The Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

One Last Plan and a Final Report

I digitized the last trench plan for the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project field season yesterday. In general, we digitize trench plans on the fly in the field directly into our GIS. This allowed us to produce publication quality illustrations (or close to it) while still excavating and allow us to make sure that we have the detail in the trench plans correct and identify problems while the trench is still fresh in everyone's mind. This year, however, we experienced some complicated trench plans that simply defied quick digitization. So the digitizing process was put off until now, when I was finally able to digitize the last trench plan. The plan below shows a trench at the southwest corner of an annex building of an Early Christian basilica. The majority of the annex room was excavated over 10 years ago by a team from the Department of Antiquities. We excavated a trench to the southwest of the main excavated area to both clarify some stratigraphic issues and to determine whether there was more architecture to the west of the annex room.

As you can tell, this plan represents a tremendously complex trench with multiple features and a wide array of material still embedded in the soil. From this confusion, however, the excavator, Sarah Lepinski, was able to discern multiple episodes of destruction and several obvious (if somewhat careless) attempts at repair. In addition to this final trench plan, we now have digitized plans of every stratigraphic unit removed from this trench and these will serve to illustrate many of the episodes in this buildings history.

This plan will be inserted into the final reports that we produce at the end of each field season for distribution to the various organizations that fund our project. Our ability to digitize on the fly directly into our GIS program means that our plans are accurate both to themselves and on the face of the earth (i.e. to other plans on the site). The technology and the cooperation of a great group of trench supervisors has allowed us to produce high quality digital images almost (almost!) instantaneously. The fact that the last trench was digitized in November (rather than years later as is not uncommon) is a testimony to our trench supervisor's diligence and the remarkable pace of technology.

Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or Thinking Out Loud 3

Last week, I looked at surface visibility and artifact densities.  This week, I want to look at two issues when considering the analysis of distributional data across the Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project's study area.

First, the distribution of ceramic material and the topography of our site recommend that we divide our site into zones for analysis.  I decided to divide the survey area into zones to attempt to isolate some variables influencing the distribution of material across the site.  In particular, these zones capture areas with distinct patterns and levels of artifacts.  Zone 1 -- the area around Koutsopetria -- has a ceramic density of over 4000 artifacts per hectare.  Zone 2 -- the coastal plain to the east of Koutsopetria -- has an overall artifact density of barely 700 artifacts per hectare.  Beyond that the areas capture very different environmental conditions.  Zone 1 consists largely of grain stubble fields with an average visibility of around 48%; Zone 2 units are usually sandier soils only a few of which are under cultivation.  The average density in Zone 2 is over 70%.  Zones 3 and 4 are defined as much by topography as by artifact densities.  Zone 3 centers on the prehistoric site of Kokkinokremos and featured units shaped to take into account the plowed top and unplowed slopes of this.  Zone 4 is the top of the Kazama ridge which extended north from the height of Vigla.  I have isolate Vigla from any zone since the densities there were so high and the environmental conditions in that hill were distinct. 

Despite the fact that these zones are the creation the archaeologist and archaeological methods, they nevertheless provide a way to limit some of the known variables (significant variations in artifact density, for example, or clear differences in land use or environmental conditions) in order to isolate other variables which may have had locally significant influences on the distribution of artifacts.  Of course, this assumes that the characteristics that formed the basis for the zones are not the main factors on our ability to map ceramics across the survey area.

To test that I isolated a number of variables that we have seen influencing our ability to document the material on the surface and look at whether they coincided with the zone divisions.

First, I mapped the distribution of grain stubble fields across the site.  Grain stubble can be the survey archaeologist's worst nightmare as it typically accompanies the remains of cute wheat which can obscure the surface of the ground almost entirely.  The darker units had grain stubble.

In units without grain stubble there was frequently some standing vegetation.  We recorded the height of standing vegetation across the entire survey area.  The darker the color the higher the vegetation.  Note that the height of the vegetation doesn't influence visibility in a predictable way.  Sometimes waist height vegetation actually makes the surface easier to see.

Another factor that plays into the distribution of ceramics is whether the fields show signs of recent plowing.  The plow often bring material to the surface from deeper with the plow-zone, but it can introduce background disturbance (see below) and break pottery into small fragments that increase the number of artifacts without increasing the amount of material (say, by weight) in the unit.  At the same time, it tends to limit vegetation across the area.  The darker areas are plowed fields.

