Interview with Ron Stroud Part 1.2

A while back I posted the first part of my on-going interview with Ron Stroud, in honor of the Regular Year Members of 1959-60. Unfortunately, I left out part of it! So here is the last fascinating tidbit associated with the first part of our interview. It's short but definitely sweet. I asked Ron how he traveled to Greece and what it was like - plane, train, what? He answered:

"I traveled from New York to Athens in August 1959 on the Greek liner, Queen Frederiki.

The Queen Frederica in 1967. For an idea of what the experience would have been like, check out this awesome video.

Pierre MacKay and the other Fulbrighters came on the other Greek liner, the Olympia. Also on the Frederiki were fellow-students Bill Wyatt, and his wife Sandra, Jim Wiseman (his wife Lucy came later), Patrick Henry and possibly one or two others. Fellow passengers were the new Director of Athens College, Dr. Rice and his wife, and the Greek poet, Athanasios Maskelaris, from whom I had Modern Greek lessons on board. The trip took 14 days and we all got the false impression that the long journey was almost over as soon as we cleared Gibraltar, but then we stopped in Barcelona, Palermo (where WW II bombing was still very evident), Naples, and Messina and it seemed to take forever to get to Peiraieus.

I was in a cabin in the very bottom of the ship with five old Greek men who had recently retired and were returning to their villages to live off the proceeds of their US Social Security. I was the only non-Greek at our table for eight, which was provided for lunch and dinner with a large flagon of very bitter retsina. The menu for lunch and dinner was printed in Greek and English and I still have one as a souvenir.

Queen Frederica menu from the 1960s.

We had a Greek orchestra, Greek dances, and Greek movies every evening; I remember Melina Mercouri in "Stella." I relieved the boredom of the journey by a shipboard romance with a young American woman who was sailing to join her parents in Athens, where her father worked for the CIA, and she was going to join the US Economic Mission. The Truman plan was still very active in Greece and the US Mission had taken over the huge city block occupied by the Tameion Building, just off Syntagma, and containing the swish watering hole Zonars, where many Americans hung out. The US Embassy was at Vasilissis Sophias and Herodes Atticus, catty-corner from the Benaki Museum and across the street from the headquarters of the Evzones.

Greece was not in sight on the eve of our arrival but I was too excited to sleep and around 3.00 a.m. went down the hall outside our cabin to where a member of the crew was standing smoking next to a large open door. The sea was rushing by and on the horizon barely visible was the outline of a mountain. "Ellada[Greece]" he said laconically. It was Cape Malea and he seemed as excited to be here as I was.

We were met at the dock in Peiraieus by Colin Edmonson, the Secretary of the School. The Secretary normally met arriving members of the School in those days. We had little baggage, because you had to go down to Customs to clear your belongings the next day, so Colin bundled us all into the School Land Rover, a venerable gray vehicle, with a large spare tire on the hood, that had been donated by Dr. George Miles of the American Numismatic Society, father of Mimsy Miles and future father-in-law of the future Director, James McCredie. It so happened that McCredie himself was there with Edmonson because they had been out on a topographic excursion with Arthur Steinberg. The reason I mention these three is that as we drove into Athens and the Acropolis loomed into sight, we all in the back seats were stretching our necks and uttering excited exclamations, while Edmonson, McCredie, and Steinberg merely drove by without looking. Hardened veterans."

The Parthenon in 1959. This amazing picture from here.

Interview with Ron Stroud: Part I

As this is the academic year 2009-2010, it is the 50th anniversary of the ASCSA's Class of 1959 Regular Year Students. In honor of our scholarly forefathers who came to Greece then, I decided to do a series of interviews commemorating that year. The first interview I did was with Pierre MacKay, who accompanied us students on several of the school trips we took during my own Regular Year in the autumn of 2009. You can check out the results of his interview here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

My second interview has been a bit longer in coming, no doubt given my change in method. Pierre I was able to interview in person and record on my iPod. (Although the archaeologist in me hopes this recording is preserved forever, the first-time interviewer in me cringes at the idea that someone else might hear how moronic I sound on that tape. Does my laugh really sound like that? Oh god.) My second interview, in contrast, has been over email, so it has taken a bit longer to compile and is far from finished. But, I figured I'd go ahead and get the first portion posted since it's been a while since I talked about ASCSA history on this blog. So let's get to it.

