Archaeology Is...

It has now been a little over two weeks since my return to the US, and I think it was just yesterday that I succeeded in getting the rest of the dirt from underneath my fingernails. As predicted, my manicurist was less than thrilled with the condition of my nail beds. And, as so many of you have pointed out in disbelief, yes, I am tan. This is a first for me, so, mark it on the calendar.

In order to wrap up my blog about my Grecian adventures, I thought it would be appropriate to gather the little ironies of archaeology and compile them into a list for your enjoyment and bewilderment. Included are several ‘definitions’ of archaeology that I heard tossed about by professors and trench workers alike and stored away for such a time as this.

Archaeology is…

1.      “Sweeping dirt off of dirt.”Following is an actual conversation I had Week 5: “Hey! How was your day?” “Oh, you know. Not bad. Swept some dirt off of dirt”.  Watching someone sweep their trench with a broom is rather comical, as it feels instinctively contradictory. Several times, the paradox elicited a dead pan, “you missed a spot.” But you learn quickly that some dirt is more important than other dirt. Archaeologists treat dirt like Carrie Bradshaw treats her shoe collection. One day you ooh and awe over it but the next? Out of style and in the way of more important prospects.  Once a pass is finished and all the ancient paraphernalia has been removed, the empty dirt is obsolete and very annoyingly in the way of beginning another pass. So, it is swept away, waiting for the day it becomes backfill material.

2.        Unfair. Trench masters sit and watch their workers slave away, as they lounge beneath the shade of a tree, fanning themselves and commenting on the severity of the heat. This tends to earn them glares and grumbles from their pack mules, ahem, trench workers. Despite this disparity in work load, trench masters receive all the credit for what is found in their trench, creating a hierarchy not unlike the big fish that eats the littler fish, who eats the tiny sardine. To be fair, everyone pays their dues. Trench masters were at one time trench workers, and have earned their positions by a lot of hard work. But what else do trench workers have time to do during the long days but gripe fondly about their fearless leaders?

3.      Interpretive. Trench masters have a habit of congregating above your trench to muse philosophically about the meaning of such and such rock formation, debate the mysteries of soil color inconsistencies, and hypothesize about the surprising scarcity of stone tools, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Notes are scratched into plastic, yellow notebooks and are later included in research to be published years from now after being defended in front of an intimidating board of seasoned archaeologists. But in reality, no one can tell you that you are wrong in your research, because it is left up to your reasonable interpretation. We can’t know for sure if that particular room was a house or a store room, or if that pile of rocks is a wall that fell over or simply, an ancient pile of rocks. Archaeology is not an exact science, and hence, vulnerable to human limitations and mistakes.

4.      “Strategically removing rocks”, according to one professor. “Um, I’m not sure that’s a wall. But if we move this rock, it sure does look like one!” said with hopeful eyes begging for me to agree with them. It’s intimidating to think that one wrong move, removing a rock that actually belongs right where it’s at, and your mistaken interpretation could become the published authority for students worldwide. This wide margin of error is why archaeologists are criticized for constructing models of what they think a site used to look like, such as Knossos, where visitors are impressed by reconstructions of formidable temple walls that might not bear a bit of resemblance to what it did thousands of years ago.  This is kept in mind when choosing what rocks to remove and which ones to leave standing at Gournia, so that we leave the most accurate portrayal of the ancient village as possible.

5.      An intense environment. There is a lot of pressure to perform, to find as much significant material as possible, because of time constraints and the ever-looming funding issue. Donors to archaeological projects want to see results, and so when a trench doesn’t produce anything noteworthy within several days, all you start hearing is “Work harder. Move more dirt. Work faster.”, so we can move onto another area with more promise. There are very few, if any, laid back days, and the minute one project is finished, you are looking forward to the next.

So there you have it. Archaeology in a nutshell. Tiring and stressful but hugely gratifying, spending six weeks in Greece was a decision that has enriched my academic and personal life. I have a new appreciation as a historian for the effort and time put into finding artifacts that I admire in museums, and it taught me the importance of academic professionals collaborating on research, as people with different areas of expertise bring a richness of perspective to our understand of culture as a whole. The Greek passion for life and the creativity they have embodied for thousands of years is one that has inspired me to pursue my own myriad of creative interests with refreshed zeal and purpose. I hope my adventures and misadventures have brought you laughter this summer, as I enjoy finding humor in life’s daily monotonies and its extraordinary moments as well.