I also mapped background disturbance across the zones.  Background disturbance is a survey archaeology term that describes the amount of non-archaeological material in the surface soil that confuses the eye of the archaeologist.  The most common form of background disturbance are fragments of bedrock chipped by the plow and turned into the soil.  This material often looks like pottery and makes identifying ceramic material in the soil more difficult.  Some analyses of the data from the Eastern Korinthia Archaeological Survey has suggested that background disturbance often influenced the ability of fieldwalkers to document material on the ground to a considerable degree.  The darker the color the more background disturbance there was recorded.  Note the consistent moderate to heavy background disturbance across Zone 4.

These basic environmental characteristics can now be compared to artifact distribution both across the site and in the individual zones.  Stay tuned for more!

For more Thinking Out Loud see:

Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or Thinking Out Loud
Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or Thinking Out Loud 2

Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or Thinking Out Loud 2

I am continuing to work on analyzing the survey data collected from 4 seasons of intensive survey at Pyla-Koutsopetria in Cyprus.  On Monday, I did focused on the relationship between artifact density data and surface visibility.  The survey area for PKAP was particularly uniform in ground cover and field conditions.  Most of the survey units had been under cultivation with cereals and were covered with grain stubble or were recently fallow. 

Average visibility across the entire survey area was around 60%. 

Average density of ceramic objects per area walked across the entire site is 2183 ceramic artifacts per hectare.

One of the key discussions in the analysis of surface density data is how to compensate for variable visibility.  Our survey area consisted of only 471 units -- hardly a robust sample.  The highest density areas of the site coincided with units of middling visibility and (to make matters worse) there were a significant number of very high visibility units that produced almost no artifacts (predominantly from an area that was an infilled ancient embayment and a coastal marsh drained in relatively recent times).  So, the small sample size and these topographical and archaeological patterns make doing any analysis of artifact density and surface visibility across the entire site difficult.

I did, however, run a small analysis on the artifact densities and visibilities from the area of the Koutsopetria plain.  We have reason to think that the distribution of ceramics across this area could be relatively uniform as most of these fields overlay buildings from the Late Roman period (if not other periods as well).  At the same time, the units had some variation in visibility with the lowest visibility units being 20% and highest visibility units being around 60%. Most units had 30%-50% visibility.  While the sample size is disturbingly small, it is interesting that there is a nice linear relationship between artifact densities and the surface visibility in Koutsopetria with an R-squared of 0.9229.

This does not hold up across the entire survey area where for the same range of surface visibility there is no evidence of a linear relationship at all and the R-squared is a laughable 0.5475.  (Note that since the following graph compares units of different sizes, I compared them using density per area walked (per ha).  The graph above compares units of identical size, so I can compare raw ceramic counts.)

 

For more installments of Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or Thinking Out Loud:

Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or Thinking Out Loud

More as I continue to work through the data.

Preliminary Analysis of Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Data or Thinking Out Loud

I have a whole day set aside for data analysis and number crunching of PKAP Survey data.  This is the first step in writing up the definitive analysis of the distributional data from PKAP for the planned monograph.  We have imposed a deadline of January 15th for producing a set of basic chapters focused on the survey data.

Today, I am working on getting an overall sense of the chronological and spatial distribution of material at the site.  While we understand this in an impressionistic way, we have done very little second phases analysis to challenge or test our impressions.  This kind of analysis involves testing our general and largely impressionistic observations against the actual data parsed in different, more systematic and critical ways.

So, to begin, a random map.  This map shows the toponyms assigned in the field to various areas in the PKAP survey area.  I didn't include the names of the toponyms, in part because they don't matter here.  What is interesting is when the various toponyms overlap each other in ways that cartographically do not seem to make sense, but sure reflect some reality on the ground as our team leaders (who recorded toponyms in the field) sought to associate spaces in our survey universe with known features in the landscape.  Since our survey world was essentially an abstract grid superimposed on the landscape arbitrarily, it was difficult to assign spaces to features -- especially when we found ourselves in the open coastal plain. 

 

My next challenge was to determine whether these toponyms had any correlation with the distribution of material on the ground.  The notion is that our in-field observations reflect something and they seem to coincide fairly clearly with topographic differences across the site.

This chart shows the chronological distribution of material across some of the toponyms above.  Although I did need to aggregate some of the areas together to produce sufficient samples to form the basis of comparison,  the results, nevertheless show that the toponyms do tend reflect different chronological distributions of material.  This, in turn, suggests that a unitary view of the site would likely distort some of the less pronounced periods that only become visible when compared to material present in their immediate areas.  Of course, the areas compared in this chart could be reconstituted and compared using more sophisticated groupings than simply toponyms.  For example, some of the areas are topographically district from others either on the top of ridges or physically distant from other areas.  Artifact densities vary across the site as well.  Some types of material might be more present in higher or lower density sites -- suggesting that parts of the site saw occupation for only particular periods.