My second interview subject is none other than Ron Stroud. Like Pierre, he came to Greece as a student of Kendrick Pritchett from UC Berkeley. Some of you may know him as one of the forces behind the monumental SEG (Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum), one of the excavators of the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore at Corinth, and a fan of ancient curse tablets. To others, he is an ASCSA legend both as a scholar and as an American School member famous for his general awesomeness and hard-core-osity. I met Ron in the fall of last year, and to me and the other Regular Members, he was more simply a Master of Storytelling, always willing over dinner to share tales full of high drama, adventure, wit and humor. Hopefully I can in turn share some of his gems with you over the course of the interview. As with Pierre, most of my initial questions pertain specifically to the experience of being a Regular Member in 1959. Here we go.

Ron Stroud tells stories about excavating at Corinth, in front of the Wall of Fame in Hill House's library.

What made you decide to do the Regular Year Program? Had you ever been to Greece before? The short answer to this, as to almost everything else about my career as a classicist, is a teacher. This time it was Kendrick Pritchett in Berkeley who was very active in the affairs of the School. I had completed two years of graduate work at Berkeley and did not yet have a dissertation project though I was leaning toward something in Greek history, epigraphy, or archaeology. He counseled me that if this is what I wanted to do, it was imperative to go to Athens as a Regular Member, participate fully in all aspects of the program, and stay in Greece for as long as I could. Like most of my fellow-graduate students at the time (1959), I had never been to Greece or any other part of Europe. At his urging, I took the School fellowship exams in February of 1959, was lucky enough to win the Seymour Fellowship, and doubly lucky because I also won a fellowship from the Canada Council and, unusually, both institutions allowed me to hold both fellowships, which meant at the outset that if I saved my lepta [pennies], I could probably afford to stay two years.

What impression did you get from Athens and particularly Kolonaki when you arrived? What was it like? How has the area changed since 1959? Anyone walking through Kolonaki today would never guess what it was like in 1959. The square itself could be a bit dusty at times, for it was dirt in the center, unpaved and surrounded by trees, sometimes in hot summer afternoons sounding with the same cooing doves that one still hears in the ASCSA gardens. After strong winter rains, it could also be a bit muddy. Remember also that in 1959 the mad craze to tear down the lovely old Neo-Classical houses that graced most parts of Athens had not yet set in. The square was still mostly surrounded by these. So there were no glass-fronted shoe stores, or upscale bars, or Goody's. The kiosks also looked a bit more Ottoman than their modern overstuffed counterparts. Kolonaki's most conspicuous feature in my memory was the "Byzantion", a large kaffeneion [cafe-bar for men], open-fronted in the summer with lots of wooden cane-chairs spread all over the sidewalk on the west side of the square. Many very picturesque old, bearded gentlemen could be seen there all day (except for siesta) and all evening slamming down playing cards on the tables, shouting politics at each other, and smoking out of water-cooled hookas, for which they brought their own mouthpieces, much like professional snooker players who bring their own cues to a billiard parlor. This was unequivocally a male preserve, in fact very few women even dared to walk along the sidewalk on the west side of the plateia. This added to the mystery and wonder of an apparition I viewed there once coming home late across the square. It was after 2.00 a.m. on a hot summer night. The lights in the Byzantion were still on and there were still a few denizens inside. Outside, however, occupying the traditional five chairs (one for her bottom and two for the arms and one each for her long, slim, tanned legs), wearing a long, sleeveless white dress, was Melina Mercouri, having a nightcap and a smoke, alone. I couldn't believe it. I just stood there and gawked like a Groupie. There was "Stella." This was long before her days in "Never on Sundays" or local and international politics, the Elgin Marbles, etc. She used to live just around the corner from the School.

There were very few cars in Kolonaki in 1959, which made even more conspicuous the arrival of the old Marasleion bus that rattled through the square several times a day. There were also a number of horse-drawn carts of junk-dealers, vegetable merchants, and always, every day, a man on foot selling brooms and shouting, "Skoupie," in a voice that could have been heard as far away as the Plaka. Many of the other itinerant merchants shouted out the names of their wares and led heavily laden donkeys. Also, every few days a man would come through with a dancing bear, an accordion, and a monkey carrying an open hat for donations.

I saw a lot of this in my very first days in Athens, for Loring Hall had not yet reopened after the summer break and I had to stay at the fabled Pension [hotel] Suisse on Neophytou Vamva, just off the Plateia. Here I met Wade-Gery and Paul Alexander and the formidable private secretary of Queen Frederica, a permanent resident, who owned the large Liddell-Scott [Ancient Greek Dictionary] and lectured me on the absurdity of the Erasmian pronunciation of ancient Greek. Like many others over the years I enjoyed the wonderful hospitality of the proprietor Loukianos ("Kyrios Lucien") Polykandriotis from Trebizond and his wife Olympia (the best cook in Athens at the time, in my view). I later became their friend and Lucien came to our wedding in Athens in 1963. But that is a whole other story and the history of the Pension Suisse needs to be
written in full.

