If you just can't get enough information on PKAP, check out our family of PKAP Blogs:
Pyla-Koutsopetria Graduate Student Perspectives
Pyla-Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog
Pyla-Koutsopetria Undergraduate Perspectives
Or simply visit the PKAP Blog Aggregator where all three blogs appear as well as up to the hour updates from my Twitter feed.
(Crossposted to Pyla-Koutsopetria Staff Blog and Teaching Thursday)
One of the key challenges that we face on Cyprus is managing the fatigue of students and staff. Our archaeological project often spends over 8 hours a day in the sun working on our trenches, processing pottery in the museum, or visiting other ancient sites. Most of students (and staff) come from mild climates like central or western Pennsylvania or North Dakota. By the end of the first week of work, the effect of the sun, work, hours, combine with the lingering remains of jet lag to produce a very tired cohort of students. Despite the fatigue, the students and staff have to keep pushing in their rigorous schedule if we hope to accomplish our research and pedagogical goals. In general, the students enjoy the rigor. Our site is beautifully situated on the south coast of Cyprus, the trench supervisors are an exceptional lot, and there comes a feeling of comradery from working together long hours in the field.
The downside of this, of course, is that as the students become more tired, they become less susceptible to learning. This goes for staff as well. There is just enough of the macho ethic in archaeology that staff work beyond their maximum fatigue levels and become less effective both as excavator and teachers.
It would be easy to simply suggest that we take more time off or ease back on our schedule just a bit, but the students have traveled quite a ways and paid a good bit of money to experience both the culture and history of Cyprus and gain experience as excavators. So, every time that we consider cutting back on the "contact hours", we worry that we are shortchanging the students. As the students become more fatigued, of course, the quality of contact hours decreases. There is some threshold beyond which it is not useful to keep the students in the field working under the argument that we are doing it to provide them with the fullest learning experience!
This challenge of balancing work load and actual learning has made me think of how we organize our classes during the regular school year. For example, at my home institution, University of North Dakota, it is fairly common for students to take many credits above the typical 15 credit work load. This puts pressure on the students to function at a relatively high level even under significant stress from their increasing workload. While the visible evidence for the fatigue is more striking when students are doing archaeological fieldwork, the fatigue and stress experienced during the academic year is no less real.
The issue that arises, of course, is where is the threshold where students can maximize their experiences on a project or in a class, while still functioning at a high enough level to appreciate it. If you push too hard and the students break down, tempers flair, and decision making (a key aspect of archaeological fieldwork and learning) unravels. If you don't push hard enough, you'll leave experiences and work on the table. To make matters more complex, some students and staff can go at maximum intensity for weeks on end, while some break down after only a week of the stress of working and managing a complex group of students and scholars.
Today is the end of our first week in the field and while we planned on going into the field all afternoon, it is clear that the students (and staff!) need some time off to recover from the first full week of excavating. We're going to work for a half day today and then take most of Sunday morning off. Our GPR (Ground Penetrating Radar) team arrives later today...
One my responsibilities is managing the digital workflow on the project. This includes migrating information collected in the field from an analog format (mostly text written) to digital formats. With the beginning of excavation, I digitized the first trench plan yesterday. Each plan is digitized as it is prepared by the excavator so the following days trench plans can include features excavated the previous day (if these features remain in the trench -- like a wall or a particularly immobile stone). The digitized plans provide the excavator with a tidy model of their previous days sketch. The worry, however, (and there is always a catch) is that they will freeze with the sketch the interpretative process. This is not a huge worry for something like a single stone which is rather less susceptible to changes in interpretation than, say, the top of a complex wall. Once the wall appears on a trench plan as illustrated it can, of course, be changed by the excavator (and we encourage them to change their illustrations as often as needed!), but I wonder how the crossing of the digital/analog divide will influence a trench supervisors understanding of the interpretative processes.
