Week 3

This has been a difficult week for us all at the excavation. We began the week with high hopes; the backhoe was coming to dig the test trenches on Monday, and we knew that it would be only a few days before we would see where the tombs were. On Monday, we had finished digging up the western side of the field, and had found no trace of a tomb. On Tuesday, the backhoe returned, and it worked on digging the eastern side of the field. There were some places that looked possible, but we learned by the end of the day that there were no tombs in the eastern field as well.

This is very sad for the team, especially since 7 students from Canada had arrived on Sunday. None of them had ever been on an excavation before, and they are very excited to learn about how to be archaeologists. They still will get to learn all the skills they need, but I know that they were really looking forward to working on digging a Mycenaean chamber tomb.

It is important to remember that even though we did not find tombs in the field, the team has still done something very important. Our digging has shown that there are no tombs there, which makes us think about some important questions: Why are there not tombs in the upper field? How did the Mycenaeans choose places to dig their tombs? These are the kinds of questions that we will be thinking about in the next few weeks.