2017 Season: Week 4
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Stelida Naxos Archaeological Project, broadcasting from Naxos, Greece. We’ve just completed our fourth week on the excavation, and oh, is it exciting as ever!
Trench Progress
With more than 10 active trenches currently on the hill, all team members are working tirelessly to dig into deeper contexts (layers) and document small soil changes and findings carefully. With trenches on both the east and west side of the hill, we’re digging to find correlations and connections between both sides. Having matching layers strengthens our evidence of when certain events would have happened.
This is also the first year where we have dug on the east side of the hill—and it is already becoming more and more populated than the west!
Those darn boulders!
A number of our trenches have encountered big boulders this week, which make digging extremely difficult. Because boulders are natural objects and not human-made artefacts, we don’t keep them (they’re also really heavy!). In fact, we need to remove them as they block the digging area of much of the trenches.
Cue George, our amazing Naxian marble-working superhuman rock-smasher. George works with marbles in a village inside the island, and came all the way to Stelida to help us remove some boulders, using valuable local knowledge of stoneworking.
Most amazingly—George does it with a single sledgehammer and his bare hands.
Public Engagement on Naxos
SNAP has always been very interested in actively engaging with members of the public and creating conversations to help us all learn more about our human story. We believe that our collective knowledge of archaeology cannot be made without the continuous dialogue between us and local publics, all with their unique knowledge and lived experiences of the island of Naxos (we also use ‘publics’ because we believe in a diversity of public communities).
To help work towards this goal, this season on Naxos, we’ve designed and printed bilingual (English and Greek) A5 pamphlets to give out to interested members of the public (such as tourists) as well as local citizens of the island.
Especially in parts of the island with little Internet connectivity and social media usage, mobile and online engagement may not always be the most practical way of engaging with the public. These handouts act as a bridge between us and those interested in learning more about our project—think, a mix between a business card and a postcard. Snazzy.
We’ve printed 200 copies and have been actively using them to engage with everyone from interested local taverna and shop owners to tourists and travellers from all over the world—especially after work hours and on weekends.
Special Guests
This week Didem Turan (from Ege University) joined our project for a week. She is currently studying the Aegean Mesolithic from the viewpoint of sites in Western Anatolia, and was very excited to work briefly on our project. Thanks for all of your help, Didem, and good luck!
We also had Tom Strasser (from the Department of Art History, and Ancient Art and Archaeology at Providence College) visit us on site as well as in Vivlos. Tom has worked on the first Palaeolithic discovered on Crete, and currently works on the Mesolithic site of Damnoni on Southwestern Crete.
Life on Naxos
Of all the places to dig in the world, a Greek island is not exactly the worst place to do so. After work hours, and on our day(s) off, we have the incredible opportunity to explore the island and become immersed in the local culture, sights and sounds.
Part of team was able to climb Mount Zas on a (luckily) cool and cloudy day recently. Perfect hiking weather! This mountain is located very close to a beautiful town named Filoti, which is a quick drive from Vivlos (Tripodes) where we are staying.
On this mountain is Zas Cave, where God Zeus is said to have been raised before becoming the ruler of Olympus. It was excavated in 1962 with finds from various historic periods (Neolithic, Roman, etc.) — some of which are now at the Naxos archaeological museum. You have to see this #squadgoals photo the group took from deep inside the cave.
After exploring the cave, they climbed another hour or two to the summit of Mount Zas, which is actually—at 1003 metres—the single highest point in the entire Greek Cyclades region. Impressive. (Read more about Zas here.)
Others visited the Temple of Demeter, a temple near the village of Sangri. Made from Naxian marble, this temple is named after Demeter, the goddess of grain and the harvest. As a result it was built near fertile areas and lands. The temple’s remains were discovered by archaeologist Nikolaos Kontoleon in 1949, and excavations lasted from 1976 to 1995. (To learn more, click through here.)
The 7th century Virgin Drosiani (Παναγία Δροσιανή) one of Naxos’ oldest churches—was also visited. (Read more here.)
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