bearsproject – Page 10 – The Bays of East Attica Regional Survey

November 23, 2020November 23, 2020

Maritime Adventures of BEARS 2020

As described in a previous blog post, the BEARS 2020 season was not a very large or complicated initiative: 3 people cataloguing pottery in a museum, and not even all at the same time! So suffice it to say that the scene in Porto Rafti in August was very mellow compared to your average fieldwork season. It turns out that not having any proper fieldwork going on opens up a lot of unstructured free time in a person’s summer schedule. With no logistics of arrival and accommodation to organize, no ultra early mornings spent frantically getting ready for a day out in the field, no students to supervise or worry about, and very few opportunities to stress out about sloppy data management, it’s easy to find time for activities that would otherwise seem impossible to fit in amongst all of the controlled collective bedlam.

Since many of our research questions about the history and archaeology of the Porto Rafti area concern its maritime connections, it seemed like a good idea to take the opportunity to see what the maritime environment of the bay and surrounding waterways was like. I’m definitely a creature of the mountain: most people would be horrified at the idea of someone spending three months in Greece during the summer and never swimming once, but I have achieved this feat many, many times in the last several years! Like everyone else, I enjoy gazing upon the aquamarine splendour of the beautiful Aegean Sea, but that’s about the extent of my usual engagement with the watery portions of the Mediterranean. Before last summer I’d also been on a private boat in Greece exactly once – when I convinced a guy who was in charge of going around collecting trash in a boat at the beach of Balos on the Gramvousa peninsula of Crete to take me around to some of the abandoned islands in that area (I wanted to photograph rusty shipwrecks).

But 2020 is nothing if not a year to reconsider our priorities, and this summer I realized (a) that I really need to swim in the beautiful sea as much as possible! and (b) that it was ridiculous to try to understand the archaeology of East Attica without seeing the region from a ship’s-eye view. Fortunately, Captain Vasilis, who took us to and from Raftis island during the 2019 season, was around this summer and had some time to help out with a few modest sailing trips.

As someone with very little experience of Mediterranean sailing, I was really struck by many aspects of these small adventures, but most of my observations are surely so banal as to be completely uninteresting to anyone who’s gone around in a sailing boat before. I found the experience of time, and the cadence of its passing, at sea to be remarkably different than what I’m used to from traveling around, by foot or car, on land, something that I have a LOT of experience doing. Although from afar the Aegean in the summer usually looks all tranquil and idyllic as a place to be, the actual reality of being in the middle of the sea amidst churning swells and strong currents feels far from either of those concepts. But, I won’t go on about my naive amazement at such basic sensorial aspects of life out amongst the waves.

One observation resulting from sailing out to Euboea and back that seemed of general interest, though, is that the local topography of Porto Rafti is really, really hard to make out from a decent distance at sea, even to someone like me, who has spent years obsessively staring at maps of the area and hiking up to every available terrestrial vantage point. Once you’re in the bay, of course, you can see all of the familiar features, islands, and peninsulas that stand out as distinctive from bird’s eye view. But as we sailed back towards the Attic coast from the east, I struggled even to find the location of the bay – Raftis island and Koroni peninsula largely disappeared into the mountainous background of the interior, and from certain angles I couldn’t even identify the distinctive dragon’s back ridge of the Perati massif. And I have hiked up that ridge nearly a hundred times at this point! Eventually I figured out that the only really distinctive “tell” for the bay’s location was the sharp “beak” at the base of the Mavronori cliffs between Porto Rafti and Kaki Thalassa. Only when we got quite close to the bay’s mouth did the silhouettes of Raftis and Koroni become clear, contrasted against the concrete-villa-speckled amphitheatrical background of the mainland beyond. Surely it would have been more difficult to make them out even at close range prior to modern development.

This made me start thinking about what an advantage this apparent hiddenness might give to people living in the bay – it’s a little bit of a sneaky spot, at least from some perspectives! At the same time, locals often talk about how ships caught in storms in the Petalian gulf are often blown right into the bay, so I guess that might encourage folks to learn to recognize the bay from afar, perhaps as I did using the southern cliffs as a navigational landmark. Anyway, these observations will definitely play a role in our interpretations of choices to exploit the location in different periods going forward.

