A presentation is being made on Andros, at Chora, next Thursday 17 October 2013 to inform the local community about the work taking place at Zagora in 2013.
The presentation will be held at the Demotiko Theatro in Chora at 7.30pm and will be given by two of the directors of the Zatora Archaeological Project, Dr Stavros Paspalas and Dr Lesley Beaumont.
They will be talking about the archaeology and history of Zagora and about its investigation by archaeologists, both past and present.
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.
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).
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’.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A stylish squad – Paul’s team present their glamorous gloves. From left: Sue Jorgenson, Rehan Scharenguivel, Paul Donnelly, Marco Schugk, Alexandra Ribeny, Antonio Bianco and Elaine Lin
Yesterday, the first day of the 2013 Zagora fieldwork season, after the morning induction of the newbies, I decided to work at excavation area 5. My Powerhouse Museum colleague, Paul Donnelly, is the supervisor of that trench area, which is covered with rocks large and small. Lots and lots of rocks. And they’re almost all grey marble – which is about as heavy as rocks get. Paul decided this called for a chain gang approach, to pass the rocks down the slope and to create a spoil heap with the rocks removed from the trench area.
As each of his team members for this first day (the trench teams are not yet confirmed) brought out their gloves, I was amazed to find the high design element in most of the gloves. There were pink gloves, turquoise gloves, lime and blue. This screamed out ‘photo opportunity’. (Secretly, I’ll be watching out to see how their stylish gloves fare through the season compared with my drab but very sturdy grey workman’s gloves which I used last year and still have plenty of life in them yet.) Click the image at right for a closer view.
The first phase of work in this Zagora archaeological fieldwork season requires a lot of hard yakka (that’s Australian slang for ‘hard work’), including trench clearing and backfill and vegetation removal. That’s what most of the team was doing in the five excavation areas yesterday, the first day of the 2013 season.
The Zagora team leaders provide all the tools for excavation work except for a few personal items which we provide for ourselves: archaeological trowels, work gloves, anti-dust goggles and any extras some of us use, such as knee pads.
Stavros Paspalas (centre) led a tour of the Zagora site to introduce our ‘newbies’ to some of the key features of the site previously excavated and being excavated this season. Marco Schugk, one of this year’s volunteers, is at left.
by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum Web Producer
Finally, after all the planning and coordinating, yesterday arrived: 23 September 2013, and the first day of the 2013 Zagora archaeological fieldwork season.
The old hands (ie those who had been part of Zagora 2012) headed out to the site after breakfast while those who were new Zagora participants stayed back for an induction session at the Kantouni Cafe.
Meg Miller and Lesley Beaumont provided a briefing about the five excavation areas, and explained about some of the specialists we have on the team, such as Stavros Paspalas (pictured at right), a renowned expert in fine ware ceramics of the Geometric period.