We can also plot the chronological distribution of material across the entire site filtering for various kinds of artifacts.  In this case, I offer the chronological distribution of ceramics across the entire site and compare it to the chronological distribution of feature sherds (not body sherds) and fineware.

More soon!

Teaching and Lecture Thursday

Two quick posts today rolled into one.

First, a Teaching Thursday must read: Anne Kelsch's thoughtful post on the Cost of a Cheap Education.  Her post is a critical response to a recent article in Washington Monthly which speculated on the disruptions to American systems of college and university education if it became possible to offer "College for $99 a Month".  Anne's post is a call to reconsider the purpose of higher education in the U.S. Join the conversation by posting a comment! Or, if you have a bigger idea, drop me a line about authoring a post on Teaching Thursday.

Second, if you haven't succumbed to media saturation, then you probably know that Michael Fronda of McGill University will be speaking today at 4 pm, in the East Asia Room of the Chester Fritz Library.  His talk is entitled "Anarchy, Rivalry, and the Beginnings of the Roman Empire".  A small reception will follow the talk.  My sense is that there will be a good crowd on hand, so, it wouldn't hurt to come early, just in case.  The talk is sponsored by the Department of History, The Department of Political Science and Public Administration, and the title sponsor is the Cyprus Research Fund.  The talk fits into the goals of the Cyprus Research Fund by working to introduce students and faculty to cutting edge research in the study of the Mediterranean World.  Complementing, Prof. Fronda's talk will be a preview exhibition of photographs taken the Pyla-Koustopetria Archaeological Project''s Artist-in-Residence, Ryan Stander entitled Topos/Chora.  For information on how to contribute to the fund and support these and other events both in Cyprus and in North Dakota, check out our support page.

See you at the talk!

Three Little Birds: Pyla-Koutsopetria, Photos, and Ubuntu

The second week of classes is upon us and the excitement of the first week has given way to the somewhat uninspiring bustle of the semester's routine.  But sometimes there are moments, challenges, and successes that seem to propel the week forward and cut through some of the routine.  Here are three such "Little Bird" moments (after the Bob Marley song):

Rise up this mornin,
Smiled with the risin sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin, (this is my message to you-ou-ou:)

Singin: dont worry bout a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right.
Singin: dont worry (dont worry) bout a thing,
cause every little thing gonna be all right!

1. We had our first meeting to plan the 2010 Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeology Project season yesterday.  Every year, it starts a week or two earlier.  I fully expect our 2011 planning meeting to take place in Cyprus or perhaps even before the 2010 season.  David Pettegrew, Scott Moore, and I convened by conference call and in an efficient hour meeting charted a course of action (subject to change, of course, or at least redirection).  It was such an efficient and focused meeting that it made me glad to work with such capable folks.  In a nutshell here is where we stand.  We decided that we would run a hybrid study season/field school/study tour this year drawing undergraduates from Messiah College, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and graduate students from UND and elsewhere.  We also set some deadlines for our work to compile a complete inventory of our paper and digital data for the projects.  We started this considerable undertaking last spring, but it was interrupted (at least on my end).  Now is the time to finish this work.  Our data inventory will be the foundation for writing the monograph.  To that end, we even set deadlines for monograph sections.  We want to have the basic text of our catalog of survey finds, methodological discuss, and our analysis of distributional data from the survey complete by January 15th next year. 

2. One small crisis is our PKAP photograph collection.  We have thousands of field and artifact photos that need to be checked, (re)labeled, and available for study to the directors of the project and their senior collaborators.  We have not developed an image database, but, instead, use the photo's filename to identify the object. It's not a particularly powerful identifier, but for artifacts our unique numbering system locates it spatially and keys it to a proper description in our finds database.  In most cases, the artifact number (and the file name) are visible physically in the photograph.  We feel that the system is pretty ironclad and stable.  The only issue is that because the photo itself contains the artifact number (i.e. the file name) we have allowed ourselves to fall behind in labeling the actual files.  This isn't the mini-crisis, however.  The crisis comes when we have the photos all labeled and checked.  How do we make them available to the team?  We need to be able to download them individually or in batches (e.g. for a trench or a particular area in the survey).  We need our solution to be inexpensive.  And if it is server side software, we need to be able to run it on fairly simple and limited equipment.  In other words, our server folks while helpful and generous, do not want to have to radically restructure their hardware and software infrastructure to accommodate our needs.  Any thoughts on this would be great.