A more explicitly research-focused expedition (at least in terms of the personnel involved!) took place soon after the trip to Euboea. Together with our Attic archaeological colleagues Nikos Papadimitriou and Sylviane Dederix, both of whom are working at the site of Thorikos, we decided to check out the maritime seascape between our survey area in Porto Rafti and the harbour at Lavrio, where Thorikos is located. We are pretty sure that the two areas had some cultural links in antiquity, or at least the artifactual assemblages from the two areas share some interesting characteristics, especially for the Early Bronze and Late Bronze Ages. Some people have even suggested that the prosperity of Porto Rafti in the LH IIIC period (the 12th century) had something to do with control over the metal resources around Lavrio! That seems pretty far-fetched to me, but it certainly makes sense that any link between the two ports would have been more maritime than terrestrial. In any case, we thought it would be interesting for both projects to see what it was really like to sail the route.

The total distance as the crow flies from Porto Rafti to Thorikos is about 15km, and the sail along the coast looks pretty straightforward, although – characteristic of the coastline of Greece generally – the intervening landscape contains many interesting little coves and peninsulas that we figured might make pleasant stops along the way. In the event, the weather was a little heavy on the day we sailed, so none of the small beaches between the two sites were very appealing stopping places, and we just made a direct shot, under sail, with no motor, from the Limani in Porto Rafti town to the industrial environs of Lavrio.

We sailed out of the bay between Raftis and Koroni, then headed straight for the dramatic cliffs that mark the southern terminus of our BEARS survey area – I have clambered up onto these cliffs at least a dozen times, but seeing them from the sea was just as cool as getting sweeping views north and south of Porto Rafti after hiking up to the top.

With Captain Vasilis and his first mate Odysseas, we had a rousing debate about what kind of animal the cliffs most closely resemble. I won’t say what conclusion we reached, so that you can come up with your own independent theories. Aside from their zoomorphic nature, the cliffs look very impressive from below. The geology – gnarly, aggressively folded up metamorphic-type rocks – looks very similar to that which characterizes the understories of the Raftis and Koroni islets, which is not at all surprising given their spatial relationship, I suppose.

Immediately to the south of the great rocks of the Mavronori cliff is an amazingly gigantic unfinished concrete complex, which I hear was supposed to have been a hotel once it was finished. As opposed to the case of the zoomorphic resemblances of the cliffs, there was universal agreement about the beauty of this stately ruin. In general, I have to say that Kaki Thalassa, the toponym for the area south of Porto Rafti, should get a prize for per capita horrendous unfinished modern developments – which is too bad, because the natural beauty of the place is really spectacular. This area is a good reminder that we are truly living in an era that future archaeologists will know as the Period of Infinite Modern Trash.

South of Kaki Thalassa, the next landmark we passed is the Akra Aspro, a collapsing peninsula of impressive white limestone. Apparently it is a popular destination for Athenian rock climbers these days, although it looks like it would be a dangerous place to climb, given that it seems to be shedding boulders on a regular basis. There are also a number of sea caves used by fishermen in the immediate vicinity.

Most of the coast between Kaki Thalassa and Lavrio is characterized by low, barren, rolling hills, almost universally developed with beach villas and small resorts. Many reinforced concrete ‘skeletons’ of houses stand as an eloquent testament to the devastation of the economic crisis of the 2010s, which led to the abandonment of plans to complete second houses due to lack of surplus income. Or at least, that is what my Greek informants tell me. Probably the individual stories are more complicated; sometimes I think it would be interesting to do some kind of systematic study and try to figure out the exact story behind all of these abandoned building sites in East Attica.

Anyway, once we rounded Cape Mavrovouni, about halfway through the journey, we could see the majestic smokestacks of the Lavrio power station! Behold, the fires of industry! Fires of industry are one of my all time favorites.

After we had progressed a bit further south, the site of Thorikos came into view beyond the smokestacks. It’s the distinctive pointy-summited hill to the right of the smokestacks marked in the photo below.

Ultimately we arrived in the bay next to the site of Thorikos in about two hours. It is a very different scene than the one we had departed from so recently – there are many different kinds of industrial facilities all around, and big shipping freighters the likes of which I have never seen up north in Porto Rafti. Despite the somewhat Mad Max-like surroundings, the area is popular with windsurfers, so I guess it probably tends to be windier than the average location along the coast.

The excitement of my colleagues from Thorikos at approaching their site by sea was clear – there was much taking of photos and general speculation about the importance of the peculiar rock formation at the peak of the hill of Thorikos as a navigational landmark for approaching sailors. It is a very distinctive looking hill, and its green ophiolitic boulders stand out quite clearly in the landscape.