Could you tell me a little more about this Pension, since I have not heard of it? The Pension Suisse had roughly ten rooms, an elegant 19th century sitting room, a large dining room. They served an enormous three course lunch, with lots of wine, every day and a simple dinner every evening except Sundays. I remember glorious siestas there in the heat of an Athenian summer in those lovely old rooms with very high ceilings and the curtains wafting in whatever little bit of breeze came up. I used to stay there a lot in later years. Lucien was a wonderful raconteur, read Anna Comnena almost daily, and had a small but potent collection of Byzantine silver coins, which had been in his family and which he managed to salvage from the wreckage that drove him out of Trebizond to Athens. My last memories of it, after it moved from Kolonaki to Alkmanos Street near the Canadian Archaeological School, were in March 1969 when my family and I arrived there after driving through a very cold, wet, rainy Italy, with a very sick one-year old son (allergic to wheat, eggs, milk, and meat--great fun feeding him in restaurants), my three-year-old daughter, and Connie. We took the ferry from Brindisi to Patras and had planned to drive that evening to Athens where we had booked rooms at the Pension. By the time we reached Patras, however, Connie was so sick, having picked up all the germs and earaches that my daughter and I had finally shed, that she literally could not walk. I had to carry her from the car to a motel room outside Patras. The next day she was even worse and when we finally made it to the Pension, I had to carry her up two flights of stairs. To say the least, my family was in tatters. It was getting close to Easter when Olympia always used to get pretty nervous thinking about all the cooking she had to do, Christ on the Cross, rising from the dead, etc. But she and her family just took us all to their bosoms. They had a doctor there for Connie within 15 mins., Olympia and the maids just embraced my two children and actually baby-sat my whole family for more than a week while I went out during the day foraging for an apartment for my sabbatical. Salt of the earth human beings.

In "My Family and Other Animals" Gerald Durrell talks about the place where the Durrell family used to stay on Corfu also called the "Pension Suisse" and Connie and I actually stayed there over the Christmas break when we were digging year-round in the Demeter Sanctuary at Corinth in 1964/5. The only thing it had in common with its Kolonaki counterpart was the name.

Once the school year started, did you live in Loring Hall and where? Yes, after it reopened following the summer break, I lived in Loring Hall in the West Wing main floor about midway down the hall between the door and the bathrooms. My maid was "Old Maria," a bustling cleaner-upper, who made the bed every morning, changed the sheets once a week, took my laundry away on Tuesday and and brought it back on Friday, and "straightened up" all the keys, belongings, books, etc. on the dressing table, and made sure my shoes were in order under the bed. She had a terrible time with my neighbor, David Mitten from Harvard who was an assiduous sherder. In those days one was actually encouraged to pick up sherds and bring them back to place in the School's sherd collection, which was kept in the basement of the Main Building. David returned from all the Fall Trips, the Friday Trips, and any other personal outings with large numbers of unwashed and often muddy sherds that he used to dump on the top of his dressing table much to Maria's despair.

Before dealing with Loring Hall in more detail, however, I have to tell the story of my first full day in Greece in September 1959. My teacher, Kendrick Pritchett was at the School at that time and he invited me to join him on an excursion to Marathon on which he was then preparing a monograph. Evelyn Smithson, a professor from Buffalo who came to Athens every summer to work on the publication of the Geometric pottery from the Agora Excavations, joined us. Pritchett had rented a car and I got my first glimpse of the Attic countryside as we drove out. At Marathon, we climbed Mount Agrieliki, picked up some Geometric sherds, and saw Byron's famous view, "The mountains look down on Marathon..." We went to Vrana where the present museum was built much later and where Soteriades had dug a lot of Classical graves, then we walked quite a bit across what was then a totally empty plain to the Soros--no weekend villas, no posh hotels, no fences, no orchards, nothing but fields of wheat stubble and vegetables and few olive trees and sheep. I remember Pritchett stopping, as his pipe went out yet again, and saying, "Mr. Stroud [we were still on formal pupil/teacher terms at that point] we are walking across sacred ground!" We walked some more after visiting the Soros and found at the shore the only "structure" in sight. It was actually a tiny hut or lean-to that an old geezer had built. Inside he had a little gas stove on which he was grilling a great fish (a synagrida) that he had caught in the Bay of Marathon that morning. It smelled delicious. It was only than that we happily noticed the letters scrawled in chalk on one side of this little hut, "EXOKIKON KENTRON" which meant that we had reached a commercial establishment and we could pay for our seafood lunch. He also had FIX beer in the old blue label bottles that was icy cold. I couldn't believe it. This glorious lunch next to the sea, sitting on the grass, with the ghosts of the Marathonomachoi [warriors of the Battle of Marathon] only a few meters away. I returned that evening to the Pension Suisse where I was staying and excitedly told Kyrios Lucien about my day. What a fantastic first day in Hellas!