Yammas!

The Conservation Room

After four days of frustrating absence due to being a sun poisoning invalid, today I was back at Gournia, alive and kicking! Nothing like alternating fatigue-induced naps and calls to the doctor with entering mind-numbing pottery data into a computer for four days to make one eager to return to Gournia’s hills of blazing heat and a never-ending line of zambilis (buckets we use to transfer dirt from our trench to the dump/rock quarry) to empty. As frustrating as the relative inactivity of the last four days have been, in all actuality it taught me a valuable lesson about archaeology, as put so eloquently this morning by my professor; “At least now you know that sweating in the sun is the fun part”. And oh how true that is.  

For every one year that archaeologists spend in the field, cheerfully digging up pottery, jewelry, houses and more pottery, specialists spend three years under tents analyzing all of it. Brave souls, the lot of them. After our hours in the sun each day, we walk up a giant hill on the outskirts of Pacheia Ammos to ‘The Center’, where a variety of characters can be seen flitting about. There are your Indiana Jones characters, the forensic anthropologists, who can look at a cracked skull and tell you in what grisly manner the unfortunate person was dispatched. Athletic, Zen pottery analysts have an eye for detail and spend their hours tranquilly organizing and cleaning the pottery the field workers (us) haul from the site. Bookish pottery experts wear hats too large for their delicate frames and stroll from table to table with furrowed brows and their hands behind their back, making soft noises of discovery or surprise, and make grand pronouncements like “Clearly, this particular delicate etching style categorizes these conical cups as PROTOpalacial, not PREpalacial”, as they point dramatically to the table covered in said conical cups. And we all nod and smile in agreement. But the people I have spent my time with for the past four days are the ladies of the conservation room.

It cannot be overemphasized how carefully guarded the Conservation Room is. You can’t just walk in there whenever you jolly well please. Someone has to ask for you, you have to be summoned. And even then they look you up and down with a scrutinizing eye as you enter, as if to see if you’re a maniac carrying a hammer in your backpack with which to destroy all of their vases. As I was in rather a delicate state these past few days, I suppose they thought I was harmless enough to allow me to work with them. But their care really is for good reason, because when you enter the room, it is shock and awe. Rows of tables are covered in not only pottery sherds, but pots and vases of every shape and size in the process of being put back together again. It’s like walking through the Macy’s beauty department and feeling like your purse is going to knock over a bottle of perfume and trigger the domino effect, pretty little crystal bottles and sparkling glass tables crashing to the ground in one terrible, harmonious symphony. Only this time the stakes are higher, because the Greek government has their eye on every vase on these tables, relying on the pottery experts of the Conservation Room to answer their most deep-seated ancient cultural questions.

The pots look like giant puzzles, which sends my impatient Type A personality into panicked overdrive. I pray to the heavens that’s not how they’re going to make me spend my time. My head already hurts; I don’t need more stress-inducing activities, please. To my relief, they had me sit down by the sink and dig compact dirt out of conical cups, wash them and set them aside to be analyzed later. From my perch by the sink I observed the atmosphere of the room, which I expected to be nothing but professional and stoic because of the responsibility they have on their hands. Far from it. There were six or seven local women working on different projects, sprawled over all the tables, and they shrieked and laughed hysterically and scolded each other all day as they worked on their ancient puzzles. They left me alone to do my work, and I appreciated the quiet of my little corner as I wielded my toothbrush and waited for my headache to go away. On occasion, my supervisor would come check my work and point out a few particles of dirt that I had missed, and at one point she picked up a cup and held it close to her face as I have seen many an archaeologist do, in awe of the handiwork of generations past. Instead, she took one look at it and said “Boy. This is one ugly cup, don’t you think?” Shocked at her bluntness, I looked at it again, and to my amusement it did look rather like a child’s 5^th grade art project. Maybe the novelty of Minoan pottery has worn off a little now?