As another example, Scott Moore and I celebrated (with a bag of chips and a fruit juice) the reading of the last unit of survey pottery from the intensive survey the we conducted from 2004-2007. Scott dutifully recorded pertinent data on over 8000 batches of artifacts (close to 20,000 artifacts total). He recorded all the information on a prepared form and these were keyed into the project database. The process of digitization transforms the objects from physical, three dimensional artifacts to bits of data organized into tables. These data can then be searched and organized according to the analytical needs of the project. Like digitized trench plans the transition from analog (or even "real") artifacts to digital artifacts ossifies or freezes certain analytical functions. Like the authority vested in the written word, digital data resists the kind of reinterpretation that more traditional analog forms of data encourages in an archaeological context. An object or a notebook entry seems inherently more susceptible to recatagorization and change.
The trick with digital data and central to the documenting the digital workflow is to annotate somehow the changes to digital datasets that occur as they move from an analog state to a digital state (and any changes that almost inevitably occur within a digital state). In a notebook or on a handwritten form it is easy to strike out an earlier interpretation or statement and replace it with a newer one. The paper copy, then, preserves a record of the changing interpretations, mistakes, and to some extent the archaeological thought process. An important secondary issue is how to preserve this process in digital form -- especially in a way that embeds the process of change in the visible representation of the data (not in hidden metadata, the name of which implies a secondary aspect to the data itself).
More scanning and digitization today... and I hope that an answer reveals itself as I continue to modify and refine the workflow from the analog to the digital.
Crossposted to the Pyla-Koutsopetria Season Staff Blog. If you haven't already, check out the PKAP Blog Aggregator.
Every years, we encounter the same problem. Some vital piece of equipment does not work the way that it should. This year (as it most often is), it was our expensive and elaborate differential GPS unit. We spent Sunday reinstalling the Trimble software on the survey controller. Fortunately, this solved the problem, but it also highlighted the fact that as archaeology develops into the 21st century, the technological demands on the average excavator or survey archaeologist will continue to increase. The knowledge necessary to fix whatever problem has infiltrated our GPS unit was completely arcane. The various menus controlling the device's settings did not cascade in a predictable way nor did they make their purpose know through anything approach common or self-evident terms. The demand for technical expertise continues through the various Geographic Information Systems software as well. Trimble's Geomatics Office and ESRI's ArcGIS are quite dissimilar, yet are both crucial to mapping our site accurately.
While many projects bring in a separate team to conduct mapping or survey activities, PKAP has a more DIY or hands-on approach. Aside from geophysical work -- resistivity and this year ground penetrating radar, our project has found itself (primarily for funding reasons) in a position to take on ever increasing responsibilities for tasks that exist at the borders of specilization. What is interesting, of course, is that some members of the project -- particularly those trained in more tradition archaeology programs -- almost resist the use of technology. Skeptical of its grandiose promises (sub-centimeter accuracy!), elaborate language (EGG Geoid Models!), and temperamental disposition ("Initialization has been lost"!), several members of the project would gladly reject it and return to old style ways of mapping, organizing data, and conducting fieldwork. In fact, we can often detect a bit of passive resistance to the growing significance of technology among several old school project members who subtly resist the various requirements imposed by technology (particularly the inflexible demands of consistency imposed by our databases) and seem to revel in declaring their particular fieldwork as having distinctive, irresolvable autonomy from any larger, technological system.
So this brings me to the question in my subject line. While our project has embraced a fairly wide ranging diy approach (note the various posts at PKAP Graduate Student Perspective Blog and this author has insisted that we do not purchase the ready-made picks and shovels, but the kind where the head is separate (or at least loosely attached) the shaft), there is a lingering reluctance among some members of the project to include technology in their performance of the diy aesthetic. This perhaps parallels one of the grander splits in the punk rock movement: on the one hand, there were punks like Brian Eno who showed an increasing willingness to embrace of technology and electronic music and, on the other, those influences by the folk tradition who recognized the simple implements of rock 'n' roll music (guitar, drums, base, keyboard) as sufficient to communicate their revolution. (It seems obvious that Metal Machine Music is ironic, but what exactly does it critique?).
