A Note on Learning Important New Life Skills

These last few days have been hot, and the students are dropping like flies.
I don't feel well, they whine.
My head hurts.
I'm hooooot.
Well, guess what? Today I learnt how to use an axe. Not a dinky little hatchet. I mean a full-sized, heavy headed AXE. The pick-axe, the hand pick, and the hatchet couldn't cut through our pournari roots, which, incidentally, I found out today are actually part of the OAK family. Like, hardwood, baby.
And Elina and I (out of necessity), were given a quick demonstration by Gino, and were soon doing full body, over-the-head swings, smashing the roots the size of my thigh (one in Gino's trench the size of his torso) into oblivion. It felt so good, and all day chips of wood like shrapnel flew through the air. And nobody chopped their leg off by accident.

A Note on the Joys of Finding a Wall

Today we think we found a wall. Hallejuhah! Imagine pick-axeing through dirt and roots and smashing rooftiles every which way (smashy smashy), and then coming across a huge limestome boulder.
With right angled corners.
And it's flat, and seems to go on forever.
And after you find the end of it, there is another one right beside it.
And if you're really lucky, a third one.
There is an archaeology joke: you find one rock, and it's a nuisance. Two, and it's a wall.
Not very funny, is it? I guess we aren't the most hilarious bunch. Apparently historians think archaeologists are a brutish, lump-headed force, who spend all their time playing in the dirt and drinking in the evenings, confirming what is already known. Anyway, the joke means that we are so eager to find signs that we are uncovering human habitation that we will read as much as we can into very little.
But in the stoa, we have pretty good evidence that yes, this is a wall. Because it runs North to South, and two trenches away from me to the North is Elina, and today she found some big limestone tumble even with mine. Now all we need to do is wait and see what Gino uncovers in the same area when he catches up. It is so exciting also because we are mainly excavating for architectural features (as opposed to finds), so this is a major discovery for us.
On another note: it has been so hot here lately that Elina's plastic on her sunglasses melted and warped. Cheap H&M.

A Note on the Village Drunk

There is an old man who always sits on the porch of the taverna where we eat dinner every night, and he is always drunk. He is known as the village drunk. Tristan, who used to be my T.A. and is now my friend, told me his story.
When he was a young man he was proud and rich, and he married the most beautiful woman in the village. He became a barber, and his profession made him even more prideful. He beat his wife, and eventually she left him.
He started drinking, and soon lost everything.
And that is his sad story.

A Note on the Similarities Between Scarab Beetles and Boys

They are both loud, annoying, slow, buzz around your head, and won't go away until you smack them with your dustpan.

A Note On What Goes Through My Mind While Digging

It's early morning. There is a cool breeze and the three of us are bent over, hands to the ground, on the site where the pournari forest used to be, clipping short underbush and gathering it in our zambili's. It feels like gardening- silence, and the liquid trilling of the birds- and honestly, there are no thoughts going through my mind.
It is bliss. Mindless work. Just revelling in being high on the wall on the side of a mountain and no one talking.
When I used to work in Building 10, often I wouldn't think of anything at all either. The rest of the time I would "tune in" to what other people were saying, joining in with the jokes, or sharing my opinion on a whole range of topics. Though B10 is large, sound carries extremely well, and when you ask a question of your trenchmate, everyone can hear. Some of my favourite "shows" to tune in to were whenever Duncan or Lyle talked, or to listen to Laura share some tidbit about the history of the surrounding area.
But out in Building 1 (the stoa has a number now! Yay!) there is not much to say to one another except grunts and pants that make me giggle because they sound remarkably similar to those produced in childbirth.
Today, while we were taking a break in the scant shade provided by the edge of the forest we had created, we overheard someone singing. It was Margriet, the Canadian director of our site, and she was singing opera to herself while working somewhere up the path from us. It was beautiful, and though we did not know the song, it didn't matter because it fit so well with the wind and the birds.

To be honest, sometimes I think about my life. I think about how glad I am to be getting older and wiser, and I think about how glad I am to be young and strong and stretching my muscles. I think about my past, and I think about my future. But mostly I exist in the present moment, and maybe that's why I love digging so much.

A Note On Archaeology as a Destructive Force

Archaeology is a destructive process. What you turn up while you are digging can never be replaced, and that is why context is so important and needs to be carefully recorded.
Today while clearing 8 metres of pournari, I was thinking to myself what an awful, useless plant it is. Then I came across a small birds nest, right at eye level, nestled in the spiky branches. I peered and saw three small, brown speckled eggs. And I almost started crying, because I had to cut the tree down, and when I carefully extracted the nest and turned the eggs out on to my palm, hoping to find them light, hollow, long dead-
they weren't.
They were warm and heavy and full of potential life.
I moved the nest to another tree on another part of the site, but every bird call seemed frantic and mournful-
where is my nest?
Where are my babies?

A Note on Pournari

Today after the students came by for their tour (sweating profusely and dressed in all manners of ill-advised garb, it being their first time on site and not yet digging), Elina, Gino, and I were moved to a new site that is under the Greek Institution but in the same city as Building 10 (where I've always worked before), in order to start excavating the stoa, which in Ancient Greece referred to a line of shops, grain storages, etc., under a colonnaded and porticoed roof. It is exciting because we have a new supervisor (who we have yet to meet; she is coming to visit tomorrow) and are so far away from Building 10 and all the students that we have our own tools, own cooler of food, own first aid kit, and are expected to excavate the site by ourselves... basically it's a TON of responsibility. And I'm glad to be given it. My best friend here, Linds, was given a T.A. position last minute when Crysta had to fly back home to England because she has the next level of seniority, so both of us are happy with the new weights added to our shoulders.
But this new site- oh my! It is covered by 6 foot plus bushes of hideous pournari, which is this Greek plant sort of like a holly bush/ acorn that chokes the hillsides everywhere. It is so tough and prickly that even the goats refuse to eat it. It is so dense that no living creature can make a home in it's branches. It is so impenetrable to fire that only the outside prickles will burn off. And working with no breeze, covered by flies and horse flies and what I think are possibly sweat bees? and attacking this menace with giant clippers is slow, hot, sweaty, dirty, maddening work. You can't touch the leaves because they will poke through your thick canvas clothes and give you a rash. Dragging branches off site is hard because they catch on everything. I fear I will go crazy due to the buzzing of flies in my face and getting inside my clothes. I'm petrified of coming upon a wasp nest and not being able to run. I HATE pournari, and I guess the best way to deal with my anger is to chop the hell out of it.
I just hope we can can clear the site as quickly as possible, and get a breeze flowing through the area. And I hope for no nightmares tonight either. I honestly feel not the slightest bit of compassion for it. It does not flower. It produces no fruit. Nothing eats it. And the roots go down so deep and need to be pick-axed out (my favourite part!).
What I've been pretending to myself while I've been fighting with it is that I am an intrepid jungle explorer, hacking my way through the Amazon or the heart of Africa. It honestly helps so much.