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.).
It actually sounds pretty similar to doing archaeology in California- the biggest hazards this time of the year (besides the sun) are snakes and fires!
Posted by: Maddy Bray | May 22, 2009 at 08:38 PM