3. Ubuntu.  This is just one of life's small triumphs.  I am now running a Ubuntu powered Dell XPS. Ubuntu has breathed new life into a 4 year old laptop. After I figured out that the ailing optical drive would not function as a port for booting and installing the new OS, I figured out that with a minimum of effort I could boot from a USB drive.  10 minutes later (and one false start, hang, crash, beeping issue), I had Ubuntu running.  It boots in less than 25 seconds.  Seems stable.  Runs Open Office 3.0, Gimp, and Firefox (and soon my new favorite toy Opera 10) without a hiccup. When something that everyone tells you actually works and works just like people tell you that it will... well, it's just a nice thing.

Writing the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project

As the semester is finally underway and I have returned to a regular routine, my PKAP colleagues and I are beginning to think about the least glamorous part of archaeological fieldwork: writing up the results.  Writing up the results has two components, to my mind.

First, we need to finalize as much of our data as possible.  Over the last two seasons of intensive fieldwork, we have let our data -- from paper forms to digital photographs and databases -- get a bit rough around the edges.  Last spring we started a massive data inventory and were able to make good strides in pulling it all together.  Now, we need to get the missing pieces sorted so that we can be sure that we are all have access to and are analyzing the same set of information.  This is tedious, behind the scenes work that larger projects often leave to designated data managers (professionals no less), but we will have to do on our own.  The temptation of course, is to declare the data "inventoried enough" and start on analysis, but this almost always ends in tears.

Then, we need to start to write.  Fortunately, PKAP has a head start on this.  Since 2003, PKAP has published 2 report articles in the Report of the Department of Antiquities of Cyprus and a couple of interpretative pieces (in Near Eastern Archaeology and in a Festschrift for Timothy Gregory).  We have also given close to a dozen conference papers of various descriptions.  So we have a nice foundation of description and analysis from which to proceed.  As a final contribution to our regular preliminary publications, I am writing a final preliminary report for the RDAC right now.  This report will documents the results of our excavations in 2008 and 2009 and the results of geophysical work carried out from 2007-2009.  It will be superficial, but will ensure that some prompt publication has appeared from our project in the event that our final monograph length publication is delayed.

The final preliminary report for the RDAC will present the results of our geophysical work -- particularly the two seasons of electrical resistivity -- and explain how this work along with the 4 previous seasons of intensive survey established the basis for the excavation at the sites of Vigla, Koutsopetria, and Kokkinokremos.  The article will then briefly summarize the results of the excavation at these three sites.  Unlike the final publication, there will only be a brief treatment of finds and no proper catalogue.

The writing process blends description and analysis and will set the stage for at least one study season where we can fill in any gaps that have appeared over the course of writing. When we have a working draft available, I will post a working paper here.

Topos/Chora: Photographs of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project by Ryan Stander

It's my pleasure to announce a new contribution to the work of the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project.  If you followed our various blogs this summer, you are likely already familiar with the contribution of Ryan Stander, a M.F.A student focusing on photography who served as our Artist-in-Residence this past field season.  He has begun processing and printing the photographs that he took this summer and we are discussing how best to disseminate them to a wider audience. 

As the first step, Ryan created this poster and offered the following description of his work.  While the specific details of our presentation of Ryan's work are still being worked out, it will almost certainly involve a gallery show, an online show, and some kind of publication. As his artist's statement represents an interplay between his vision as a photographer and the project's archaeological goals, we are planning to include the voice of archaeologists in the final presentations of his photographs.

Watch this space for more information on Ryan Stander's Topos/Chora. 

Ryan Stander

Topos and Chora
Photographs of the Pyla-Kousopetria Archaeological Project

 

“The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project (PKAP) has investigated the 2 sq. km coastal zone of Pyla Village in Cyprus since 2003.  The project is a transdisciplinary, landscape-oriented investigation that has drawn upon an international team of archaeologists, historians, geologists, illustrators, and other specialists to produce a vivid, diachronic, archaeological history of a significant coastal site.”

“Since its inception, photography has played a key role in archaeological research. Tendencies to view the camera's eye uncritically as an objective representation of material reality have gradually given way to more sophisticated understandings of the camera's role in producing the kind of illusive objectivity that formed a compelling foundation for archaeological knowledge.  While photographs of artifacts, architecture, and even topography will continue to appear as evidence for archaeological arguments, there has been less attention to work of photographers in creating the same kind of dynamic, discursive landscapes that archaeological knowledge imagines.  By incorporating an experienced landscape photographer into a landscape archaeological project, we seek to problematize in an explicit way the role of photography in the creation of archaeological knowledge.”

