PICS!

Ok so I'm not sure if anyone is actually still reading this...sorry I've been terrible at updating the past few weeks!
I've finally got my pics all offloaded and sorted so here's a quick sampling from the dig:


My trench (this is after the first 2 weeks so we've already removed the top few layers)


This is me digging in my trench with some of my trench buddies


Here's me and my first metal find...my bronze ring!


This is me with my trench supervisor Marie...excited about the sling bullet I found!


Here's the group of people I worked with on the Acropolis...we are standing in my trench and the neighbouring trench after they had been combined. In the end we uncovered what used to be a road and also a courtyard at different points in time. In total we had 5 seperate trenches on the Acropolis.


This is the entire dig team of Argilos 2010. Here we were on a day tour of Amphipolis and at posing at the ancient gymnasium.


This is me and some of my buds after we took our epic swim in the sea during the huge storm...we are pretending to be beavers:)


By the third week I had some pretty ridiculous tan lines going on! This is me a bud out on the island of Thassos where we spent our 3-day weekend.


This is me and some of my girls on our last night in Argilos.

Hopefully I'll get my Greece and Turkey travel pics sorted soon and have some of those up to for anyone who's still interested.

Home Sweet Home!

Hello everyone!
Well, for those who don't know yet I've made it home safe and sound!
I actually arrived back in Ottawa 6 days ago but I've pretty much just been sleeping a lot, doing laundry and working on my report.
It is so weird to be living with access to air conditioning and a washer and drying machine again!
These are the kind of things that you don't realize how much you depend on until you don't have them anymore.
But I just wanted to let you all know that pictures will be up soon!
It's taking me a while to offload them all and sort them (I have three memory sticks to go through!) but hopefully I should have some up within the next couple of days.
And for anyone interested I'll be doing a recap of the travelling period after the dig.
Anyways, thanks again for all the support! Hopefully, I'll see you all soon. xo

c'est la vie

ahhhhhh!!!

Ok, I am freaking out a little bit...this is my last night in Asprovalta!!
I can hardly believe the dig is actually over!

So I think I left off on the Monday after Thassos.
That afternoon turned out to be a bit of a bad day actually.
We ended up having to do a cleaning layer which is hands down my very least favourite part of archaeology.
We had to scrape a very thin layer of mud and silt off of our entire trench.
It's extremely hard work and it's pretty hard on the back and knees and becasue it;s only to clean you only go into the dirt about 1 or 2cm so you never really find anything.
So that was a bit of a bummer day,
But things got a lot better on Tuesday and Wednesday.
We finally were allowed to dig our occupation layer and we found TONS of cool stuff.
We got some pieces of pottery which are actually failry complete (or else lots of pieces that can be glued together) which are extrememly important to help date the site.
We also found some more sling-bullets. Wait did I tell you about our sling bullets? They are so cool! Shaped kind of like ini footballs, about 3 cm long and they're made of lead. They are ammunition for sling-shots and they feel like they can do some pretty serious damage!
Originally, I found one and another girl in my trench found one (like last week).
But then on Tuesday one of my trenchies found three!
Plus we found tons of metal nails, a figurehead (looks kind of like a chicken...but might also be a boar, lol) and we also found two more rings and some hinges/latches.
Those two day were really exciting because it was basically all the kind of stuff that we'd been waiting for the whole time.

Then yesterday was pretty stressful.
We had originally been thinking we'd just go down to the road level, clean up and then be done...and then we uncovered a wall.
Lol, so it was exciting to get some more architecture but it was some pretty hardcore work.
We had to extend our trench twice and we actually opened up into the trench next to ours.
The wall actually extends the length of the two trenches and possibly further.
We also finished uncovering the road which is a LOT bigger than expected.
I had a very sore back after yesterday but to look down into the trench and see the finished product was pretty amazing.
I can't wait until I can upload pictures of it!

Today was the last official day and basically it was mostly spent on paperwork.
I was back on site for a little over an hour this morning to help take ending elevations and triangulations and a few measurements.
Then I was at the museum for a few hours doing some last minute washing and cataloguing of artefacts.
After that, we had to update our log books and finish all our diagrams and SU fiches.
It can get a bit hairy trying to do paperwork in a team and there were definitely a few frayed tempers but thankfully we managed to get it all done and approved.