This was followed two days later, however, by an interlude that was not quite so pleasant. Pritchett, bless his heart, had wanted to help his student in any way he could, so he invited me to come to the garden of the French School at 6.00 p.m. where he had been invited for a cocktail by the Director Georges Daux and Mrs. Daux. The latter was one of the most elegant ladies in Athens and Daux himself was a scholar of great repute but also a formidable presence. I didn't even own a suit, let alone a summer suit. So clad in a heavy cream colored sports jacket that desperately need dry cleaning and gray flannels that were coming apart at the cuffs, I tentatively rang the bell at the front gate of the French School on Didotou Street. The thyroros led me to a flowery sector of the garden where seated in all their splendor were the Daux and Pritchett with one empty chair beside them. Daux in a spotless white suit rose to greet me and I was introduced to Mrs. Daux who looked like something out of Vogue magazine. To make it even worse, my Professor, as I knew before, was a connoisseur of fine wines, champagnes, madeiras, and all the rest. So I was offered a huge array of potent drinks, many of which I had never even heard of before. I was scared stiff, but the Daux quickly realized it and they loved Pritchett, so that they made every effort to put me at ease. Not a chance.

Luckily I was savvy enough not to gulp down what was in my glass but to take only a few sips and to hold onto it half empty until it was time to leave. Later in life, I became good friends with Daux and during a long rainy afternoon together in Berkeley many years thereafter we joked about our first encounter, but it was far from amusing for me at least at the time.

Stay tuned for Part 1.2 and Part 2.

The Graves of Archaeologists

I was just looking over Troels Myrup's blog Iconoclasm and noticed a post he did a few months back entitled 'Staying Behind.' It featured the gravestone of G.L. Harding and reflected on the fact that many foreign archaeologists end up being buried in the land where they dug, rather than the one in which they were born.

While I was on the Regular Program, I tried to document all the graves of archaeologists that we came across. Some are buried on the very site they excavated:

Ekrem Akurgal, one of the most important experts on Turkish archaeology, is buried at the site of Old Smyrna (in the modern city of Izmir). Check him out in this video.

Humfrey Payne is buried just down the hill from Mycenae. He was the director of the British School from 1929 until 1936 when he died of blood poisoning. His wife was Dilys Powell, a journalist who also wrote the pithy Villa Ariadne, a lively view of the archaeologists who worked at Knossos. Humfrey Payne also excavated the Sanctuary of Hera at Perachora where I gave a site report.

The gravestones of many archaeologists reference the ancient world or the work they did in life:

Carl and Elizabeth Blegen, whom I have discussed numerous times on this site, are buried beneath a headstone that mimics the grave stelae from Mycenae.

The grave of Heinrich Schliemann, the excavator of Troy and Mycenae is of course the most recognizable example of this. His tomb, in the shape of a temple, is decorated with scenes from the mythic Greek past and also with scenes of excavation. Ancient and modern heroics.

An extraordinary number of famous names are buried together in the First Cemetery in Athens. Because the cemetery is Orthodox, the burials of the non-Orthodox (foreigners) are separated off by a fence. Walking through that collection of graves is an exceedingly strange experience. Headstone after headstone bears a familiar name. Famous archaeologists from the earlier days of the discipline lie beside others who have made a more recent impact.

William Bell Dinsmoor, for example, is famous for his architectural studies. His son (also named William Dinsmoor) followed in his footsteps, and I always have to do a double take when I see their names, just to make sure I'm looking at Sr. or Jr. Whenever I hear them mentioned, I will always think of Margie Miles saying 'Dinsmoor' while pointing up to some architectural oddity.

Adolf Furtwangler is a total legend. His impact on the study of the ancient world was enormous. John Boardman remarked that he was "probably the greatest classical archaeologist of all time."

Eugene Vanderpoole was the Mellon Professor (the Professor of Archaeology) at the School exactly 50 years ago. It was he who dragged Pierre McKay all over Greece. As Kostis Kourelis has pointed out, his house was considered something of an architectural superstar in Athens. I most frequently heard about Vanderpool in reference to life at the School during WWII. He was placed in a concentration camp and survived, but his health was never the same after. Whereas Furtwangler was a legend for his scholarship, in the many tales that I heard, Vanderpool was an altogether different sort, a giant, much beloved, a war hero. His presence and heroism still hang over the School, especially in the tender words of those who remember him.