                  - From the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Artist-in-Residence Invitation

Ancient conceptions of place varied widely between Aristotle’s preference for topos and Plato’s emphasis on chora.  Aristotle’s topos suggests objective point on a map that exerts no actual influence upon those who enter.  Whereas Plato’s preference for chora, which draws upon the etymological root of “choreography,” as the reciprocal dance between humanity and environment. While topographic mapping and Global Positioning Systems are remarkably helpful to research and convenient for day-to-day living, it is through continued presence and interaction in the landscape that allows the intimacy of chora to emerge from the plotted points and coordinates. While archaeological work relies upon topos, it cultivates chora.

My work for the PKAP residency functions on several levels: documentary, landscape, and archive of topos and chora. By drawing upon both ancient conceptions of place, I was keenly aware of our contemporary presence in the landscape as researchers. This reflexive stance guided my efforts to document this emerging diachronic perspective of the historical landscape. As human presence transforms topos to chora it becomes archaeological evidence. Similarly, the photographic project provides a document of ongoing human presence and an alternative archive of evidence of the 2009 PKAP field season in this Mediterranean landscape.

Punk Archaeology: Trench Sounds

The long awaited final Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project podcast has arrived.  Titled "Trench Sounds", it is a 10 minute extract of over 3 hours of taping in Dallas DeForest's trench at Pyla-Koutsopetria.  (For more typical discussions of this trench you can down load these two podcasts: Koutsopetria East Week 1 and Koutsopetria East Week 2).  The goal was to capture the sounds of a trench in all of their mundane glory.

The inspiration was Punk Archaeology.  Kostis has posted on Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and its seminal influence on the New York "No Wave" movement.  This album, which is almost impossible to listen to, is composed almost entirely of various ephemeral sounds of the musical production process particularly looped tracks of guitar feedback much of which was created intentionally by placing guitars facing their amplifiers.  This dissonant noise was then remixed and edited to produce tracks including an unusual locked groove track at the end of side "D" (of a two record set) which would play the final 1.8 seconds continuously (an effect lost on 21st century listeners who are more likely to spend the 4$ to download the album in MP3 than the $20+ to purchase the album on vinyl!).

Our final "Voices of Archaeology" track is hardly as intentionally dissonant as Metal Machine Music (nor will it likely be as iconic).  It does, however, capture and attempt to present some of the ephemeral sounds of archaeology -- the gentle thumping of the pick, the scraping of the dust pan, the cascades of dirt into buckets, the interrupted and fractured conversations.  It attempts to capture sonically, what we as archaeologist are attempting to capture physically: the various bits of pieces of the past.  At one point on the track, Paul Ferderer asks whether a tiny fragment of ceramic material is a piece of tile or a piece of pottery.  The tiny fragment was at once almost completely inconsequential (and the question of whether the fragment was pottery or tile was even less consequential as all ceramic material was analyzed by our ceramicist) and at the same time the bit of ceramics is representative of the archaeological process.  The artifact must be contextualized in some way to generate meaning.  It goes without saying (almost) that fragments of the past have no inherent meaning.  They are displaced objects that the archaeologist envelop in contexts ranging from the place of origin, the original "primary" use, and, of course, the chronology of the other objects at the site.  The tension between the decontextualized object at the moment of discovery (the most tenuous and fleeting contextualizing moment) and various "big picture" narrative and analyses that ultimately come to make a specific site meaningful finds its place in the immediacy of punk rock as experience. 

I recently listened again to the MC5's first album Kick Out the Jams, a live album, and admired their effort to capture the live sound and mark the band as a live phenomenon while evoking punk rock's debts to the blues (a genre of music almost always recorded live) and the ephemeral connections manifest in garage bands across the country.  The contextualizing narrative of modern American music has, of course, placed the MC5 in a proper analytical and interpretive category (often placing them alongside Iggy Pop's Stooges whose first album came out the same year and captured a very different kind of sound through the exacting production of John Cale) and striped the first album of much of its shock value (although it still can capture some of the excitement typical of live performances).