Two of my friends have already left this afternoon and it is so hard to say goodbye.
It's weird.
Some times it can get hard working, living and playing with the same 25 people 24/7 for 4 weeks.
And to be honest I am reeeeally looking forward to travelling with my sister and just being around someone else for a change.
But at the same time I have made some really good friends and I hate saying goodbye to everyone=(

Tomorrow morning I leave for Athens.
Originally I was going to get a bus and then the train but we've managed to score a ride with Bobby.
He's drivng me and a few buddies to Athens straight which is a huge help.
I am super excited to start travelling and to see Leah!
I don't know how often I'll have internet access while I'm travelling but I'll try and still update whenever I can.

Ciao for now!

Long Weekend and Quebec Day

So last time I wrote we were having weather problems.
On Thursday morning it was scary windy but we were still on site and my trench was actually able to close our layer.
We finished a destruction layer and we are now right on top of our occupation layer which is very exciting.

Thursday afternoon we all packed into the vans and rental cars and drove to a port about 1.5 hours away and then took a ferry to the island of Thassos (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thassos). We got a long weekend this week because of St. Jean-Baptiste day and almost all of us spent the weekend on the island. The drive there was tons of fun becasue I had a lot of franco's in my van so we listened to French music the whole way:)
We did a lot of sunning on the beach, hiking around, eating and shopping but the highlight was definitely the marble quarry.
On Saturday we drove halfway around the island and then went for a bit of a hike and ended up at this insanely gorgeous marble quarry.
The water was perfect blue and you could see pretty far down.
A lot of us jumped from the cliffs into the water which was SO SCARY but so much fun.
All in all it was a really good and relaxing weekend.

We returned to Aspro. yesterday and were supposed to be back to work this morning except that it rained AGAIN last night so when we got to site this morning our trenches were flooded.
We bailed them out and it's been sunny for a few hours so we'll go back to site this afternoon and dig.
Hopefully I'll find something good!

Rain, rain, go away...

Ok, so apparently the worst of the storm was yet to come!!
Sunday night the weather was still damp but starting to clear up.
We knew we wouldn't be able to dig on site because most of the trenches were flooded and the damp destroys the stratigraphy.
So the majority of us spent Monday at the museum washing and classifying pottery as well as working on our SU fiches (they're like layer reports) and stratigraphy drawings.
There was also a small team who went down the the beach site to bail out the trenches there because those ones are about 5 feet underground and had retained the most water.
It was warm and sunny all morning so we all assumed it would be business as usual for the rest of the week.
Unfortunately we were VERY wrong.

We came back into town around 2pm for lunch and while we were in the restaurant we could feel the wind picking up and see the sky getting suddenly darker.
All of a sudden the whole sky opened up and it started pouring rain...and when I say pouring I really mean pouring.
I have never seen anything like it before in my life.
None of us wanted to be stuck in the restaurant so we all decided to make a dash back to the apartment.
Within literally 2 seconds of stepping out we were soaked to the skin.
As we were sprinting back me and 3 other girls decided that since we were already socking we might as well just go to the beach. So we literally sprinted to the beach and ran into the sea fully clothed.
The sea was insane.
The waves were crashing and foaming and the sky and water were crazy greenish-bluey colours.
The whole sky would just split open with lightening and you could feel the thunder shake your whole body.
We all grabbed on to bouys and just let the waves come.
We were there for maybe 20 minutes before the rain stopped, but we stayed in the water to watch the storm.
But we could literally see the storm moving through the surrounding mountains and over the area of our dig site (Argilos).
We stayed for about 45 minutes in the water just watching the show.
I have never seen lightening like that before in my life.
There would be like 2 or 3 strikes at the same time...and sometimes it would just be like a huge flash-bomb and the entire sky would light up.

After we trudged home and dried off we got our marching orders from the supervisors and were basically told that it would be impossible to dig for the rest of the day.
We also found out that the walls on the beach trenches had collapsed.
Big bummer for the peeps on the beach...they might be moved to the slope or Acropolis and have to start a new trench:(

So then a whole crowd of us piled into the boys room and watched Beauty and the Beast. I think there were 9 of us in total on the bed. It was very cozy, lol

The afternoon started to dry off and the sun came out so I decided to do my laundry.
I had no more clean socks and was very low on everything else.
So I dumped everything into the tub and scrubbed for like an hour and then went to hang everything out on the lines.
But of course, my luck being what it is, this would turn out to be a big mistake.

