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Introducing Kate and Amy Boyd: Zagora volunteers

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Trowel tales and true – Kate and Amy Boyd

Amy Boyd on site at Zagora
Amy Boyd on site at Zagora. © PHM; photo by Irma Havlicek

I thought it would be interesting to profile some of the people who have volunteered to do fieldwork at Zagora in 2013. Most are archaeology students undertaking either undergraduate or postgraduate study. Others trained as archaeologists or studied archaeology some years ago but decided to earn their living doing other jobs. Yet others trained as classical archaeologists but work as archaeological or heritage consultants in the Australian context. All of these have maintained an interest in classical archaeology and spend many of their holidays volunteering on projects all over the world.

Amy and Kate Boyd belong to another category. Kate is a high school Visual Arts teacher and Amy is a high school Maths teacher, both of them currently working in the Illawarra.

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Sophia Melita, Batsi ceramist

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by Irma Havlicek, Powerhouse Museum Web Producer
with Lea Alexopoulos, archaeologist

Sophia Melita behind her shop counter.
Sophia Melita behind her shop counter. © PHM; photo by Irma Havlicek

Sophia Melita knew from an early age that she wanted to be a ceramist so she went to art school at 17 to study the craft. After four years study in Athens, she began her career as a ceramist which is what she has now been doing for 33 years, running her own workshop and shop.

From late May to early October, the holiday season, she sells her products in her shop in Batsi (up the steps off the main street, and to the right from the Tountas Bakery). For the rest of the year she is working in her workshop in Andros, creating ceramics for her shop.

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Archaeological sieving

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Jane McMahon breaking up clumps of dried soil to ensure there are no pieces of artefacts inside
Jane McMahon breaking up clumps of dried soil to ensure there are no pieces of artefacts inside. Tessa Morgan (in front) and Kate Boyd are working in the trench. © PHM; photo by Irma Havlicek

by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum Web Producer

When the archaeologists have excavated down past any topsoil or backfill (soil and stone material which had been placed there to protect the trench if it had been previously excavated), and reached what they consider potentially archaeologically significant layers of earth, they must begin dry sieving the soil at that layer to ensure that no artefacts or artefact pieces of significance are missed.

The photo at right shows several important tools of archaeology: sieve, wheelbarrow, trowel (in Jane’s hand), pick (partly obscured, being used by Kate Boyd [wearing aqua top], work gloves, brush, dustpan (green, at far left) and buckets for carrying soil, rocks and plant debris away).

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Team Zagora plays soccer with the locals

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by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum Web Producer

Giorgos, our host at the Kantouni pensione/restaurant, has the ball
Giorgos Moustakas (holding the ball) organised the game. © PHM; photo by Irma Havlicek

Giorgos Moustakas, our host at the Kantouni restaurant and pensione, last year organised a soccer match between his team and Team Zagora – a team cobbled together from among the archaeological team. Last year we played on a pitch in Gavrio at night – and it was freezing.

But a tradition was born, and this year we played again. This time during the day last Sunday, when it was warm and pleasant, on a playing field up the hill at Batsi.

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Sunset over the marina at Batsi

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Sunset over the marina at Batsi
Sunset over the marina at Batsi. © PHM; photo by Irma Havlicek
by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum Web Producer

I snapped this sunset over the marina at Batsi about 7pm yesterday when walking back from the shops to the Kantouni restaurant for dinner. It was so lovely, I just thought I would share it with you.

Directors’ plans for 2013 excavations at Zagora – an overview – part 2

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This is part 2 of the Directors’ plans for 2013 Zagora excavations post. See part 1 here.

The architectural plans of Dr J. J. Coulton

The fortification wall at Zagora, drawn by J. J. Coulton
The fortification wall at Zagora, drawn by J. J. Coulton © Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens

The work of the 1960s and 70s is the foundation from which the project directors are working. In particular they refer often to the architectural plans made by the highly respected Dr J. J. (Jim) Coulton, who was the site architect then. We are thrilled that he will be visiting the site this year, and I hope to interview him for this blog.

Coulton’s drawings provide a vivid and clear visual representation of his impression of the buildings and people at the time of the settlement. They are published in the ‘Andros Museum Guide’.

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Directors’ plans for 2013 excavations at Zagora – an overview – part 1

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Dr Lesley Beaumont and Professor Meg Miller working in our open plan and fully air-conditioned site office (formerly an animal pen).
From left: Dr Lesley Beaumont and Professor Meg Miller working at Zagora in 2012 (in an animal pen). Photo by Irma Havlicek; © PHM

This year, 2013, is the first full excavation season at Zagora since the 1960s and 70s. This post is based on a conversation I had with Professor* Margaret (Meg) Miller and Dr Lesley Beaumont on site at Zagora on Wednesday 25 September 2013, when they explained how the Zagora Archaeological Project (ZAP) directors decided where to excavate this year.

In a future post I will present the approach of the third director, Dr Stavros Paspalas, to how the archaeological finds are being processed at the Andros Museum, and what they are hoping the finds reveal about the settlement at Zagora.

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An ingenious wasp trap

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by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum Web Producer

Ingenious wasp trap made by Hugh Thomas
Ingenious wasp trap made by Hugh Thomas. © PHM; photo by Irma Havlicek

As if heat, high wind, a tough walk to and from the site and hard work on site aren’t enough (oh, and the odd snake or two), we find it is wasp season at Zagora. For joy. Most everybody else has been very calm about it, just waving them off. I am by nature not very calm about it, and generally make myself scarce where stinging flying things are concerned. Lunch sandwich ingredients (bread, sliced cheese and meat, cucumber, lettuce, tomato, beans, boiled eggs, mayo, etc. – kindly organised and prepared by Lea Alexopoulos – are laid out for us and we fill the bread with our preferred ingredients). For the first few days, we competed for lunch with the wasps. And not just a few wasps: a darn lot of wasps.

Then Hugh Thomas came up with this ingenious wasp trap: a 1.5 litre plastic bottle with lemon cordial and some sliced meat in the bottom, and a few small holes cut into the sides of the bottle. The wasps are attracted into the bottle, start to feast on the goodies at the bottom, and drown. Sorry, wasps. But it was you or us. Thanks, Hugh.

Aerial (kite) photography at Zagora in 2013

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Hugh Thomas setting up the camera rig.
Hugh Thomas setting up the camera rig.

This year the project is employing aerial photography – using a kite to fly a camera overhead – to record the changes in the site. This was the idea of Hugh Thomas, one of the trench supervisors this year and a 2012 Zagora team member, and his archaeological colleague, Adam Carr, who is new to the project this year.

Hugh researched and put together the setup – a kite with attachable camera rig on which is mounted a compact digital camera. Hugh added software to the camera’s SIM card which makes the camera take a shot every four seconds once he turns the camera on and sets it to Auto.

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The Zagora office at Batsi

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by Irma Havlickova
Powerhouse Museum Web Producer

Beatrice McLoughlin and Andrew Wilson in the Zagora office in Batsi
Beatrice McLoughlin and Andrew Wilson in the Zagora office in Batsi

We have a large contingent of people working on the 2013 Zagora Archaeological Project. Over six weeks there will be some 50 people at Batsi working on the project. They are not all here at once. Some are staying for the entire period, some are doing the first three weeks, some are doing the second three weeks, and a few are doing different periods. At the peak there will be 39 people staying here at the same time. It’s formidable in terms of the logistics required, especially as most people are travelling thousands of kilometres to be here, and it requires a plane to Athens, a ferry to the island of Andros, and land transport from the port on Andros to Batsi, where we are staying.

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