So PKAP continues. Each day offers the potential for another skirmish between the earnest and self-sufficient archaeologist with the tape, compass, and notebook, and the technologically savvy director burdened with his Mad Max like tangle of databases, GPS units, video cameras, data collectors and "softwares".
(Crossposted to Pyla-Koutsopetria Staff Blog and Teaching Thursday)
Classroom teaching hardly prepares you for the adventures and eventualities of teaching (in the broadest sense) while on site in a foreign country. My colleagues, R. Scott Moore (IUP) and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College, Pa.), conduct archaeological research each summer in Cyprus and over the past few years have gradually increased the pedagogical and student components to this work. This has forced us to balance our research goals -- extracting good quality archaeological data from a site called Pyla-Koutsopetria -- with teaching goals -- giving the students not only an education in the history and culture of Cyprus but also in archaeological method and practice. At the same time, we have to deal with the very real challenges of managing a group of students through the various stages of travel and culture shock. Since many of our students come from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Dakota, schools that tend to produce students who do not have extensive experience outside the country, this can be as big a challenge as actually teaching historical, archaeological, or cultural content.
Many of our students have a tendency to be nervous about venturing out into the city of Larnaka where we live. Some of this comes from the somewhat disorienting local street "grid" where everything seems slightly off parallel so streets are ever converging and diverging, and some comes from the words in the Greek alphabet (even though most important signs are translated into English). Scott Moore proposed that we encourage the students to engage their surroundings through a scavenger hunt. The students will take their digital cameras and crisscross the city taking photos of both practical features (like banks, pharmacies, and mailboxes) and various historical monuments and places across the city. The goal of the latter is to form the foundation for discussion of religious and cultural pluralism on the island as well as make the students familiar with significant the local monuments and how history is inscribed in the local landscape.
PKAP 2009 Scavenger Hunt
Practical
1) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find a pharmacy
2) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find a ATM machine
3) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find a public mail box
4) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find a periptero or mini-market
5) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 5 points – find an American restaurant
6) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 3 points – find a bookstore
7) ___ 1 point each, and worth up to 3 points – find a Greek Orthodox church
8) ___ 1 point each up to 3 points – find a bakery
9) ___ 2 points – find a Swiss restaurant
10) ___ 2 points – find an Irish restaurant
11) ___ 2 points – find a Chinese restaurant
12) ___ 2 points – find a Cypriot restaurant
13) ___ 2 points – find a Lebanese restaurant
14) ___ 3 points – find the post office
15) ___ 3 points – find the police station
Cultural
16) ___ 2 points – find Ayios Lazarus
17) ___ 2 points – find a mosque
18) ___ 2 points – find the castle/fort
19) ___ 2 points – find the statue of Cimon/Kimon
20) ___ 2 points – find the image of a chalcolithic figurine
21) ___ 2 points – find a coppersmith/metalworking shop
22) ___ 2 points – find the municipal market
23) ___ 1 point each up to 3 points – find a street without a Cypriot Greek name
24) ___ 1 point each up to 3 points – find a non Greek Orthodox church
25) ___ 1 point each up to 2 points – find a mudbrick building
26) ___ 2 points – find a shark fishing boat
27) ___ 2 points – find a large airplane
28) ___ 1 point each up to 2 points – find a sign in Russian
29) ___ 2 points – find a store selling Lefkara lace
30) ___ 2 points – find the Black Turtle restaurant
31) ___ 2 points – find a school
32) ___ 2 points – find an example of Gothic architecture
33) ___ 2 points – find an example of Ottoman architecture
34) ___ 2 points – find an example of Byzantine architecture
35) ___ 2 points – find an example of British Colonial architecture
36) ___ 2 points – find an ancient ship-shed
37) ___ 2 points – find a Greek flag
38) ___ 2 points – find a Cypriot flag
39) ___ 2 points – find an EU flag
Bonuses
40) ___ 5 points – find a Cypriot wedding or procession
41) ___ 5 points – find an American car make and model
The first week or so of the season always involves a very special kind of chaos. First, we make the rounds talking with the various authorities on the island who sanction or support our fieldwork. Over the last week we met with folks at the Department of Antiquities, the Cyprus American Archaeology Research Institute, the British Dhekelia Garrison (both the military and civilian sides), and the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum. Each party has a particular interest in meeting with us. From the Department of Antiquities, who is responsible for all archaeological activity on the island, to the British base at Dhekelia, who are primarily concerned with our safety on their land.