We went down for dinner at 8 as usual and were told that we would have the day off today since we had already finished with the pottery at the musuem and the trenches were too wet to dig.
It's always nice to have a day off but I think most of us were also kind of disappointed.
Being stuck in the apartments for any length of time starts to give you cabin fever.
But anyways, after supper we hung out for a bit in the garden but once again the wind started to pick up and all the stray cats and dogs started going craaazy.
Most of us went up to our rooms and I was sitting there chatting when I realized my laundry was still out on the line.
I rushed out to get it, hoping to have it in before it started raining again.
Meanwhile the temperature had dropped big time. It was suddenly only like 15 degrees and the wind was going crazy.
I had not been outside more that 1 minute before the sky opened up and it started raining and hailing!
Big, huge chunks of ice.
At that point the storm was at the worst it'd been all 4 days.
The thunder and lightening were crazy and I was afraid our whole washing line would blow away.

So today it's a bit overcast but definitely warmer.
I have nothing to do so I am boooooored.
This afternoon we are going to do a workshop...maybe on differentiating pottery or something.
Anyways, I'm going to go look for something to do.

Wrath of Zeus and Poseidoooooooon

Hello everyone!
Thanks so much for the comments...I wasn't sure if anyone was actually reading!

We have been having the most INSANE three day thunder-storm this weekend. I have seriously never seen anything like it!
On Friday we went to site in the morning and we could see the storm clouds on the surrounding mountains. It was really windy and actually kind of chilly which was actually great conditions for digging.
It was so cool that they actually sent us back to site after lunch.
But around 5:30 Dr. Perreault was speeding around telling everyone we had to leave becasue a huge storm was coming.
It was weird because we could see lightning and hear the thunder in the surrounding mountains long before the rain itself ever hit.
But when the rain did hit it was intense.
It has been pouring on and off since Friday afternoon and the streets are completely flooded.
Last night we went dancing and the bar we go to (Versus) is on the beach. It was kind of cool because it wasn't raining but there was sooo much lightning going off. It was so awesome to watch it exploding over the water.
When you see a storm like this it's pretty easy to see why the Greeks believed in the gods and thought they were such wrathful beings!

Today is Sunday and I was originally planning to do my laundry but since I usually hand wash and then hang dry it ont he balcony I don't think that'll work out today!
Our balcony is a few inches deep in water and everything is soaked.
Everyone is a little restless today and mostly we've been playing cards and cleaning.
I've swept and scrubbed the room I share and me and another flatmate swept and cleaned up our kitchen.
Then a few of us entered the man-cave (the boys room...there are only 4 boys on the dig and about 20 girls, lol) and we watched Conan the Barbarian (DUMB movie) and also part of Beauty and the Beast. One of the guys brought a huge laptop and a whole bunch of movies so it's a pretty sweet setup.
I wish we could go to the beach though because I have a major sock tan from wearing my sneakers and socks on site and I really need to even it out, lol

There haven't been anymore major finds since my last post but we are starting to hit some exciting layers.
We are past the abandonment layer and are just over the destruction layer.
My trench has to go slowly to go slowly so that we don't break any pottery but we can see huge chunks of roof tiles and potsherds under a thin layer of soil. In my lane it looks like I might be uncovering a large vase or possibly the base to a much larger pithos vessel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pithos).

Yesterday we spent the day in Thessaloniki.
We got to see the white tower which was pretty cool (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Tower_of_Thessaloniki) and we also spent a lot of time going through the archaeology museum there.
Thessaloniki is a pretty dirty and crowded city. I didn't really like it to be honest. I hope Athens is better!

I've had some questions about food so here's the rundown.
For brekky we basically have bread and tea/coffee. I bought some peanut butter to go with mine because I was in dire need of protein to get me through the morning part of the dig!
At 11am we have a break and snack. We drink TONS of water and we almost always have karpoosi (watermelon) and bread and tomatoes. We just grab hunks off the loaf of bread and eat the tomatoes like apples:)
For lunch we always eat at the same taverna.
They provide tzatziki and bread and greek salad everyday.
They have buffet of food to choose from and I have tried mousaka, couscous, gyros, souvlaki and a variety of beef, pork, chicken and fish dishes that I don't even know the names of.
Greek food is ok...it was pretty exciting trying all the new stuff at first but when you eat it everyday you kind of start missing the stuff you're used to.
For dinner we all eat in the garden and the food is made by a few of the team members here. Bobby (Arianne's husband...she is one of the supervisor's) and Saskia (Perreault's wife) are the main cooks and they do a really good job. Monday is spaghetti, Tuesday is cold cut sandwiches, Wednesday we go out for the best pizza I have ever had in my life, Thursday is salad's, and then Friday and Saturday we have BBQ. We've had souvlaki, suasage, pork chops, and hamburgers.
My favourite thing about the food here is all the fresh fruit. We eat it all the time and it is so refreshing because it is always so hot.

