more so than aging directors or conflicting priorities – was how we get into and out of the field. Bruno Latour would be impressed, because nothing impacts the progress of field work more seriously than cars breaking down. This week we’ve had two flat tires on the same car. Clearly, the car is less than impressed with our interest in completing field work. Or maybe the car is on my side and keeping me from completely collapsing under the grind of field work.