After we’d satisfied ourselves with such distractions, we thought about making a traverse over to Makronisos, a currently uninhabited island just to the east of Lavrio that used to be used as a prison for political dissidents, which sounds like a lovely place for a swim, right? However, the sea was angry! As the north winds were picking up Captain Vasilis thought it would be best if we turned to start the trip back towards Porto Rafti, where he knew of a sheltered place to hang out and enjoy some cleaner waters near the bay.

The trip back north was INDEED an adventure! We had to sail a bit farther away from the coast than we did on the way down, because according to Vasilis the chop gets significantly worse closer to the land. The waves were rolling with a vengeance and there was a lot of fun to be had as the prow rose and fell with the swells, making successive dramatic leaps and crashes. The experience was very elemental: the sound of the thwack as the hull slammed into the surface, the cold salt sprays splashing across the deck, the bluster of the northern winds, etc. I think the weather changed somewhat during the course of the day, but the biggest difference was just that we were going into rather than with the wind, which apparently changes everything! It took us about twice as long to get back north as it had to come the other way, and we had to use the motor. Without that, I’m not sure we couldn’t have made it back at all. Yeah, yeah, basic sailor stuff, I know…

After a few hours of being bashed around in the boat, we were happy to relax in the sheltered waters south of Perati island, just to the north of Porto Rafti bay, near Brauron. Everyone had a nice swim, and Odysseas even showed us how he catches octopi – don’t worry, though, we released the baby specimen we found so that it could grow up to become a full size delicious octopus for some taverna-goer in a year or so. As evening rolled in, we headed back home to the harbor, and were relieved to find much calmer and smoother waters in the shelter that the bay provided.

It was cool to see the coastal landscape from a new perspective, and to get to know some amazing colleagues working nearby to our project in East Attica. But spending the entire day on a sailboat is pretty intense! I woke up the next day with a vicious sunburn, even though I’d already been in Greece spending a lot of time outdoors for two months at that point, and a new appreciation for the realities of life at sea. I’d say that maritime travel is both more boring and more exciting than I imagined it might be. I also think I had been underestimating how complicated something simple like a trip from Porto Rafti to Lavrio could be depending on things like the weather and currents. All three of us agreed that there is a lot of potential for future maritime explorations in the future. We hope this will be the first of many reports along these lines, and that there will be opportunities to take the rest of our team members out on the open seas in later seasons.

October 26, 2020October 30, 2020

A Lecture about Postpalatial Raftis

BEARS fans might be interested in tuning into a lecture about the project’s work on Raftis island, which will take place on the evening of Tuesday October 27th. The talk is for a local historical society in Marietta, Ohio, so it will be aimed at a general audience. Anyone can register to watch online via this link.

Update: If you missed the lecture and would like to watch a video recording, it can be accessed here (with a suggested donation to the sponsor, a small non-profit organization offering historical programming in the small Appalachian community of Marietta).

October 20, 2020October 20, 2020

A Lecture by Catherine Pratt, BEARS co-director

Members or fans of the BEARS project might be interested in an upcoming lecture by our very own co-director Dr. Catherine Pratt. The lecture is taking place Thursday October 22 at 4pm Eastern time as part of the University of Toronto’s Mediterranean Archaeology Collaborative Specialization speaker series. Here is a link where you may register to attend via zoom.

October 16, 2020October 16, 2020

Archaeologist Confessionals Volume 10: Elliott Fuller

As the semester really gets rolling along here in Toronto, the epic saga of the BEARS team member interview series continues! This week we’re bringing you a conversation with one of our founding graduate student team members, Elliott Fuller, who is also a PhD student in Classics and the Mediterranean Archaeology Collaborative Specialization (MACS) program at the U of T. In fact, Elliott is a foundational member of that program: a member of the inaugural MACS cohort, and the first Toronto Classics student to pursue his PhD with a research focus on the Late Bronze Age. Such pioneering bravery is to be commended, but Elliott is also well known as a master of all things Classics – he made the MACS faculty proud by absolutely crushing all of his Greek and Latin language exams, etc., over the last several years, and continues to prove that sometimes Bronze Agers are just better at everything. Speaking of superlatives, in last summer’s field season Elliott was unanimously voted “Best BEARS Beard” and also got the prize for finding the largest ‘sherd’ of pottery I’ve ever seen come from a survey project. He currently resides in Victoria, British Columbia, but I recently managed to catch him on Zoom for a chat about all things BEARS, archaeology, and pandemic hobbies.

SCM: You are currently pursuing a PhD in the Classics department at the University of Toronto. Can you tell us what got you interested in Classics and why you decided to pursue a PhD in the subject?

