News - Week 8: The Zea puzzle

The ‘Happy Herring’ with his favorite diver Andrzej

Another day at the office - Mads is describing shipshed structures

Another day at the office - Mads is describing shipshed structures

This year's dive number 200 was celebrated this week!!

Author: Chryssanthi Papadopoulou and Mads Moeller Nielsen

We have now successfully completed another eight-week season in Zea. The harbour and its inhabitants (including fish) have co-existed with us for nine years now and as a goodbye gift, lots of small fish and cuttlefish gathered around the divers and trenches without any fear and with curiosity regarding our dive-gear and the disturbed sediments. Note that the amount of cuttlefish we have seen this year is considerably larger than any other season, which makes us hope that the murky harbour is gradually being cleaned.

So, this week, along with bidding farewell to our fishy friends (especially the ‘Happy Herring’), we wrapped up our work in Zea. This year we have finished excavating a very large area of shipshed and quarry remains, we have surveyed very complicated structures, in order to understand a multi-disturbed context of mingled structures, we have written long descriptions of what lies in the water, and we have backfilled all sensitive areas to protect them from anchors and anchor chains. However, after having employed over the last nine years dozens of diving-archaeologists, hundreds of dives, thousands of hours of underwater excavation and survey, and hundred thousands of survey points with AMAZING results, we still have a lot of questions left to answer. Naturally, this provides us with more focused intentions for our future operations.

We are now looking forward to our work in Mikrolimano, a new environment with a new setup and focus. Our area of operation proposes also new dangers, since it is an area of increased boat-activity and is superseded by modern jetties. Additionally, in some of the locales of the trenches, we have to deal with large concentrations of modern rubbish disposal. Nonetheless, we are excited to be passing from the study of the actual structures (shipsheds) to the study of the safe-keeping of the structures (fortification of the harbour). We expect to have stimulating results very soon!