Archaeology

I am staying in Corinth excavations, run by the American School of Classical Studies. This is a place where archaeologists come to dig during the excavation season (late March through May) and then to do research on all of the stored findings during the rest of the year. There are several archaeologists here now and it is very interesting to listen to them. I am learning a lot of new things. Old Corinth has many “digs” or places where work has been done to uncover whatever is there: pots, bones, coins, olive pits, pig bones, buildings, and many other objects of past civilizations. The archaeologists hire people to do the actual digging, but they plan where to dig and direct what happens during the excavation. There are also specialists who know how to clean the things off and preserve them. Archaeologists take the remains and study them carefully and compare them to try to determine how each item was used and to date the items.

I have been volunteering in the storerooms for all of the finds at the museum. Ian, one of the archaeologists from Australia said that the store rooms are like the part of an iceberg that is underwater. The museum only shows a very little part of what has been discovered (the tip of the iceberg). Most of what has been found is in the basement of the museum there are shelves and shelves and drawers and drawers of items that have been found during the various excavations. Everything is catalogued and stored carefully so that it can be found again. Every little piece is marked with where and when it was found and given a number so that it can be found in the archives in the future. The shelves that I have been helping to dust have ceramic pieces that are marked with the year that they were found. Many of them were found in the 1940’s and earlier. The material that is found stays in the storeroom so that archaeologists can go back and look at past finds. I have been told that there are 9 other storerooms of material in different parts of Old Corinth.

This year the dig was at Panagia which is close to the Elementary School that I hope to visit. It is a site where they have been digging geometric sarcophagi which are stone graves from the 9th or 10th century BCE. They have been excavating there for the last several years. They found bones and many items that were placed in the sarcophagus. From what they found archaeologists have determined that panagia was a burial location in the 9th and 10th century and then during the 3rd century BCE there was some evidence of Greek construction. However, the Romans then came and built a large house on top. They used and destroyed all of the Greek remains and flattened the land so that they could build, so there is not a lot of archaeological evidence for the Greek construction.
Can you guess what happened here by looking at the remains of the bones?












Today at lunch I met a marine archaeologist. She works underwater looking at sunken ships and other remains. Right now she is working on underwater excavation of an ancient harbor. She is going to send me some pictures that I can post to show you!