EJF: When I was starting university, I thought I wanted to do anthropology, so I had signed up for intro courses in that, but I had some electives, so I took Latin as well. I had a really great Latin teacher, I was also very good at it , and I liked the challenge of learning a different language. It was also wonderful to learn about Roman culture through the language. But what really sealed it for me was that summer, after my first year, I went on a study tour of Greece Traveling in Greece for 4 weeks and seeing all of these sites and eating the food, was amazing. That was definitely what convinced me to do the Greek and Roman Studies degree at UVic.

SCM: Very understandable! And you decided to continue on to the PhD for similar reasons?

EJF: I definitely had it in my mind that if I went on to grad school I could continue learning about this material that I really love and am interested in. And there is also continued potential to keep going to Greece and continuing to do archaeology. Then of course the dream is to eventually, not get paid to go to the Mediterranean, but at least get your expenses covered to do that continuing into the long term.

SCM: Yeah, I feel like we are on the same wavelength. I was certainly very motivated by the idea of spending as much time as possible in the Mediterranean when I veered towards academia/archaeology as a career. Now, you said that your entrée into the field was with Latin, but now you are doing something very different from studying Latin literature! What kind of research are you working on in your program, and how are you doing in terms of progressing through grad school at Toronto?

EJF: My research at the moment focuses on trade in the Aegean Bronze Age; that’s the broad topic. More specifically I am interested in trying to reconstruct the role of traders in Late Bronze Age society and looking at the role of coastal sites in exchanges and interactions that occur through commerce. I’m hoping to explore those things further in my major field exam, which is what I am working on right now. I’m currently making my way through the reading list for that. I’m hoping to also bring in some evidence from the eastern Mediterranean, including the texts from Ugarit, which deal a lot with merchants and traders. In general, I’m also very interested in what’s happening in the eastern Mediterranean.

SCM: Interesting! And how did this come about, that you went from being good at Latin to getting bogged down in the crazy mixed up scholarly world of Late Bronze Age trade in the eastern Mediterranean?

EJF: I think it goes back again to the study tour I did in Greece with Brendan Burke. He works on the Aegean Bronze Age, specializing in textiles. He took us to all kinds of sites, but I think he had a particular passion for the Bronze Age sites, like Knossos and Mycenae, and that definitely impacted my interests. Something about seeing Mycenae and knowing how old it is but seeing also how monumental it is, that was really exciting to me. I ended up doing an honor’s thesis with the same professor, which was more on Iron Age material, on burials; but then I did an MA thesis on Bronze Age mortuary rituals. I also completed a program at the British School on Linear B, and wrote a short paper on inscribed stirrup jars, which is kind of how I got into the whole trade issue. In that paper I was looking at how these jars circulated and how some of them seem to misappropriated or end up not where one would really expect to find them. And that’s a direction I’m still going in my major field. I guess it’s kind of a convoluted trajectory.

SCM: All good research trajectories are convoluted! What would be the fun in knowing where you are going to end up when you start a research project? To me it seems extremely strange when people actually end up working on what they said they would work on three years ago or whenever. To me that is just not the right way to do it!

I suppose you are now reaching the critical moment of academic life, when you will never be in a formal class again, or take many more exams. Looking back at the more formal stages of your program, what would you say has been your favorite or most valuable course or experience that you have taken in the program so far?

EJF: The initial stages where I was taking Greek and Latin prose comp and studying for the Greek and Latin exams were really intense and stressful, but that was also really productive. I learned Greek and Latin really well! That was an initial trial by fire – not so pleasant but very good to have done. Definitely one of the highlights was the MACS program and the seminar. That’s one of the things that drew me to Toronto, was the potential of studying the Mediterranean as a unit, and also from so many different perspectives and archaeological approaches. and then of course also the fieldwork component was obviously great – the BEARS season was amazing. So, I’d say definitely the entire MACS program has been the highlight of the PhD so far.

SCM: I hope you’re not just saying that because you think that’s what I want to hear!

EJF: I know, it sounds like flattery! But it’s all genuinely true!

SCM: Well, it’s good to know that things went okay – you know you were in the very first year of that program, so you were the guinea pigs! But I’m glad you didn’t necessarily feel that way. Now, time to indulge your interviewer’s inane curiosities: you are a transplant to Toronto from the West Coast. I am still relatively new to this wonderful culture called Canada. Can you tell me the main differences that you see between West and East Coast Canadian culture? Are there clearly different cultures? Or is it just basically the weather?

