Zagora dig blog

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.

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by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum Web Producer

Yesterday morning (Sunday 22 September 2013), some of us headed out to Zagora to have the first discussions at each of the five trenches selected for excavation this season.

All three team leaders were there: Meg Miller, Lesley Beaumont and Stavros Paspalas. Also there, of course, were the trench supervisors for this year: Excavation area 1 – Ivana Vetta; Excavation area 2 – Mel Melnyczek; Excavation area 3 – Hugh Thomas; Excavation area 4 – Kristen Mann; Excavation area 5 – Paul Donnelly.

Following are photographs of each of the trench sites in order we visited them:

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by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum web producer

The Kantouni Pensione and Restaurant at Batsi, Andros, is once again alive with the sounds of archaeologists, now planning the 2013 season of the Zagora Archaeological Project. The first of us to have arrived on Thursday and Friday 19 and 20 September, had dinner outside in the balmy night air of the Kantouni courtyard last night (Friday 20 September), just as we had done in the early days of the season last year, when it was warm enough to do so.

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by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum web producer

Travel is an important part of the life and work of an archaeologist. They must go where the archaeological sites are – and those are spread throughout the world.

Paul Donnelly, Powerhouse Museum Curator (as well as archaeologist) and I set out for the Greek Aegean island of Andros from Sydney Airport on Thursday 19 September. We had a 15-hour flight to Abu Dhabi, a couple of hours stopover there, then a 5-hour flight to Athens.

Our flight to Athens was in daylight and Paul spent much of the time looking out the plane window (pictured, above, right), and pointing out features of the land and waterways below. “Look,” he said as we flew over Iraq, “there’s the River Tigris…. and the Euphrates – so important in ancient Mesopotamia.” (A view from the aircraft is pictured at right.)

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by Irma Havlicek
Powerhouse Museum Web Producer

A model of a Geometric period settlement is being developed by Powerhouse web producer, Kate Lamerton, to complement the Zagora Archaeological Project (ZAP). It is primarily for children – but then everybody of all ages who’s seen it wants to play with it (including me!) – don’t you? You can see a photo of a detail of the work-in-progress at right.

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by Irma Havlicek
Online Producer, Powerhouse Museum

Here’s a video (2 mins 17 secs) showing how very windy it can be at Zagora. I can tell you from personal experience that the wind sometimes felt stronger than I was able to capture in the video.

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by Dr Lesley Beaumont,
one of the three team leaders of the Zagora Archaeological Project

Last Friday, Meg Miller, another of the team leaders of the Zagora Archaeological Project, and I undertook a four-wheel drive training course at Eastern Creek in western Sydney. We undertook the training course so that this year we will be equipped and competent to take a 4WD vehicle down an unsealed track that will allow us to get a little closer to the Zagora site to deliver equipment at the beginning of the day and to transport heavy excavation finds to the Archaeological Museum at the end of the day.

This will obviate the need for our team members to carry heavy and bulky items along the rough donkey track that they will be walking every morning and afternoon for half-an-hour in each direction in order to access the site.

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by Dr Lesley Beaumont

Acutely aware that safety is of vital importance at Zagora, Dr Meg Miller, Dr Archondia Thanos and I undertook Remote Area First Aid training with St John’s Ambulance Australia on Monday and Tuesday 15 and 16 July 2013. This is an example of the many skills (apart from archaeological ones) that archaeologists routinely develop in the planning and undertaking of archaeological projects.

We had one Remote Area Trained First Aider, Ivana Vetta, with our team last year. Ivana will be with us again this year as a Trench Supervisor – but also available to use her first aid skills.

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by Irma Havlicek
Online Producer, Powerhouse Museum

Ivana Vetta, who wrote the previous post about slag, is working on a Ph. D based on her research into metal at Zagora. Here’s what I found out from Ivana about why finding slag at Zagora is important.

Slag, which is a waste by-product of either metal-smelting or metal-smithing, has been found at Zagora in the past*.

Smelting is the process of heating the ore (metal in rock) to very high temperatures to separate out the iron and eliminate impurities (slag).

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by Ivana Vetta
Archaeologist

[Note: Ivana Vetta will be returning to Andros with the Zagora team in September 2013, and would now like to share with you this post that she wrote in her time at Zagora during the 2012 field season. Another post, ‘Why slag matters’ (and it does!) will follow shortly.]

“I found it!!!” Hugh yelled from down below, the top of his head barely visible down in the deep crevice, “I have found the entrance to the mine!”

The plan had been hatched weeks ago when Archondia (archaeologist, Dr Archondia Thanos) was reading her guide book of the island and found that there were ancient iron mines near the Hellenistic Tower at Agios Petros (St Peters).

Exploring the potential iron sources on Andros is particularly important for my research on metalworking at Zagora. The previous excavations at the site, 1967-1974, and the 2012 season’s investigations noted significant evidence of iron working on and around the site. This evidence is mostly in the form of slag, the waste product produced from the smelting of metal ore and smithing of metal objects.

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