News - Week 4: like a layered Birthday cake

Farewell dinner for Charles - Vassilis lectures on the fish on the grill while Bjoern does the cooking. All fish shot by Yiannis and Bjoern free diving in the sea around Serifos during the weekend.

Konstantina after diving - with all the talented women in our field we will soon have adopt an equal opportunities policy for men.

A visitor at the site – Panagiotis explains what we are doing and why we are doing it – fell free to drop by, we love talking about our work.

Author: Konstantina Vafiadou and Bjoern Lovén

Konstantina Vafiadou reports

This week was a one of transition. Charles went back to England after he modified and brought to perfection his improvisations of the surface supply equipment (model 97 B!!!) - and we had a great farewell dinner. While Chrysanthi also left (just for a week) after giving instructions on excavation procedures in Trench 2, we gained Panagiotis Athanasopoulos, who has worked for many seasons on the ZHP.

Aristea and I continued excavating Trench 2 where we reached a new layer that may represent another closed deposit. We found more charcoal, the possible remains of rope, and an olive stone. We hope that next week will produce more organic material.

Mads, Andrew and Vasilis continued cleaning structure U:1 (Unidentified Structure 1). They also surveyed the same structure with David’s help. The survey procedure requires 3 people: a diver, a “prism-boy” who must be steady since he has to level the pole, and David who shoots.

Even though two “vital” people are missing this week, the excavation continued as normal. With each new day all the members (and especially the new ones) feel more confident with excavation procedures, the equipment and the diving itself. And we never tire of the many people who pass by the site and out of curiosity decide to stop and visit.

A brief comment from Bjoern Lovén

Last week’s survey of the monumental wall revealed that this structure was built on an incline. This means that we are dealing with a side-wall and not the foundations of a colonnade. The inclination will allow us to reconstruct the gradient of the superstructure within a reasonable range of precision, and it will give us more data to determine the length of these buildings based on our analysis of the ancient coast line.

All indications points towards a 5th-century BC date for this wall dividing two shipsheds. As I write I can see this massive wall built up to a height of six to seven meters and the empty space along its sides filled with two swift triremes...