EJF: Hmmmm, well, I think it’s definitely the weather, but there is also just a different feeling. Perhaps they’re related. Maybe the weather out west makes people more relaxed . But I’m not sure – there is something more than that. People in Victoria are really friendly and relaxed in a way that…. well, there are definitely people that are friendly in Toronto, but it seems like people are much more stressed and more career-driven . The weather in coastal BC is kind of Mediterranean. It’s hot and dry in the summer and then cool and wet in the winter. So, you don’t get the extreme cold temperatures in the winter, or these winters that seem to drag on forever, that make people with Seasonal Affective Disorder miserable, that kind of thing. Another difference is that in Victoria you are always really close to parks and lakes and the water, so it’s very easy to get out and be somewhere beautiful if you are stressed out or just want to escape the concrete jungle. Toronto has a lot of parks, but it’s a different scenario.

SCM: You have to be a little careful, because people might call you an environmental determinist! But, yeah, I hear what you are saying. Endless urban winters can drive anyone a little nuts. It’s an interesting answer too because it sounds a lot like what people would say to a similar question about east and west coast cities in the US. So maybe that is a vote in favor of your environmental determinism position. Same on both sides of the border. Now, you have also worked and traveled quite a bit in Greece: how about the major differences between Greece and Canada?

EJF: That’s somewhat tricky. For some reason whenever I land in Athens I am immediately filled with this sense of profound well-being. Maybe it’s related to the fact that when I am in Greece I don’t have the normal responsibilities that I have when I am home But it’s almost like an entirely different sensory experience. There are different smells and sights that you don’t have in Canadian cities. Everything in Athens seems more vivid somehow – stronger smells, louder noises, just more in general. In a good way! I think being in Greece is just generally amazing – the weather, the food – everything is so good. And you are so close to the water all of the time, there are beautiful beaches everywhere, and you have access to these remains of the ancient past. You can see and feel the long-term history of the place more immediately than you can here. Obviously, Canada has a long-term history, too, it’s just not as visible. I guess Greece just seems like a better place to be for any human in ways that are hard to describe.

SCM: It is a feeling as much as anything; it is always challenging to articulate what a place really ‘feels’ like in a different place. I like your point about the smells. My favorite thing is when you are walking through a plateia early in the morning and there is a bakery nearby, and the smell of the wonderful things emerging from that bakery is so strong and so good. I love that smell so much. Someone needs to open a Greek bakery on my street in Toronto. My quality of life would increase immensely.

EJF: Yeah, totally! And there’s also this factor of having so many good and happy memories associated with those senses and smells too.

SCM: All of the best things seem to happen in the Mediterranean; that has been my experience! I think there is this other factor of people around you being happier, too, which tends to make one happy. I love that it’s okay to go out and sit for a coffee with your friends for 4-5 hours in the middle of the day and nobody is worried about it. In Toronto, I feel like peoples’ heads would explode!

EJF: Yeah, I love the way that life really circulates around socializing with friends and family there, rather than people molding the time for those human connections around and in between whatever arbitrary work tasks that we think are more important. In Greece, I think people are better at taking time to relax and talk with people they care about. I think that’s something we should probably do more of.

SCM: Even as something of an obsessive workaholic, I totally agree with you. Anyway, Greece is the best – unfortunately this summer most people in the field were not able to spend much time there, and certainly most actual fieldwork was canceled. However, last summer, of course, you came and worked on the BEARS project in Porto Rafti. What did you think about the BEARS project? How about the town of Porto Rafti as a place to live?

EJF: Well, in terms of living in Porto Rafti, one thing to say for sure is that our accommodations were amazing. I have been pretty lucky on projects to always have a roof over my head; I’ve never had to live in a tent or anything. But the BEARS houses were by far the swankiest place I’ve ever gotten to stay on a project, which obviously makes life more pleasant! Porto Rafti is a bit unusual compared to other Greek towns I’ve stayed in, just in terms of the way that the streets are organized. There aren’t a lot of sidewalks. We had to dodge a lot of cars sometimes. But the town itself is very beautiful and it is in a very beautiful place. I didn’t really get to know the place or explore it as much as I wanted to. Even though we had a very generous stipend, we mostly stayed in and cooked meals at home. I’m hoping that when we go back I will get out and see more of the scene in Porto Rafti. That’s the plan for 2021.