And then there is Bert Hodge Hill and his wife Ida Thallon Hill. Ida has always been of great interest to me because of her pioneering role as one of the first women to ever excavate on the Greek mainland. The physical presence (books, furniture, etc.) that the Hills and Blegens left at the American School is of endless fascination to me. But most importantly of all, the Hills paid for me to attend the Regular Year Program by generously endowing a fellowship. Thank you, Bert Hodge Hill!

While at the American School, the monumental personages buried there at the First Cemetery became much more than names to me. They suddenly became the teachers and mentors of friends and of my own teachers and mentors. They became the topics of stories, reminiscences and School myth. They stopped being just recognizable names on book covers and beneath article titles. They're no longer just bibliography.

The First Cemetery is extraordinary for the simple fact that it preserves and also recreates a community. Granted, most of the people in that fenced-off section were of the same social class, almost all were foreigners, and all were non-Orthodox (mostly Protestant and Catholic) - they were already bound to run in the same circles. But a large percentage were part of an intellectual family tree, a community with connections across nationalities and zig-zagging relationships down through decade after decade. They're all there together under the shady pine trees. Young archaeologists can visit the First Cemetery and literally see their social and academic ancestry there before them. Name after name is instantly recognizable and meaningful. It occurs to me that nowhere else in the world will I ever know so many names of the dead in one place, in one cemetery. Nowhere else will I have so many connections to so many headstones.

What an odd and uncanny thing!

Happy Anniversary to the ASCSA Regular Member Class of 1959!

It was the year that the Twilight Series debuted on TV and Barbie’s face was first revealed to the public. Eisenhower was president. Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th States of the Union. Two monkeys went into space, managing safely to return to Earth. It was in July that Charles Ovnand and Dale Buis were the first Americans to be killed in the Vietnam ‘Conflict.’ The Dalai Lama fled Tibet on the same day that Busch Gardens opened its doors in Florida. On February 3rd, Buddy Holly died.

It was 1959. In the autumn of that year, a group of graduate students from all over the United States converged in Athens, Greece, arriving by plane and by boat. They came together in the suburb of Kolonaki, looking not much different than it does today (but without quite as much glamour). They met at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, an institution in the midst of a financial crisis, filled with an extraordinary number of driven individuals, and nevertheless possessed of a sense of immortality and tradition. Institutionally and personally the memories of World War II were strong; many of the members in 1959 had acted as Allied Intelligence officers because of their knowledge of the Greek countryside. There was more than one person at the School who could estimate troop numbers and lay explosives under bridges, or conversely, had spent time in Nazi concentration camps. Greece itself was still recovering from the shock of the Civil War, with military rule still clamping down whole regions of the country.

The students who arrived that autumn were the 1959-60 Regular Year Members. General consensus reveals that no year’s students are the same, some are less than stellar, less than pleasant, or the opposite entirely. The group’s measure seems to be determined by the luck of the draw. But no one denies that the ’59-’60 Members were anything less than extraordinary. It seems that altogether that year produced a very special batch of Regular Members, including none other than Ron Stroud, T. Leslie Shear, Jr. and his wife Ione Mylonas (as in daughter of George), William and Sandra Wyatt, Patricia Lawrence, Theodora Stillwell (later MacKay), Pierre MacKay, etc.

This year it is the 50th anniversary of that Regular Year, so I have decided to interview Pierre MacKay and Ron Stroud to find out what that year was like. I’ll be posting excerpts of Pierre’s interview over the next week or so, as I transcribe them. So stay tuned for a little ASCSA history.

Things I see a lot of

The view from the back of the bus. Somehow I've managed to hold on to the same seat I've had the entire year.

This picture is a double whammy. First there's the map stop, with all of us standing around a map of the area, compass properly positioned, learning the lay of the land. Then there is the passing-out-of-the-handouts. If there is a handout for every site we visit, then how many times this year have I watched the handouts go round?

The climbing of a hill/acropolis/mountain. Notice that everyone else is somehow ahead of me.

Usually when people post pictures of their trips, they upload the ones of beautiful landscapes, quirky images, or smiling people. Far too often, the most ubiquitous images are left out, especially the bus. The tour bus is one of the most common things to see in Greece, and for us, it is pretty much the structural core of our day. I would go as far as saying it is the center of our world.

BSA Carnival

So last night was the annual Carnival party at the British School at Athens. The BSA and us go way back, to the 1880s in fact. The American School was founded in 1881 and the BSA in 1886. When we moved to our new digs here in Kolonaki a while back, the ASCSA and the BSA decided to be neighbors. In fact, when it came time to buy the land for Loring Hall, we split the cost (and the land) with the Brits. Of course, when we got hot water in 1930, they were just getting electricity - booyah!