When I wasn’t in the Conservation Room, I entered data into the computer, of every bag of pottery, bone, shell and stone tool that we have found at Gournia thus far, all the while gazing longingly out the window at the shining sun. It was mind-numbing work to be sure, but I was appreciative of the air conditioning. After drinking massive amounts of Gatorade and eating pretzel sticks and salted chips by the bag, I now feel almost fully recovered, and enjoyed my day back at the site. And I’ve realized that as frustrating and exhausting as the work out in the field is at times, I really do love it more than data entry and pottery washing. Some people just really, really like pottery. It’s fascinating to look at for a while, and quite beautiful, but I haven’t been bitten by the pottery bug. I wouldn’t want to spend my days walking on egg shells around tables full of breakable pottery. I want to be outside, swinging the pick ax and watching the dirt fly! And judging from the amount of dirt that fell out of my shoes when I got home, I swung that pick ax like a boss today.

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The Insanity Sets In

There comes a time in everyone’s dig experience when you suffer from a case of sudden on-set insanity. Yesterday my trench leader picked up a stick and started prancing around our trench, brandishing his “magic wand” with theatrical flare and declaring orders with a giddiness we all suspect may prove to be an unusual form of heatstroke.  In my case, it wasn’t so much insanity as it was standing on the brink of snapping from extreme annoyance and exhaustion. This occurred last Thursday, when after working for a week in “The Thunder Dome “(what we all call the hill from whence the thud of pick axes and shovels can be continuously heard, as opposed to the delicate scratching emitted from less hectic trenches), our trench master concluded that there was nothing of significance to be found in our trench. But did we stop digging? No. (Maybe more evidence for heatstroke?) Instead, another team (since then embittered) was made to join our trench, creating a Trifecta of trenches forced to pulverize the side of the hill in hopes of finding a house that we are all now sure does not exist.

This newfound knowledge that we are slaving away for nothing, the fact that the lecture I am sure to  receive from my manicurist because of the callouses on my hands isn’t going to be made worthwhile by the discovery of a Minoan mystery, the claustrophobia caused by the addition of 5 more people to our already 12 person Thunder Dome team, the heat above 105 degrees, homesickness caused by the fast-approaching visit of my brother and being antagonized by fellow trench workers who have nothing better to do to keep themselves from going insane than make fun of Texas, all these things pushed me to the brink at the end of last week. What else to do but to have a nice little cry during kolatso (lunch) and lie down pathetically in the dirt amongst the cigarette butts and fire ants. Props to my roommate Molly for surviving the drama.

As if things could not seem more blue, after lunch, the trench next to us struck gold. Literally. They found a gold necklace link. And that made my heart break just a little bit more. Why today God? Why today. I need a win.

Thankfully, on the brink of going insane, my brother showed up. Saturday morning could not go fast enough! I stuck to my side of the Thunder Dome, keeping to myself for fear of finally snapping, and picking dirt from our trench baulks with such violence that chunks of dirt pelted the workers stationed 20 feet away.

Kyle’s midday arrival saved the day. He listened patiently as I chattered away in desperate relief at his presence, describing each of our 15 trenches with my extensive knowledge of all things archaeological. Later that day he got to meet Minnoli, who chose just this particular day to pull out his handy little comb and brush not only his mustache, but also his chest hair. We ordered tzatziki, souvlaki, moussaka, yogurt with honey, chips in olive oil, calamari and gyros, and ate with zeal as 60-year-old Minnoli charmed and shocked us with his flirtatious ways, then took the bus to Agios Nikolaos to eat even more. Sunday we traveled to Ierapetra and hopped on a boat to Chrissi Island, where we swam in the most beautiful water I’ve ever seen with the dramatic, imposing view of Crete looming overhead. We caught up on life, I forgot about useless Trench 29 and we snickered immaturely as we took furtive photos of obnoxiously hairy Greek men. I’m very grateful that we are still partners in crime, even though we have passed the age of acceptability for such behavior.

