News - Week 3: FINALLY we find organic material

New team member David behind the total station.

Andrzej ‘steady-hand’ Swiech holds the stick while Mads documents the monumental wall.

Chryssanthi getting ready to dive.

Mads relaxing in the sun after diving a LOT the last three weeks.

Author: Bjoern Loven

This week we welcome a new team member, surveyor David Scahill, who has grown accustomed to monumental architecture from his detailed study of the South Stoa at Corinth.

Trench 2 has so far yielded three closed contexts, all containing diagnostic (i.e., datable) ceramics, but this Friday we finally found organic material in the third closed context – charcoal and a twig – enough for carbon dating. The context in question is a dense clayey layer which offers very good conditions for the preservation of organic material. The possibility of finding organic material in the interface between sea and shore has been one of our main working hypothesises, and now it is finally being realized after seven years of excavation. We hope that future, large-scale excavations of this area will produce such wooden artefacts as broken or discarded trireme oar blades, hull elements, tool handles, ramp features or debris from the superstructure etc. This is wishful thinking of course, but now that the right preservation conditions are found to be present, the chance is now real - and we are determined to find the needle(s) in the haystack!!

Work in Trench 1 has been completed. It has also produced two closed contexts, one of which is directly related to the shipsheds; when Mette Schaldemose has studied the finds after conservation, we should have a much better understanding of the chronology of this part of the shipshed complex at Zea. This week also saw the surface cleaning and documentation of a monumental wall which either divided two shipsheds or created a stylobate for a colonnade.

Our first three weeks have been running perfectly, due in large part to a very dedicated team in the field under the watchful eye of our new field director, Chryssanthi Papadopoulou. We can still do better – but not much.