Nowadays, we're virtually on the same land, sharing the gardens and the tennis courts. When I look out my window, I look directly at the British School. There's a long tradition of people strolling back and forth across the street from the BSA to ASCSA, whether for tea, ouzo, lectures, or other social/work occasions (Piet de Jong being a prime example). We also have access to each other's library (even sharing the same library catalogue), which is really handy, given that I'm always looking for books that only the BSA library has. For a while I found their library terrifying, since I always got lost in it, but now that I have (finally!) figured out where the little library maps are, I feel like I'm straight out of London.

I don't know when the tradition began, but at some point in time we started the alternating party thing - we do Halloween, they do Carnival. Last night was the BSA's much anticipated party, which had the theme of 'Down Under.' I didn't hang around too long, since I had Harry Potter to read and went home a little after midnight. Apparently the festivities lasted well into the nighttime, and there were several surly looking people shuffling around Loring at noon today, having just gotten out of bed.

So thanks to the British School for throwing a great party (with great decorations)! Here's how a few of us Americans participated in the theme:

Fosters - Australian for Beer, Boxing Kangaroo, and Dreya with some boingy flowerythings.

Crikey and Criminal.

Dingo a la Elaine from Seinfeld.

Any guesses?

Things to do in Athens

1. Find Mexican Food

Living in Greece for an extended period of time can be extremely trying on the American constitution, trained as it is to extract energy from highly-spiced foods. American visitors to Greece are advised to consume large amounts of hotwings, chili, General Tso's chicken, and spicy salsa prior to exiting the United States. Upon arrival in Greece, be prepared to lose all interest in food, massively increase one's salt and pepper intake, and experience reoccurring nightsweats due to guacamole deficiency. Commonly, a cause of severe distress for Americans is the shock to the system caused by sudden and unexpected shortages of Mexican Food, an American staple to which most US citizens are addicted, without their knowledge.

In case of emergency, proceed on the Metro's Blue Line to the Chalandri Station, disembark and continue for 20 minutes in the direction of downtown Athens. Immediately enter Sante Fe Restaurant (Agiou Georgiou 30B). Research has shown that the food provided in said restaurant, owned by former residents of New Mexico, meets the dietary standards for decreasing the debilitating effects of Sans Mexican Food Shock.

There's even sour cream.

2. Play American Football

In order to boost morale, a common recommendation for Americans in Greece is an occasional game of football, sure to improve dispositions and circulate the humours. Best played on football-related holidays such as Thanksgiving or Superbowl Day, Americans are advised to play on the open killing-field behind the American Embassy. Should participants be ejected from the field by Greek policemen, continue play in the open game-area several blocks removed from the Embassy. It is highly recommended that the game not take place in the portion of the field reserved for pet use. Although the remaining portion of the green has a wet and marshy quality, known to be hazardous to upright bipedalism and conducive to injury, mud is recognized for its healing effects on the epidermis. In order to combat the subsequent toxic flood of lactic acid within the muscular system, consume large amounts of water and, if able, see a local masseuse.

3. Have a BBQ

Grilling large quantities of high-calorie meats is a past-time familiar to many Americans, and if possible, is an activity that should be continued while habitating in Greece. The most popular dish for such occasions is the famous Bacon Explosion, composed of woven bacon slices surrounding sausage and additional bacon bits. If the Bacon Explosion catches fire and takes on the appearance of a volcano-charred Herculaneum papyrus scroll, slice it open and consume the interior with a spoon, as one would eat a kiwi.

City Beneath the Surface Above: Public Archaeology and the City Walls of Ancient Athens

On Thursday morning, Leda Costaki took us on a search for the city walls of ancient Athens.

Leda Costaki, whose 2006 dissertation explored the road system of Athens, explains the city walls visible in the Kerameikos. They are made up of two parts, the wall itself, and the proteichisma, the wall ‘in front of the wall.’ So two walls, with ring roads and moats included. Here note the multiple phases of the structure, marked by different types of stone and different construction techniques.

Since Athens has been inhabited continually for several thousand years, multiple versions of the fortification walls are known. There's the pre-Persian War wall, the Themistoklean Wall (5th c. BCE), the Kononian fortifications (4th c. BCE), the Valerian Walls (3rd c. CE), the Justinian repairs, the 13th c. Medieval fortifications, and the Turkish fortifications (utterly demolished as soon as the Greeks gained independence in the 1820s). Numerous cemetaries have been found surrounding the exterior of the walls/gates, such as the famous Kerameikos cemetary.