Our short track of trench sounds hopes to capture the same thing -- at once it is inconsequential (and frankly hard to listen to!) alone just like Paul's fragment of pottery -- but at the same time, it captures a moment that begs a larger, more dynamic context.  The moment of discovery is the point of departure for archaeological analysis.  Trench Sounds pushes the incidental noise of archaeological research into the center,  like the feedback pushed to the center of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music.  By recontextualizing the sonic elements of archaeological fieldwork I hope to have shed light on the analytical process itself which brings otherwise discarded and inconsequential artifacts to the center while pushing the archaeological experience to the edges... 

Enjoy: Trench Sounds

Update: For an overly generous response click here.

Be sure to check out our other podcasts:

PKAP 20009 Introduction
Koutsopetria East Week 1 (Featuring P-Ferd)
Koutsopetria West Week 1
Vigla East Week 1
Vigla West Week 1
Kokkinokremos East Week 1
Kokkinokremos West Week 1

Koutsopetria East Week 2
Koutsopetria West Week 2
Vigla East Week 2
Vigla West Week 2
Kokkinokremos East Week 2
Kokkinokremos West Week 2
Ground Penetrating Radar Team

Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project 2009 Press Release

The equivalent of the archaeological victory cigar is the project press release.  It's penned only once the fieldwork is done (and usually before the real celebration -- the publication of the results) begin.  I send a version of this off to my university's Office of University Relations and they perform their tweaktastic magic on it.  I'll post a link to their improved (embettered?) version when it appears:

17 July 2009
Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project Press Release
For Immediate Release

The Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project has completed its 7^th season of archaeological fieldwork in the coastal zone of Pyla Village near Larnaka Cyprus. Since 2003 the PKAP team has worked under the direction of William Caraher (University of North Dakota), R. Scott Moore (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) and David K. Pettegrew (Messiah College) and used intensive survey, remote sensing, and excavation to document this rich archaeological landscape. The 2009 field season was our second season of excavation and the largest and most complex to date with over 30 students and colleagues from the US, Canada, the UK, and Cyprus including 3 graduate students from University of North Dakota. Over a 5 week season, the PKAP team opened 6 trenches at the sites of Vigla, Koutsopetria, and Kokkinokremos. The trenches on the prominent coastal height of Vigla produced significant evidence of a Hellenistic (4^th-3^rd c. B.C.) settlement.  An imposing fortification wall surrounded domestic quarters whose collapsed mudbrick walls sealed valuable ceramic material on the floors. These buildings may have been the houses for mercenary forces positioned to protect a vulnerable stretch of coastline near the cosmopolitan city of Kition, or perhaps the homes of local residents who had settled in fortified villages during politically unstable times. The excavations on the neighboring coastal ridge of Kokkinokremos revealed two sections of complex perimeter wall dating to the Late Bronze Age. This wall suggests that the site itself was not properly fortified but only ringed with a series of interlocking structures. While these structures would have presented an imposing vista to an attacking foe, the presence of doorways leading through the exterior wall indicates that residents of the Late Bronze Age settlement regarded practical needs over the need for an impregnable defense. The final area of excavation was the Early Christian basilica at Koutsopetria. Our work near this long-known building sought to unravel the complex history of repair and rebuilding that occurred during the 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th centuries A.D. To gather information on the building’s tumultuous life cycle, the excavations focused on an annex room that suffered several incidents of significant damage before its roof and second storey collapsed under seemingly dramatic circumstances.

In conjunction with the excavation work, the PKAP team conducted 10 days of geophysical survey with ground penetrating radar in collaboration with Beverly Chiarulli of Arcaheological Services Laboratory at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. This work revealed several areas of significant subsurface features.

Finally, the PKAP team continued its commitment to a trans-media approach to archaeological research. We were joined in the field by an experienced documentary filmmaker, Ian Ragsdale of Big Ape Productions and Ryan Stander, a photographer in the Masters of Fine Arts program at the University of North Dakota. Various members of the PKAP team blogged regularly on PKAP sponsored blogs, tweeted from the field on a PKAP Twitter feed, and produced a dozen podcasts. These projects represent an important aspect of reflexive fieldwork, as well as a commitment to public outreach through new media delivered over the web. The newly created Working Group in Digital and New Media at the University of North Dakota will contribute to the production of Ragsdale’s documentary and facilitate a digital exhibit of Stander’s photographs.

All field work was completed with the permission and cooperation of Director of the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus, Dr. Pavlos Flourentzos. We also enjoyed the generous assistance of the Estate Manager of the British Sovereign Area – Dhekelia Garrison, the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum and the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute. The 2009 season΄s fieldwork was funded by grants from the University of North Dakota, Institute of Aegean Prehistory, and generous private donors.