Then, back to the daily grind of Gournia. As fate would have it, our day at Chrissi gave me a nice case of sun poisoning, and I have been banned to data entry and extra pottery washing for the next few days until the headaches, fatigue and shakiness leave me. Which is just fine with me, as it is supposed to be 112 tomorrow. As ‘112’ reminds me of childhood days scrambling eggs on blistering concrete sidewalks, I have no desire to be out in such heat throwing rocks into a wheelbarrow. I got very good at data entry today, and I plan on being even better at it tomorrow, enjoying the sweet comfort of air conditioning. Maybe the change of pace will bolster my spirits enough to be impervious to the petty chitter chatter of my equally tired compadres in the Thunder Dome.

Desperate Times

Last night my roommates and I were officially fed up. Our apartment is a train wreck. Left only to dream wistfully of the nonexistent air conditioning and tempted daily to cave and drop 30 euro on a pathetic, plastic fan, we have awoken nightly to the buzz of happy mosquitoes about our ears, the stifling 95 degrees drenching us in sweat and cutting short precious hours of much-needed sleep. Adding to our annoyance are our comically tiny towels, the size of which couldn’t dry a single dish were they meant for the kitchen, our broken washing machine and the constant discovery of new bug bites. And after walking around Knossos all day in the hot sun, we discovered that the water in our bathroom had mysteriously turned off. No showers for us.

Hmph.

To console us in our discomfort, Minnoli, local legend and our favorite restaurant owner, let us in on a secret. Drinking raki, the local moonshine, keeps the skeeters away.

By all means then, Yammas!

The stuff tastes like rubbing alcohol, but he was right. Several shots later and we had forgotten our lack of creature comforts and arose this morning with no new bug bites. We couldn’t change the heat, but we could now beat the mosquitoes. Hurrah!

Our relief was short lived, for little did we know that a much bigger problem lay just around the corner. When we tried brushing our teeth this morning, no water came out of the faucet. As it turns out, what we thought was an easily fixable pipe difficulty is in all actuality a wide-spread water shortage. Not only is the entire town of Pacheia Ammos without running water, all the towns within a ten mile radius of here will be without any water until Wednesday, at the earliest.

I can only imagine our grubby little faces at the moment of that announcement. Fifty filthy archaeologists, staring in dreadful silence and disbelief at the bearer of the bad news. All you could hear were the obnoxious cicadas humming in the olive trees.

So, no showers?

No. No showers. Or sinks, or toilets.

What are we? Savages?! Showers are a basic life necessity, and gosh darn it if theres nobody in this world who doesn’t deserve a shower more than an archaeologist after a 13 hour day in 105 degree weather. Words cannot describe how dirt-encrusted the skin, how matted the hair, how streaked the sunscreen and sweat, how absolutely and totally FILTHY each and every one of us is at the end of our work day. So, yes, I suppose ‘savages’ is a good word.

Once the reality set in, us smart ones sprinted to the nearest super market and bought all the water bottles and baby wipes in the place. After my first failed attempt to remove any amount of grime from my body by splashing myself awkwardly with a water bottle, I now realize that I must brace myself for the next few days. I must resign myself to my fate. I am simply going to be the dirtiest I have ever been until Wednesday, forced into isolation for the welfare of others and driven mad by my ever-worsening grossness, incapable of relief until water once again flows from our faucets.  

And if the water does not reappear on Wednesday, I may attempt to dig a well, out of desperation. Or throw myself into the Aegean, clothes and all, in hopes of obtaining some semblance of cleanliness. And believe me, if worse comes to worse, I will not hesitate to buy forty 6-packs of 2 liter water bottles and fill my bathtub to the brim.

Dirt

Whoever said the first day of a dig is the hardest is a LIAR.

Day 1 is looking pretty good right about now. For our first day, two blissful weeks ago, my trench group, dubbed “The Double A Team” after our first dig assignment, House AA, cleared our 5 meter by 5 meter trench area of grass and stones, taped off the area to ward off pesky tourists and dug 10 centimeters of earth out of one third of the trench, creating a long, clean line in the earth. We were so proud of that first locus. We thought it was the hardest work we had ever done, and slept well that night, content with our days work and looking forward to the easier ones ahead.