The infamous CGMs (columnar grave monuments) of Athens, stored behind the Kerameikos Museum).

Because Athens has been continually inhabited since antiquity, with the population skyrocketing in the last two hundred years, archaeological excavation has had to deal with the modern inhabitants of the city. Over the past century, the approaches archaeologists have employed have been varied, from buying plots of land and dismantling houses to forcibly moving refugee camps in preference for the ancient remains. It hasn’t always been pretty. But when it comes to the ancient city walls, modern building has usually been allowed to precede, provided it keeps the walls relatively intact. Leda’s lecture was most interesting, for me at least, because she addressed the difficulties the Archaeological Service has had preserving remains amidst a modern metropolis.

Every time construction begins, builders must get the approval of the Service, and if antiquities appear while foundations are being dug and concrete poured, then the Service swoops in to perform a ‘rescue excavation.’ Leda stressed the enormous pressure weighing on the shoulders of the Service members, who are hounded on all sides by historians, archaeologists, land owners, construction companies, and governmental offices. Usually all they can do is scramble in get the antiquities out as fast as possible – they don’t have the luxury of meticulous record keeping, detailed measurements, and copious notebooks that other archaeological teams enjoy. In and out – save the antiquities from destruction and looting – then move on.

Leda provided some fascinating history of rescue excavations in Athens, which became a problem as soon as Greece gained independence in the 1800s and the population swarmed in from the countryside. More recent waves of population movement into the city and the subsequent construction of buildings led to an enormous amount of rescue excavations in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 80s, however, the Archaeological Service was contending more with the impact of cars, since overpasses, highways, and other infrastructure needed by an automobile nation were changing the landscape of the city. In the 90s, it was all about the new metro system, abundant remains showing up pretty much everywhere a new metro station or line was planned. And then, of course, there were the 2004 Olympics, which transformed the city and cost approximately 7 billion euros.

The Archaeological Service has also had to determine how best to preserve certain remains (like city walls) while also meeting the needs of construction projects. Leda’s lecture on the city walk was structured around the different preservation philosophies employed over the last several decades.

Will Bruce, Rebecca Ammerman, and Ben Sullivan peak through grating to view parts of the city wall.

The walls, for example, have been hidden away in basements.

They have been preserved in, you guessed it, parking garages, with no signs whatsoever indicating to car owners that they are parked next to the fortification walls of ancient Athens, 2,400 years old.

In this case, the 4th c. BCE proteichisma is housed in the parking garage, but the main wall was actually entirely dismantled and move to the plateia outside.

More recently, there has been an interest in making sure the walls are available to the public.

This section of the wall lies in the basement of an apartment building. The owners have built a seperate entrance that is open to the public.

At the Divani Palace Acropolis Hotel, the walls are preserved on the bottom floor of the hotel, next to the gift shop. Notice that the antiquities have been covered in houseplants, to make them more aesthetically pleasing.

The National Bank of Greece has left the entire lower level of their structure open for the public, who can look down at the walls or walk on glass floors to view the ancient drainage system.

Paths and Empty Roads by Archaeological Sites in the Greek Countryside

The Regular Year program involves a lot of walking. In order to get accepted into the program, the School requires a doctor's verification that you are in reasonable health. This isn't to say that we were all fit as a fiddle, as if our first hike up Lykabitos Hill wasn't like hiking through the valley of the shadow of death. Brutal, is how I recall it. But during the fall trips we got into much better form, so that I was on my way to being as healthy as I was when I drove a pedal-cab at OSU football games.

But then the trips ended, and Christmas happened, and nowadays we do far fewer walk-abouts. This was clear to me yesterday, when we went to the ancient sites of Thorikos, Sounion and Zoster. I'd forgotten what physical activity was like, and how, on foot, the empty road appears ahead of you.

Scott Gallimore navigates a dried creek bed, directly next to the classical-era stoa at Thorikos. Up ahead of him you can just make out the collapsed blocks of the building, which at some unknown point slid into the river.

Lindy Dewey-Gallimore treads the abandoned railway line that runs through Thorikos. Over-grown and unused, several of the railroad ties were ripped out within the last day or two. They'll no doubt be more useful where ever they are now. Site formation at work!

Regular and Associate members travel the winding mountain road at Vari. Our bus couldn't make the trip because the road had been blocked by a funeral. Our destination was the shrine of Pan and the Nymphs in the Vari Cave. We made the hike back in total darkness.

The countryside is green and wet in all directions, a far cry from the dry and yellowed landscape of Greece's summer. Usually this a good thing, but some plants are apparently a nuisance.

