News - Weekly Report 3: Continued excavation in Area 2

Fig. 1: Mette Arenfeldt

Fig. 2: Off-site: Niels instructs Eva and Mette in the all important skill of HAND-FANNING

Fig. 3: Mette tending Niels – without the land based team there is no diving

Fig. 4: On-site: Niels instructs Mette

Author: Mette Arenfeldt and Panagiotis Athanasopoulos

Week three is now completed and the project is running on full speed overcoming some minor problems ranging from equipment drawbacks to staff members being ill. The weather has been on our side during the past week with sunny and warm days.

Visibility in the harbour is still an issue but after hundreds of dives it does no longer affect our efforts. Additionally, week three signalled the return of two staff members. Charles Pochin, project’s head technician is now back at Zea Harbour Project, providing once again to all of us the firmness that nothing will go off beam while he is around.

Panagiotis Athanasopoulos also returned to the project after spending a year in England, finishing a master’s degree in underwater archaeology.

During week three, we continued the excavation in Area 2 focusing in Trenches 3, 4, and 5. Trenches 4 and 5 are now completed and based on the stratigraphy we can assume that we are dealing with a disturbed context which does not have much to contribute to our research at the moment.

The last two days of the week, excavation took place in the unidentified structure U:1 also in Area 2. Niels Bargfeldt and Panagiotis Athanasopoulos had four dives in the area cleaning the top surface layer of sediment and removing a vast amount of litter lying on and around the structure. More work will definitely be carried out in the same area next week.

Next week surely looks promising in terms of excavation and moreover, we are planning to initiate this year’s electronic survey campaign.

Our architect Sigrid will be away this year, creating the next generation of high-tech surveyors, and we missing her guidance and high level professionalism. However, other project members have been trained in using the total station and results will be of the same high standards as always the last years.

Hopefully, everybody will be active and healthy next week and as long as the weather is sunny things will get better and better.

Mette Arenfeldt (fig. 1) reports
It is now the end of the 3rd week of my 6 week stay at the Zea Harbour Project. It is very nice to get some field experience contrary to reading books all day which is what you are doing most of the time when you are a student of classical archaeology.

I only got my divers licence just before I came here and therefore feel very inexperienced compared to all the other divers at the ZHP and I don’t feel that I have totally got the hang of it yet (Directors note: Mette is doing very well).

Underwater excavation is also much more difficult compared to a land excavation and especially here in the Zea Harbour where visibility is very poor and we are diving in very shallow water. On Wednesday I was on a tutorial excavation dive with Niels B. and he thought that my hand fanning skills needed improvement . So he arranged a special evening course for Eva and me where he showed us the right and wrong ways of hand fanning, lying across two chairs with a dredge head in his hand (fig. 2). This was very rewarding and nonetheless, very fun.

This week I haven’t been in the water that much. I have mostly been on land learning how to tend the divers properly (fig. 3).

Being a tender basically means that you are setting up equipment, helping the divers getting their equipment on, talking to them on the communication system and making sure that they are all right, getting the pumps for the dredges started and handing them the things they ask for etc. It is very good to get an all-round experience of what is going on at the site and see what it takes to make it work properly.

I believe, that taking part in a maritime archaeological excavation is a very fulfilling experience and especially being at the ZHP is very enjoyable and I am looking forward to the next 3 weeks of learning and improving my underwater excavation skills (fig. 4).