Fast forward to today, the middle of week 3. Today, we left the security and familiarity of House AA and began work on a new trench, which just happened to be located on the side of a hill. Shrubs were removed, huge roots pulled out of the ground with our bare hands and then pick axes used to remove an entire foot of top soil from our six meter by three meter perimeter, which is the equivalent of 9 times the amount of work we accomplished on our first day at Gournia. All this in 105 degree heat. In 7 hours.

So long, training wheels. We’re in the big leagues now.

Tell me now the first day is the hardest! Ha! I long for Day 1. I ache for it. To return to a  blissfully naïve state of mind that archaeology means delicately perching on a comfortable rock and nonchalantly brushing stray dirt from a beautiful, intricate, perfectly in-tact vase that just popped right out of the earth. In reality, dirt is your enemy. It is what stands between you and the discovery of never-before-seen historical artifacts. Dirt is hard-packed, feels heavier in your shovel as each hour passes and has an annoying habit of settling itself under your nose and giving you a Hitler stache.

Every once in a while, a few vehement choice words can be heard yelled across the site, cursing the dirt for being so infuriatingly in the way of profound archaeological breakthroughs; “Get out of my f-ing trench!” As if the dirt would pack up its belongings and apologetically move aside for us.

As my trench leader isn’t likely to let me use a leaf blower to blast all that dirt to the other side of Gournia, pick axes and trowels will be my daily companions.

At least I will have killer arms after this.

Bones

Yesterday I found a stowaway in my pottery bucket.

Tammy and I were sitting under a tree at the Cretan Archaeological Center, washing buckets full of pottery, just as we do every afternoon after working at the site. Hundreds of sherds of pottery pass through our hands, get scrutinized under our careful eyes then tickled with a toothbrush (the archaeologist's cleaning tool of choice) before being classified as “clean” and sent to the pottery experts for examination. Most of the time, stones, bones and other materials get sorted out from the pottery we wash, but occasionally we’ll get some stowaways and you just throw them out or pass them on to the right person.

I reached my hand into the bucket for another piece of pottery and picked up a white, smooth, concave object the size of my palm and thought to myself: “This can’t be pottery. Its not red, and the texture isn’t right. What are those little speckles? And layers? And why is it…oily?” And then I screamed a little and dropped it back into the bucket. Yep. Bone. That was not a rock. That thing was most definitely part of somebody’s skull.

Never having touched a real skull before, one can understand my consternation. Blech. Eww. Yucky. Blech blech blech. It gave me the shivers. When we finally fished it back out of the bucket and poked at it with our toothbrushes, fascination overcame the morbidity. Little bubbles had broken the surface over time, and layers of bone growth overlapped one another to create an aged look. Brown speckles gave it the oddly familiar appearance that one sees in National Geographic but never expects to actually dig out of the ground.

The cranium fragment was safely transported to the forensic anthropologists to ooh and awe over, and Tammy and I went back to washing pottery. But it struck me as rather a profound moment. As much as it’s awesome to discover the past through studying its remains, I sort of felt like we should leave those burial sites alone. Individuals were buried at those sites, mourned over there by those who loved them. Holding that bone had made me kind of sad. How did they die? Part of Gournia shows marks of burning, maybe telling of its destruction by the Myceneans. Was this person killed when their village was attacked? Even if their death wasn’t violent, their remains deserve respect. I’d almost rather leave them untouched and undisturbed. Nobody should be unburied.

Gournia as a whole has taken on a new reverence to me now as well. While peaceful now, and covered in my footprints and those of curious tourists, it may have also been a place of terror and death to those who called it home thousands of years ago. People were born here, lived, ate, laughed and died, on the soil we dig up every day. And like other archaeological sites all over Crete, Gournia also saw destruction.  Its inhabitants either fled, or were massacred by invaders, leaving its mysteries to be solved by archaeologists and untrained hands like my own. That makes Gournia a cemetery, even if it is one of memories.

When I walk to site every morning now, I will do so with a deeper appreciation for the gravity of the history, both beautiful and tragic, that this place has seen.