Margie Miles, Mellon Professor, on her way to the Thorikos Stoa.

One such example is a verdant and clover-looking plant that spreads like a carpet in olive groves. It turns rocky Greece into a British countryside.

We learned about this dark and evil plant on Wednesday from Harriet Blitzer, who spoke to us during the Weiner Lab seminar. Harriet works on, among other things, olive cultivation and the domestication of plants. She is particularly forceful when it comes to this cloveresque greenery, which was imported to Greece and has thrived to everyone's dismay. It apparently acts like a sponge, holding water in, but kills all the local wild flowers; instead of olive groves starred by spring blooms, only this dread plant remains (yes, I've forgotten its name already). Think kudzu in the South, although it hasn't quite reached the point of swallowing whole trees. It sure is pretty to look at, but I imagine in the spring I'll think differently, when all the wild flowers are gone.

Acropolis Dogs and the Parthenon's Phases

On Thursday, we visited the interior of the Parthenon to hear about the reconstruction project which has been going on there (I'll be posting about reconstruction projects in the near future).

Photo: Melinda Dewey-Gallimore, 2009.

We climbed up the 13th century tower located at the southwest corner of the Parthenon, which is one of the only post-antique structures still preserved on the Acropolis, the rest having been dismantled to make way for the 'important' bits. The tower was constructed not long after 1204 when the Parthenon was converted into a Catholic church by the Franks. It was made of spolia and contained a spiral staircase, which was incidentally a lot of fun to climb up. The view was phenomenal. Eventually the tower was turned into a minaret when Athens came under Ottoman rule in the 1400s.

A drawing from the 1700s showing the minaret as it stood in the SW corner. The picture depicts the bombing of the Parthenon by Francesco Morosini in 1687.

Despite the tower being an astoundingly important piece of historical evidence preserved on the Acropolis, it is surprisingly little discussed. Sitting on the porch here in Lorring with other graduates, I was a bit appalled to see how little we collectively know about it. It reinforces how much we need projects like The Other Acropolis or Anthony Kaldellis' forthcoming book The Christian Parthenon: Classicism and Pilgrimage in Byzantine Athens. (If you can't wait for its release, check out his online lecture A Heretical (Orthodox) History of the Parthenon.)

While up on top of the tower, we were shown this:

Photo: Melinda Dewey-Gallimore, 2009.

It's a dog print preserved in a terracotta tile. None of us can figure out when it dates to, since it doesn't appear to be ancient Greek or Roman. Any ideas?

A Report on Christmas Break, And So Begins the Winter Quarter

The Christmas holidays have finally come to a close, and I really am back in the blogosphere (did I just actually say ‘blogosphere?’). Our Fall Quarter here at the School ended with a six-day trip to Crete, amidst a whirlwind of seminars, paper run-throughs and efforts to avoid nervous break downs. We got into the holiday spirit by having two tree trimming parties here in Athens, one at the Director’s House and one in Lorring Hall. There was even carol singing, believe it or not, accompanied on the piano by the Assistant Director of the British School, Robert Pitt.

Lorring Hall’s tree trimming party.

Regular Members Tom Garvey and Sean Jensen.

I went back to the States for a much needed month-long vacation, although it turned out to be extremely busy and involved a lot of driving all over the East Coast.

My driving route.

I went to Atlanta for 10 days or so and was able to eat lots of banana pudding and watch tons of Battlestar Galactica with my mom. I also visited Beast Cat and was taught to crochet by my grandmother.

Note the fancy new hat and scarf my grandma made me.

I spent Christmas on a mountaintop in Tennessee and played lots of Wii. Then back to Atlanta.

Yes, I got a cowboy hat for Christmas. I’m thinking it might make a good excavation hat.

I spent a few days around New Years in DC, before heading to Columbus, then on to Philadelphia for the AIA Meetings. Made the 12 hour trip back to Atlanta before taking a 24 hour flight back to Athens on Wednesday. We had a truly lovely morning yesterday, visiting the inside of the Parthenon. The day was gorgeous and warm, and our tour of the Parthenon was interesting while being sufficiently laid back.

‘Chillaxing’ on the steps of the Parthenon.

Today I gave my first site report of the quarter at Eleusis. I presented the Telesterion, the main cult building in the sanctuary and supposedly the site of the mysterious Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone.

Note so mysterious in the daylight, missing the spooky torches and secret rites. Imagine us sitting on the steps, wet and bedraggled from the early rain storm, with wet handouts plastered to our clothing.

And now, as soon as I finish this Fellowship application, the weekend awaits! I plan on enjoying it via a good vegetation session on the couch.