Generally on site the temperature is between 30 and 40 degrees C. It can be really hard working in the heat and so we drink so much water. The heat it actually the thing I have the hardest time with. I will be down crouching or on my knees digging for a while and whenever I stand up it gets all black and spotty in front of my eyes. I'm hoping that this huge storm will cool things down for a while.

Well I'm going to go for now. I am in desperate need of clean socks so I might just try washing a few and hanging them in our apartment.
A Bientot!

Pay Dirt

Exciting news!!
I made my first major find(s) today!!!

Ok, so first of all, my trench has been moving along really well since Monday.
Yesterday morning, one of my trench buddies found a bronze coin!!
It was the very fist coin out of any of the sites and she was awarded a bottle of ouzo:)
Then yesterday evening, the trench across from us also found a bronze coin.
And then, just this morning, I found first a bronze broach (or possibly button) and also a bronze ring!!
I was SO EXCITED!!!
We got to do the procedure for special finds because this isn't something that's very common...especially the ring!
So basically, the Acropolis is kicking butt;)
I wish I could show you all a picture of my finds.
We took a few but it's kind of complicated getting them online since I don't have my own laptop...o well.

Tomorrow we are actually going to be working at the museum all day because it's going up to plus 40 and they want to keep us out of the sun for the day.

Anyways, I'm on my way to dinner but I just wanted to share my news!!

Work hard, play harder...

Hello everyone!

So last post I left off at Wednesday on the dig site.
My trench has made good progress since then.
We've cleared all our top-soil and we're now down to the Hellenistic level!
We find tons of roof tiles (we actually throw those out since they're pretty common) and we will occasionally find ceramics and pottery.
The objective of our trench is to get down to ground level (where the road is) and hopefully find some good stuff.
So Thursday and Friday the hard work continued and we're starting to get into the rhythm of things. It's a lot easier to take elevations everyday now that I'm more used to it and filling in our logbook is becoming second nature.

When we're not digging the team here likes to party!!
The first time we all went out together was Tuesday night and we went to a bar called Versus.
Then we went out again on Friday night to Versus again(Friday is called YUPEE!! day becasue it's almost the weekend, lol).
Friday was a big dance party and it was quite a lot of fun.
As most of you know I am not a big drinker at all but that's no problem becasue most people are pretty careful about their alcohol intake.
We always remember that morning sneaks up pretty quick, lol
Last night was a lot of fun because we had a big bonfire on the beach. Someone filled up a watermelon with vodka and another one with ouzo and then poked straws in those got passed around a few times.
And then today we all slept in until about noon because we had A LOT of sleep to catch up on.
I actually woke up to the sound of a man with a megaphone on the street outside my window selling frech fruit.

Yesterday was really cool becasue we went to Vergina and Pella.
Every Saturday is field trip day and they drive us to interesting places to see sites that are bing or have been excavated.
Pella was originally the ancient capital of Macedonia and we went to see the palace and excavations that were going on there.
It was really neat becasue they've uncovered tons of old mansions and there are some really neat floor and wall mosaics that are incredibly detailed.
Then we went to Vergina and saw the burial site of Philip II who was the father of Alexander the Great.
There is actually a musuem built right on top of the mausoleums and we got to see a lot of really interesting stuff.
Tons of gold and silver items and lots of armour were found and we were all jealous since all we have right now is tiles and pottery, lol
Here's more about Vergina and Pella for anyone interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pella

Today is a lazy and recuperating day.
We went down to the beach around 1:30 and we'll probably mostly just sleep and hang out all day.
Yeah, I know you're jealous;)

First Three Days

Well I can honestly say that I have never sweated more in my life than in the last three days.
The dig is going well!!
It is super hard work but you get to see visible results for everything you do which makes it worth it.

