Ayia Sotira 2008 Excavation

We have been busy all week, digging for about 9 hours each day.  We
are making good progress, and we are hoping that we will be able
to finish by the end of next week.  Of course, this depends on how
many burials are in the tomb.  Laura is supervising work in the
dromos, and she has already found some pottery sherds. She has
excavated at least 2 meters in 4 days.  Jessica and Katie are
supervising the students and the workmen in the chamber.  They are
removing soil from the collapsed chamber, and have taken out about a
meter and a half so far.  We are beginning to water sieve, so that we will find any tiny seeds, bones, or parts of ancient plants.

Our spirits and energy are generally high, and I will keep updating the blog as often as possible about our finds!

The exciting news from Monday is that we found a tomb!  

Although there had been some talk that the pit the students were digging was a tomb, there did not seem to be much chance that it really was.  Then, on Monday, we got a call that Angus had found the entranceway to the tomb!  We all rushed to the site to do our different jobs.  Katie, Laura, and Jessica are supervising all the workman and students as they dig.  I have been working on site, as well, taking the measurements and mapping our progress.
Right now, it seems like the tomb is very large.  The entrance way is probably about 7 meters long, and the chamber appears to be about 5 meters in diameter.  

We are just beginning excavation —  I’ll write often as we keep digging!

This week has been another busy one at Ayia Sotira.  We are still
working in the Museum on pottery, mapping, and data entry.  New
projects began this week, too.  Phil came to help us with our drawings
of the tombs.  He is an archaeologist and an architect.  Also, Mary
and I have been driving and hiking around the area looking for other
Bronze Age sites.  These sites were discovered during the Nemea Valley
Archaeological Project (NVAP), which Jim and Mary worked on in the
1970s and 1980s.  We are using the maps that they created then to try
and find some of these sites again.

Also, 2 students from Bryn Mawr came from Athens.  They had been
working at another museum there for a month, and then came to join us
for 2 weeks.  They have been working part of the time in the Museum,
and part of the time up at the site with the field school students.
The field school students are continuing with their work at the site.
One group has dug to the bottom of its trench, and so is taking
photographs and drawing. The other group continues to dig deeper.

We have been doing many fun things in the afternoons, as well.  On
Wednesday, we drove over to Mycenae and visited Petsas House, an
excavation run by the University of California, Berkeley.  On
Thursday, some of the students from the Petsas House excavation joined
us at the Sophos Hotel for dinner.  Yesterday, we went to another
local winery in Nemea.  There an oenologist (“oy-NOL-o-gist”), someone
who studies wine-making, showed us how the use of different kinds of
oak barrels affects the taste of the wine.  Today, the field school is
visiting Lerna and the city center of Argos.  Tomorrow, we have
arranged a soccer game in the evening.   As you can see, we are all
very busy!

It is hard to believe that we have been here about a month! This week the team has been divided into two groups — some of us are working in the Nemea Museum, and others have been up at the site.The Museum group is working on different jobs. Birgit has been drawing the pottery. She very carefully tries to draw the shape, size, and decoration of each pot, so that a person could really understand the pottery, even if he or she could not see it in person. Jessica, who has been trained in studying skeletons, is looking at some of the bones that we found in the previous seasons. Laura, Stella, and Ann-Sophie are working with Jim and Mary on organizing, cataloguing, and studying the finds from previous years. I’ve been finishing up the maps of the site from this season and teaching the students how to use the Total Station.

The field school students are working on site, practicing how to dig. On the final day of excavation we found what looked to be a natural pit, which is full of pottery. Angus thinks that this pit may have been formed by an earthquake. Then, water caused pottery to fall into it. It is still possible that the pit may also have been made by people, and so the students are continuing to dig. The students are working in teams of 3 people at the site in the mornings and then working in the Museum washing pottery in the afternoons. The students are also taking field trips to archaeological sites in the area. Last weekend, they visited the Temple of Nemean Zeus and the citadel at Mycenae. Tomorrow they will go to Tiryns and Epidauros.

The whole group also went on a wine tour yesterday afternoon. Many people grow grapes in this region, especially the St. George grape. We learned how they press the grapes with their feet, how they allow the wine to age in oak barrels, and how they create a distinctive flavor for their wines.