Each meeting, of course, brings with it the potential for a new set of challenges. This week, we've moved from our traditional digs at the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum to site of the museums storerooms at a place called Terra Ombra. The special electrical system at the storerooms seems to struggle to handle our rather modest array of computers without blowing the main fuse which requires a walk around the block to reset. At the same time, the folks at the base have expressed concern with the potential for wildfires. The wet winter and the end of cultivation at two of our main areas of fieldwork has let the vegetation to grow to dangerous levels. To limit this very real risk (fires raging across archaeological projects are not unknown on Cyprus), a few of us are going to receive some fire training at the base fire station tomorrow and we have had to cut back swathes of the vegetation to create a safe barrier for our work. Cutting back the vegetation involves contacting and contracting with the local landscape management company to bring their big field mowers out to clear the site (and avoid the archaeology). We'll also have the local grounds keepers for the Department of Antiquities trim back the overgrowth from around more delicate areas of the site.
We've also brought our differential GPS online, organized our new storerooms (and begun to process pottery from last year including 12 prodigal units of survey pottery that managed to escape analysis last season), and identified several places where new survey will clarify the relationship between surface features and excavated features. Michael Brown, our indefatigable colleague from the University of Edinburgh, Cypriot prehistorian extraordinary, and representative of empires lost, constructed several new sieves, while Scott Moore and myself scoured the city for various archaeological tools including the elusive small hand picks. We found three of the seven that we need and have promised of more to come next week.
While trying to manage this, we've also begun to gird ourselves in preparation for ARRIVAL DAY. Over 48 hours the project will go from a sleepy project of 8 made up of senior scholars and University of North Dakota graduate students and alumni to a bustling hub of archaeological chaos with over 25 scholars, graduate students, undergraduates, and support staff of various kinds. Each team shows up at different times or (in some cases) all at once meaning that after noon tomorrow we'll put even the thought of fieldwork on hold for a bit as we marshal the team.
Fieldwork is slated to begin on Monday....
To get the rest of the story from different perspectives, be sure to click on our Pyla-Koutsopetria Blog Aggregator here.
(Bev, that's a site where you can read all about the project from the perspective of staff, graduate students, and even undergraduate volunteers! Just click on the headlines to go the various blog entries.).
We spent an afternoon in the field today walking across the landscape and deciding where our 2009 trenches might be and what needs to happen before we begin to excavate in earnest. The area of Vigla has been removed from cultivation now based in part on the results of our fieldwork. While I am not entirely sure whether plowing was particularly destructive to the architecture below the surface of the hill, the end to the plowing combined with the particularly wet winter has let the local vegetation take over. The entire ridge is completely overgrown with a dense tangle of prickly weeds. (Compare it now to photos from last year)
Paul Ferderer, a UND graduate student in history, got his first taste of the field. Brandon Olson a UND M.A. in history alumnus, joined us in the field from Penn State, just hours after having arrived in Cyprus.
We are going to have to get these weeds taken back before we let our team of undergraduates loose on the hill. The risk of both snakes and fires sweeping through the dried weeds is too great right now.
In the meantime, however, we’ll leave Vigla to under the watchful eye of its natural guardians:
The PKAP season is slowly coming to life with the arrival of various team members. Almost every day from now until the end of next week, we’ll head over to the Larnaka airport to collected travel-weary colleagues from various universities across the U.S. and the world. The first few days of the season are always more about logistics than archaeology per se.
