Good night, sweet trench

Alas, lovely trench PC 42's days have come to a close.



Actually, they came to a close at the beginning of August, but, well, I haven't quite got around to commemorating the trench's final moments.

In the end, PC 42 was excavated down to bedrock which revealed several walls and a good deal of construction evidence. We found a fair number of post-holes and cuttings in the bedrock and a lot of levelling fill.

Most of PC 42's scarps were a nightmare, thanks to tree trunks and the ancient dumped debris that makes sculpting scarps into vertical faces - 'like glass'- the bane of undergraduates.

On the last day of fieldwork, a tarp was laid in the trench and all the dirt we had removed during the season was dumped back in. This is called 'backfilling' and is done in order to protect the trench from the elements, as well as clandestinii (looters). Watching all that dirt go back in - well, it hurts the heart a little to see it done.

Backfilling at Poggio Colla in 2004.

It also hurts everywhere else a little, too. Actually, a lot. I'll be honest. Backfilling was the one day where the physical pain was so bad I wanted to cry. It was a nice reminder that age and decrepitude even conquers archaeologists.

Ultimately I did survive Backfill Day, though. So too did PC 42's students, who were total champs and made the season really spectacular.

Thanks, guys: Cassie, Kristen, Morgan, me, Sarah, Jack.

For now, PC 42 sits lonely upon its wooded hill, tree roots already weaseling down into the soft empty soil that has replaced its 2300 years of stratigraphy. The Mugello Valley is a quieter place, without the hoard of filthy American students stomping about in a fine impersonation of 'Pig Pen.' I went on to see a large part of Italy over the subsequent three weeks (more on this later), but in the end, the Mugello still holds pride of place as my favorite part of Italy. Mushroom hunters, wild boars and lightening storms just aren't the same anywhere else!

Me and the Mugello at dusk, as seen from the amazing restaurant 'Casa di Caccia.'

Rainless

Currently I am in Campania and the sky is the never-changing cloudless blue that I became familiar with in Greece. A few weeks ago, though, it came as a shock to find that excavations sometimes actually have to deal with rain. Sure, I knew rain fell on British excavations and on Jamestown and stuff; but having never experienced it myself, it didn't seem like an archaeological reality. I was spoiled in Greece, where it stops raining in early June and then, well, that's it - no more moisture for the rest of the summer. The Mugello Valley, on the other hand, turned out to be wetter than I anticipated.

At first I was a bit...perplexed...by the whole covering-the-trenches-with-tarps-at-night thingy. And then I found out why it was necessary.

Bailing out PC 40.

In the end, the tarps were not wholly effective and some trenches got a bit...damp. This was especially unfortunate for those students digging through a deep layer made up of dark, ashy soil. Which turned into a gruesome greyish-brown ooze. They ended up having to sift the mud by hand.

Robert of PC 41, covered in black slime.

A PC 41 bucket. Yuck.

Alas, my own PC 42 did not escape unscathed, either. Yet somehow my students were awesome enough to stay relatively clean despite it all.

PC 42's sparkling clean Jack and Cassie excavate a muddy rubble pit that turned out to be a robbing trench for yet another wall, removed and filled in during the Hellenistic period.

Hands Off: Tools As Artifacts at the Archaeological Dig

From the beginning of its existence as a discipline, archaeology has been about objects. While its true that for many projects the dirt itself is starting to get the same respect as the items that are uncovered in it, archaeologists cannot help but remain object-oriented. All day you look for artifacts in the soil- tiles, pottery, worked stone, metals, weaving implements, tools. Your day is centered around 'things.' Your hands are constantly touching and feeling objects to help in their identification - is this ceramic or is it a rock? Your eyes and your body are constantly on tippy-toe, waiting, hanging on the potential appearance of 'things' with every passing clod of earth.

But of course, modern 'things' are just as important as the ancient ones in an archaeologist's daily life; they can receive the same sort of intense focus, adulation and worship as the ancient treasures themselves. I'm talking about tools.

Everyone knows what its like to have a work utensil that's used day after day. It's quite easy to develop a relationship with it, whether it's a crappy keyboard that you grow to loathe or a favorite pen that you jealously guard. It can be a major bummer if your favorite item gets lost, or breaks, or is stolen by a co-worker. It's the same way with an archaeologist's tools. At most excavations, there's often a morning rush as everyone tries to grab their favorite things before someone else does. There's a race for handpicks, for dustpans, for bristle brushes, for the lightest shovel and the sturdiest bucket. These tools can cause a lot of unacknowledged jostling, secret irritation, silent glowering and intense satisfaction.

I myself have become quite fond of the old rounded trowel I found in the tool shed this summer. I bet every person on the Poggio Colla excavation has their own secret attachment. Some of those human-tool relationships are a bit more obvious.


Take PC 42's student-digger Morgan, for example, who has a tool with a story. And a name - Tiger. Most of the students went off to Home Depot or Lowes to buy their trowels before they came to Italy, which means that most of the trowels look pretty much the same. But Morgan found one at her own house. It turns out that her parents once built a deli and her dad was tiling the interior. He shaped his trowel to make it more useful for laying tile, in contrast to the flat brick-laying trowel. And so Morgan decided to adopt her Dad's tool, which he had created and inadvertently imbued with sentiment.


Sure, you can only use it with one hand because if you flip the blade you'll destroy everything in its path. It's a vicious weapon and can bite the hand that wields it; it's a trowel that demands respect. But it's master is Morgan.

Some of the tools are a little more serious. There are even a few that only staff members are allowed to use, for obvious insurance reasons. Like the ax.

PC 42, the ax in use. As it turns out, trench supervisor Kyle used to be a competitive lumber jack. Be gone, tree stump!
And when these really serious tools break, waiting for their replacements can leave everyone on edge. The recent shattering of the ax-handle was just such an affair. At least now we've got it back, and rotten tree stumps are once more flying off the side of the hill.
But besides being mean, lean, archaeological-context-destruction machines, our tools can be an endless source of entertainment as well. They can make a person happy, when not giving blisters and callouses or accidentally stabbing you.

PC 42 student-digger Jack displays the proper way to double-fist the handpick.
While our focus on the ancient objects may be well-recognized, the archaeologist's daily obsession with modern tools is, I think, just as great. Um, unless it's just me.
Keep your paws off my trowel.

Back in the Agora Storage Rooms

Okay, I'm back now I think. I've spent the last few days either moping in bed, writing a paper, or reading feel-good books like Harry Potter. But we have some interesting things to look forward to this week, like Eretria. Plus I have a new theme to introduce to the blog in a few days, once it's been cooked up properly and ready to go. So let the archaeological fun resume.

Storage amphorae in the store rooms of the Agora excavations.

John Camp shows some osteological evidence. Every one of those wooden drawers represents a layer excavated by the Agora diggers since the 1930s, each full of context pottery to help future generations re-date the material accurately.

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.