In terms of the experience, it was my first time doing survey, and my impression of survey was that you slog through fields and you maybe find a few battered sherds, and that is considered a victory. But BEARS was not like that! We were finding so much amazing pottery on the surface all of the time. Every day we would make a new spectacular find. That was obviously pretty exciting and very good for morale! It made for a really interesting and constantly surprising field season. I thought it was very cool that we had these sites in the same region, but each was from a totally different chronological time period and the assemblages of each were totally distinct from one another. It was fascinating to see how this one little corner of Greece had been used in so many different ways over this huge period of time. That to me is really interesting.

SCM: That is a good point! We have a huge diachronic range on these sites, but each site is totally distinct in how the landscape is being exploited and the types of artifacts that are abundant. So, everyone has a different strategy for dealing with a physical container that was pretty much the same through time, which must turn on different ways that people reacted to that landscape.

EJF: Yeah, and of course the big mystery is the whole situation with Late Bronze Age and Late Roman on the island. It seems like the two assemblages are pretty different from one another, but I wonder if the two groups were doing the same thing living out there.

SCM: I have some theories about that! But they shall remain secret for now. How about you, since you’re a Bronze Age scholar, what’s your best idea about how to explain what’s going on out on Raftis in the Bronze Age?

EJF: I don’t have the answer! It is really interesting, because the prevailing narrative, that this is a refuge of some kind, does not really make sense with the finds. It’s right after the collapse and people are fleeing, and they are hiding in these marginal environments…okay, but what is happening on Raftis does not seem to fit that. Because if you are fleeing for your life you would not have so much fancy cooking pottery and so many varieties of fancy painted pottery and ritual vessels. And the finds from Perati are quite dissonant with the idea of a refuge settlement too. I was just reading an article by Shelley Wachsmann arguing that the Pylos rower tablets refer to an orderly evacuation of the palace in boats, which I don’t really agree with. But one of the things he says is that nobody would take pottery with them in such a situation because it is just not so valuable. I guess by that logic if the people on Raftis were evacuating someplace else, then it would be strange that they had so much fancy stuff. Anyway, the point is that whatever is going on out there, I do not think these people fit into the normal definition we have of ‘refugees’ or the destitute escapees of some palatial disaster. Maybe there is an attempt, like at Tiryns, to retain some degree of the symbolic prestige of palatial life after the collapse, but obviously with Raftis they are moving to a completely new and typologically distinct physical space. It is all very peculiar!

SCM: The enigma of Raftis continues – we’ll have to keep chewing on it through the next several years of work! Now, one major bummer of 2020 was that we couldn’t go to Greece to continue working on Raftis, but there have been many other ways in which 2020 has been very challenging/depressing. How about the flipside of that coin – are there any ways in which the pandemic or related restrictions have improved your life lately?

EJF: Actually, yeah. One thing that I found initially was that the situation led me to develop a very healthy routine, which I did not have before. I was running and exercising at home and doing things on a normal schedule. For example, we have a grocery store right across from our house, but instead of going there every couple of days to grab whatever, we would do one big shop once a week. I think that also helped us save money. In a weird way I think the lockdown made me a better person! Besides that, I have been getting a lot of knitting done – I have made a lot of new knit items, which has been good for my mental health. And it gets us ready for winter.

SCM: Wow, good for you! Talk about keeping a positive perspective – time for a healthy routine and a productive hobby. Sounds like you should start an advice column for those of us without such a great strategy. Let’s end on that positive note, I guess: thanks so much for talking with me today, and good luck with the knitting and reading!

October 11, 2020October 12, 2020

BEARS 2020: Small but Mighty

Like most everything associated with archaeological research, our carefully laid plans for a 2020 field season of the BEARS survey derailed spectacularly sometime around late March. In Toronto, the spring that followed was cold and grim in pretty much every imaginable way.

However, by early July, virus cases had waned to vanishingly small numbers in many parts of Europe, and Canada had gotten the pandemic situation sufficiently under control that Canadian residents were among the few non-EU passport-holders allowed to enter the coveted Schengen zone.

Even after it became clear that Canadians could in theory travel to Greece, we never considered trying to hack together a late-summer season of fieldwork with students or whatever archaeologists happened to be hanging around Athens or anything like that. However, we did have the idea that, since we’d found an unexpectedly large amount of material in 2019, it would be useful if we could at least get a tiny skeleton crew to spend some time in the Brauron museum working through our backlog of finds, so that everything would be up to speed heading into 2021. Although most folks ended up not being able to travel to Greece at all, or in time, we did manage to get three BEARS team members on the ground to work on cataloguing and study of our finds from 2019 this past August (no Goldilocks, unfortunately). The purpose of this post is to provide an update on the very tiny BEARS 2020 project, such as it was.