There is always a bit of a shock arriving in the Mediterranean from North Dakota. The heat, humidity, and noise are striking on first arrival (especially when you arrive on Friday night when our seaside town comes to life). Last night the constant buzz of motorcycle, car, and scooter engines kept us awake (in combination with jet lag) well into the wee hours of the morning.
Arrival also brings with it the momentary traumas as we face the various things that we forgot in the U.S. or have somehow become inaccessible to us. It was relief to find that we had remembered all the software and cables for our GPS units, for example. It was less of a relief to discover, however, that this year the TSA kindly locked the case that contains parts of our GPS unit, the tripod, and other odds and ends. Unfortunately, we do not have the key to the case. So, for now, some vital equipment is trapped inside a heavy duty plastic golf bag case. The solutions at present range from trying to find a TSA key to sawing through the somewhat flimsy plastic latch. I’ll leave it for Scott to recount how we resolve this issue…
Tomorrow morning we head up to Nicosia to meet with folks at the department of antiquities and discuss our fieldwork plans. Once we have that worked out (and various meetings with folks at the British base), we should be able to get to mapping out our trenches for this season.
Stay tuned!
Cross-posted to Teaching Thursday and the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Staff Blog.
As the spring semester gradually recedes into memory, the summer beckons. Many folks at the University of North Dakota, head off campus or switch gears on campus as they begin to focus on new summer research and teaching projects. These projects, even when it’s just teaching a summer class, inevitably involve a change of pace. The pace of the summer semester slows down for some; for others who look to the summer as a time of more intensive research and teaching find that the summer brings a new bustle to their routine.
I will be heading to the Mediterranean this summer, as I have for the last 6 years to conduct archaeological research on Greece and Cyprus. This year, I’ll be joined in Cyprus by about 15 undergraduate and graduate students from across the US. These students arrive with different expectations, different skills and experiences, and different ways of learning, but all of them expect to leave Cyprus after 4 weeks with a better grasp of the methods, theory, and practice of archaeology. They’ll attempt to acquire these skills in the most distraction filled environment possible. Not only will they be inserted into a fully-functioning archaeological research project, but one that is located in a beach side town (Larnaka, Cyprus) in a foreign country! While it is easy to see how an travel outside the US provides additional opportunities to learn through experience, these same experiences can also provide considerable “background noise” to the more routine and regimented learning processes that we are accustomed to in the classroom. (As much as we might embrace the chaos of Edu-punk, few of us turn our classroom into a night at CBGBs, but there are days in Cyprus, when the height of our research season meets head on with the annual summer festival in Larnaka (the Kataclysmos) that we’d embrace a daily routine that took on the relatively predictable routine of, say, an Iggy Pop show.)
Teaching in the sun, in Cyprus or anyway away from the standard routines of the classroom involves new strategies that not only allow students to absorb the chaotic realities of experience, but nevertheless ensures that they acquire basic skills essential to the courses (so to speak) that they are taking. For us, it’s balancing between imparting the rigorous and structured requirements of “scientific” archaeological research and allowing them enough unstructured times to feel comfortable in a dynamic and complex foreign city. This is particularly challenging for us because we also have research priorities each season. On the one hand, this ensures that the students feel the genuine (and authentic) experience of professional, archaeological research with all its contingency and excitement. On the other hand, this creates a place where some members of the project are constantly tempted to sacrifice the unstructured time for the structured and rigorous experiences of primary data gathering. One season, we famously broke our students. The senior staff were disappointed that this dedicated cadre of students weren’t taking in the local culture more consistency until we realized that after a grueling day in the field the students were collapsing on their beds and sleeping until dinnertime and then crashing out immediately after dinner clean up. This was hardly an environment that cultivated students’ access to unstructured time!
Over subsequent seasons we’ve been better balancing work and play, but the balance is always deliberate. Keep an eye on how well we are maintaining it through our Pyla-Koutsopetria Project Blog page.
I am an assistant professor at the University of North Dakota who is an active field archaeologist in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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