The very first day of the actual day was completely spent clearing.
Basically the site gets overgrown during the year except for the 2 months that a team is there and so at the beginning of each session there is a TON of clearing and weeding that has to be done to uncover everything.
The first day we cleared the site on the slope which was so hard but it looked really good once we were done.

There are actually three sites at Argilos.
The first is the slope is where there is a huge road going uphill and the remains of the village (so ruined houses, a public house etc).
Than there is the beach where they've uncovered a ton of pottery and some bones. The site used to be a harbour and we only started excavating because they are planning to build a new road over it.
The site I am at is the acroplis. Phillip II of Macedonia conquered the site and gave a mansion on the acropolis (highest hill) to one of his generals.
They've uncovered the mansion (which is in really good condition and even has an oil press) as well as some domestic buildings. The part at this site that I am working on is outside on the eastof the mansion. Last year they just uncovered a small section of a wall and what is possibly a road or a courtyard. The objective of my trench is to uncover it, find how far it goes and figure out what it was used for.

So the second day I was put in my trench group and we cleared our site.
Again, majorly backbreaking work!
It's basically the most hardcore gardening you can think of. We had to remove any trace or plant life (weeds, grass, flowers, trees, etc.) as well as get rid of rocks and roots and whatnot.
I was really surprised because there was actually tons of potsherds just laying around on top of the ground but unfortunately they have to be thrown away as they have no context.
But we managed to mostly clean the site yesterday and than today the real dig began!

The first thing we did was mark off our trench which required very precise measurements.
Then we had to take our levels and figure which meant measuring how far above sea level each individual height in our trench was.
Everything is recorded in very precise detail.
Then we actually got to start digging.
My trench is a biut difficult since it is on a slope and it's hard to keep the stratigraphy seperate sometimes.
I work with 3 other girls and we basically are on our hands and keens scraping and digging all day.

I have dealt with almost every single kind of insect that you can poissibly imagine. We constantly are uncovering spiders, ants, beatles, grubs, scorpions, mice, centipedes and tons of other bugs.
I was super grossed out at first but you eventually kind of get used to it.
I actually have about 15 really bad bug bites right now...some mosquito, some spider.
They itch like crazy!!

Every morning we wake up at 5:30 and get ready quickly (mostly that means apply like 3 layers of sunscreen) and then we take about a 15 minute ride to our sites.
We work nonstop until 11 when we get a short snack break. Than we work again until 1:45 when we do a quick cleanup of the site and then we ride back into town for lunch.
We eat lunch at a small restaurant which usually has s buffet of about 5 or 6 different dishes.
We also get greek salad and break with tzaziki sauce.
The food is ok (I am giving everything a try!) but not as good as I've been told it would be.
After lunch we get a break until about 4. During this time we can nap, do laundry, go to the beach...whatever we want!
After that we do cleaning at cataloguing of our finds at the museum.
We all eat dinner in the garden of our apartment at 8pm and then we usually get to sleep around 11 or 12.
It's quite a packed day!!

There is so much more to say but I need to go!

PS- for those who were wondering...no, there are no toilets on site. We have to go int he bush=) But to be honest it's not usually required since we pretty much sweat all of our liquids out.

I made it!

Hello everyone!
Just wanted to let you all know that I've made it to Asprovalta safe and sound!!
Getting here was one of the worst and most complicated experiences of my life. In fact my luggage still isn't here...loooooong story. Basically Murphy's Law was in full effect for the last three days and we experienced mulstiple delays, missed flights, being overbooked and not getting on and of course, lost luggage.
We only got in last night around midnight (local time) and we'd been travelling for almost 40 hours by that point.
But thankfully the worst is over and I'm so glad to be here!

Today is a free day and the actual dig itself starts tomorrow.
I got to meet everyone else today and everyone seems really cool and super nice. The majority of us are from Canada with a handful in from the States. There's also a guy from Norway.
Today we all went to the beach and hung out (us Ottawa girls couldn't get in the water since we still don't have our bathing suits)but it seems like a really good group of people.

Last night when we got in it was POURING rain (which was very much in keeping with the rest of our trip actually lol) but today is nice and sunny and around 29 degrees.
Our apartments are so much better than we thought they would be.
I'll try and get pics up at some point.

I'm at an internet cafe right now and the guy across from me just lit up his second cigarette so I think I'm going to leave for now.
But thanks to everyone for the emails and well-wishes!
I'll try and get you all more details later.