Skeleton season BEAR #1 was me, yer faithful blog correspondent and project co-director. After a week of scuffling with Air Canada agents (even as a person with Canadian permanent resident bona fides, it sure is not great to be traveling on a US passport these days) and the acquisition of official-looking transit papers from the extremely helpful Greek consulate in Toronto, I flew to Athens on July 11. Coming on the heels of 4 months of barely leaving my apartment, the trip felt majorly miraculous. My first priority was to get up into the mountains for some cobweb-shaking-off hikes among the big peaks of the Pindos, which took a couple of weeks. Once that was out of my system, I settled into Porto Rafti and Brauron to get down to the business of bulk cataloging finds from BEARS 2019.

In addition to a whole series of forms containing information about survey units, the BEARS database integrates two finds catalogues: one for inventoried finds and one for bulk finds. I know databases are not the most exciting topic for blog posts, so I won’t go into too much detail about the many wonderful intricacies of the forms. The idea is that every single object collected in the survey is represented/accounted for in the bulk finds catalogue and given a bulk finds number, while only select objects (say, sherds that are very well-preserved, very datable, etc.) are pulled out, given an inventory number, and described/analyzed in more detail.

Our finds experts are the ones who will ultimately go carefully through the pottery from each unit and make the decisions about which finds should be inventoried, since they are the ones who are trained to know which sherds might be especially informative or important. Cataloguing bulk pottery is not quite as sensitive a task. The idea is to produce a comprehensive log of finds from a unit, so that someone can look at the form for any individual survey unit and get an immediate sense of its finds: how many krater rims or kylix stems, what distribution of sherds from different periods, fine wares vs. coarse wares, etc. To me it also seems just generally desirable to have a specific number attached to every find from the survey, however worn or seemingly uninteresting, from the point of view of Stackenblochen principles.

In practice bulk cataloguing involves trying to impose some kind of informational order on the chaos of a bag of unsorted sherds: sorting coarse and fine wares, separating out different kinds of feature sherds (bases, handles, rims, etc.) or sherds that all come from the same vessel shape, that kind of thing. Then each sherd or group of sherds is given a lot number and entered into the bulk catalogue, along with basic information: shape, fabric description, etc.

Since our small 2019 lab team was overwhelmed just keeping up with basic processing of all of the finds we brought in from the field, literally zero bulk cataloguing was done last summer, which is not so great, since we collected over 6,000 sherds. I lost a fair amount of sleep over the winter thinking about the sorry state of our finds catalogues, to be honest. In a way it was really helpful to have 2020 “off” from fieldwork so that there was time to catch up.

Unfortunately, I am also the last person that anyone would want to be tackling this activity. This summer was the first time that I’ve spent any time whatsoever working on finds in the lab, and I felt very fish out of water getting into it and trying to make sense of our many, many large bags of pottery. It turns out that it is helpful to have, say, at least a basic grasp of the vocabulary that ceramicists use to describe things like fabrics when cataloguing thousands upon thousands of survey sherds.

Fortunately, I was joined in the first week of August by Skeleton Crew BEAR #2, Bartek Lis, who drove/ferried down from Poland. Bartek knows more about pottery, especially LH IIIC pottery in our region, than pretty much anyone. He’s also been restudying the pottery from the neighboring Perati cemetery, so he is definitely the Mycenaean ceramicist that we need to have studying our Late Bronze Age material. I also happen to have been friends with Bartek for almost my entire adult life – he is one of the very first people that I ever met on a Greek archaeological project, in fact: back at Mitrou in 2004. I learned an immense amount from working with him in the museum, and he was able to get me up to speed on the basic characteristics of our Raftis assemblages pretty quickly. It was a great reminder that even elderly people like me can learn some new tricks occasionally. Now I can identify a piece of a krater rim or a deep bowl handle, and even some of our local fabrics like white ware and the normal Raftis cookware, without thinking about it too much. This was very helpful when sorting all of the finds from Raftis, because, oh boy, did we collect a lot of deep bowl handles out there.

Bartek was obviously not just in town to help me figure out how to describe bulk finds. Much more of his time was spent analyzing the sherds he’d inventoried last year in more detail and pulling out new finds to be inventoried. He found some amazing and surprising stuff; we have lots of really interesting new insights and questions about the Raftis assemblage just from his short visit this summer, and there are still many units he did not have time to get through. But I’m not going to spoil all the fun by saying too much about those finds just yet.

