Ancient History Ramblings

First Full Week of Work

Our first full week of work began today. In the morning, the students were given introductions to the site and to the museum, and then in the afternoon carted out to begin work on the site. It is a bit daunting to begin work because we always have so much that we want to accomplish, and we soon realize that we can never get it all done in the limited time we have on the island. For me, the big issue is analyzing all of the pottery, at least the Classical to Modern pottery. I only have about 4 more units and all of the survey pottery from 2004-2008 will be completely done. The problem is that I have only barely started the excavation pottery from last year's work. So I have last year's to analyze, along with the pottery excavated this season, which might be twice as much as last year's.

RSM

Airport Runs

Today the majority of the team showed up in Larnaka. Their arrival necessitated multiple cars making multiple trips to the airport. Fortunately, this is a short drive of only about 5-7 minutes. So, for dinner Thursday night there were nine of us, but by dinner on Friday night there were 25 people. I will be making one more airport run on Saturday afternoon, and then there are no more airport runs until Tuesday when 28 IUP students and faculty show up for the Cyprus leg of a summer study tour. While this group will not be participating in PKAP, they will be staying at Petrou Brothers with us, and we will be leading them on trips to various archaeological sites around the island.

RSM

Loud Night in Larnaka

Larnaka can be a loud city at night. I left my balcony door open last night to take advantage of the cool night breeze that was blowing last night. I probably should have have just relied on the air conditioning. About 2 AM, a group of kids on scooters circled the block yelling and honking at each other. Then, at 4 AM I was stunned to hear thunder and a brief rain shower. Usually, by the time I arrive in Cyprus the rains are over. In my 13 summers on the island, I have been rained on twice and each time the showers lasted for less than 2 minutes and was never heavy. I have seen rain clouds in the distance and several times have been enveloped in a heavy fog. So, listening to the thunder and brief rain was an unusual experience. Finally, at 6 AM somebody started weed whacking, or strimming, the lot across the street. He evidently had a pretty powerful machine, aka loud, and he was using it to shred metal - or at least that it was it sounded like. We are getting more rooms today and moving people around, so I will be moving from the 1st floor to the 3rd floor, so I hope it might be a bit quieter. We will see.

RSM

New Lab Digs

Today we got to set up our lab space at a new location. For the last 5 years we have been working at the Larnaka District Archaeological Museum, which has been great. The staff have been very friendly and the museum is only a five minute walk from our hotel. Last year we had a minor issue in that we were bumped out of the majority of our usual space by another project and ended up working out in the museum's courtyard. This year, our work space is being taken up by several large sarcophagi that are being restored. At the end of last season, most of our pottery was moved from the Larnaka Museum to an outlying storage facility, known as Terra Ombra. It reminds me a bit of the last scene from Indiana Jones and Raiders of the Lost Ark in that it is a huge warehouse filled with rows and rows of pottery stacked to the ceiling. Since our usual space is occupied, the museum is letting us work out there. I actually think it might be a better work area since it is larger and roomier.

RSM

Success at last - on several fronts

Well, we were able to get the golf bag case containing our GPS tripods unlocked today. Susie and Bill found a locksmith who was kind enough to unlock it for us. We are ready to visit the Larnaka Museum tomorrow and see what we need to do to get ready for the field season. That should be an interesting experience.

RSM

Locked case update

Well, I went to the Larnaka airport and tried to find someone who might be able to help me unlock our locked golf case that contains our GPS tripods inside. It was quite the experience trying to fit the case into our very small rental cars. From the number of looks I garnered in the airport, I guess they don't see many golfers on the island, I received several double takes as I wheeled the case around. Anyway, I was sent to various people and offices who were all perplexed as to how to help me. Most were friendly and wished they could help, but couldn't. My last stop was with British Air customer service. I have to admit to being a fan of British Air and usually have a great experience when I deal with them. Today, that wasn't really the case. The customer service rep seemed to imply that I was some sort of crackpot wasting her time, and openly scoffed at me bringing golf clubs to the island. I tried explaining that the case contained important GPS equipment that we, as an archaeology project, needed access to. Playing the archaeology card on Cyprus often has great results....except this time. She seemed to have the same opinion of archaeologists as golfers. So, our next sep is.......to be honest not really sure what our next step is - I'll let you know.

RSM

Ok, first issue

So, as Bill explained in his blog, we have a small ..... problem. The Trimble R-8 system we use is a very nice system. It is very accurate and easy to use (a plus for us). But, it is hard to transport to Cyprus. I found a great

golf bag hard case system that fits the tripods perfectly. The problem is that it has a TSA approved lock on it, which I left unlocked and did not bring the key for. As I found out this morning when I went to open it up, that evidently, the baggage folks at Philadelphia were kind enough to lock it for me and so now we have a locked case full of GPS equipment and no way in....yet. I have to go to the Larnaka airport today to pick someone up, so I might take the bag with me to the airport on the off chance that they might have a key there that could open it. If that doe not work, it will be interesting to see what we have to resort to in order to get the equipment out. I'll let you know what happens.

RSM

Sudden Silence

Sorry for the silence, but I have been wrapping things up and have not had much free time. I also spent some time trying to install a new hard drive in my laptop and that has resulted in a lot of lost time and a new hard drive that is only good for a paperweight....so far. Anyway, the PKAP season is upon us. The first group of people arrives Friday and within a week over 25 people will be there at Petrou Brothers. It will be interesting to see what sort of stress this many people puts on our logistical setup.

RSM

Semester completely over

Well, my semester is finally over - I submitted grades today. So, I can now turn my undivided attention to the PKAP field season. I have spent most of the day going back over the logistics of rooms, and making sure that we have the right number of rooms for the right number of days. It was a lot easier in 2004 when there were only 6 of us and we only needed 2 rooms. This year we are over 30 and need 11 rooms. Tomorrow I will go back over the budget and make sure we are good on what we have, versus what we need,

RSM