Alas, someone as skilled and awesome as Bartek is always in high demand, so after a week of work revealing many new mysteries and secrets of Raftis pottery, he was off to Volos. Following a lonely week of manic cataloguing, I was joined for the last two weeks of August by BEARS Skeleton Crew member #3, Melanie Godsey. Melanie is a PhD candidate at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill who is studying our Classical and Hellenistic pottery, especially the Koroni finds, amidst a multi-year stretch of living and working in Athens at the American School of Classical Studies. She worked on Koroni for her MA thesis and study of the pottery from old excavations on the site will form part of her PhD thesis, so she is, like Bartek, really The Person that we want dealing with the Koroni finds from our survey. And, like Bartek, she was very generous in sharing her expansive knowledge about how to identify and date historic pottery, especially amphoras, with a very ignorant project director. In just 2 short weeks she powered through all of the Koroni finds from 2019 and produced a detailed report of her conclusions: this was quite an excellent development, since we didn’t really know much about those finds at all before her visit in 2020. Melanie also happens to be excellent company, and I was glad to have a friend around for early morning swims and even the occasional evening beer and nachos.

By the end of the season, our tiny team of three accomplished quite a lot – after one more week of photography and data entry in early September I’d completed the bulk pottery catalogue, which now includes every single sherd collected in 2019, and Melanie and Bartek had inventoried over 400 objects from Raftis and Koroni.

Although it was cool to have a new experience, I don’t think I’d want to spend five weeks sorting pottery again: as a creature of the mountains, being in the museum all of the time made me feel pretty weird and cagey. Somehow it was even more tiring than working in the field, too – now I understand why the lab teams need so many coffee breaks.

Aside from yawny museum days, there was plenty of time to get outside and enjoy the beautiful environs of eastern Attica, too. The hours of the Brauron Museum dictated our work schedule, so outside of 9–4pm Mon–Fri a person was free to roam. I got into a good daily routine of running every morning around sunrise, and then swimming in the sea for awhile before work. This is the view in morning light from my usual swimming spot at the south of town:

Not a bad way to start the day. In the afternoons I’d usually hike around for a few hours, either on the trails atop the Perati massif to the north and the Mavronori cliffs to the south, on Koroni, or off-piste in the mountains southwest of town, between the bay and the archaeologically rich area of Merenda (now home to the world’s most elegant and harmoniously sited hippodrome). I met a few very handsome foxes, and accumulated an extensive collection of photos of Porto Rafti from nearly every possible direction. Overall I would give the summer’s swimming and hiking achievements a solid 5 stars. Last summer, in contrast, I only swam twice, if you can believe it, and I met zero foxes.

Another great development this summer was that we began seeding closer relationships with some other colleagues and projects working nearby in Attica, especially the Belgian/Greek project currently underway at Thorikos. Nikos Papadimitriou hosted Melanie, roving tile consultant Phil Sapirstein, and me for an incredible tour of the site, and also showed us some of the cool finds they’ve been pulling out from Stais’ leftovers the Lavrio museum. We all learned a lot. The following week I recruited our friend and boat captain Vasilis Miliotis to take some of us on a sail from Porto Rafti to Lavrio and back so that we could get a sense of the maritime route between the two sites. Of course, there was some afternoon boat swimming as well. This is an excellent method of forming collegial relationships. I recommend it to everyone!

All in all it ended up being one of the most enjoyable summers that I’ve had for a long time. It’s always the best to be in Greece under any circumstances, of course, but I certainly appreciated it more this year because it seemed for a long time like we might not be able to travel at all. It was also a much more relaxing schedule than normal, since pretty much everything was canceled and there weren’t too many people around. I mean, we did get a lot of work finished that really needed to get done on BEARS; and much work was done generally, outside of hiking and swimming hours. But usually there is so much going on and so much to do that you hardly take the time to just stop worrying about dumb work stuff and enjoy the many succulent pleasures of summer in a glorious place.

October 5, 2020June 21, 2021

BEARS-related content in the newsletter of the Hellenic Museum of Melbourne

If the onset of fall weather and the excessive workloads of online teaching have got you down, why not take a break by reading some of the unhinged thoughts and ramblings of a BEARS project co-director? Here is an interview that was recently published in the newsletter of the Hellenic Museum in Melbourne, Australia.

September 3, 2020September 3, 2020

Archaeologist Confessionals Volume 9: Kat Apokatanidis

The very limited BEARS 2020 study season (population: 3) in the Vravrona Museum has been full steam ahead over the past several weeks, but comes to a close tomorrow. A brief report on our activities and new insights will appear here as soon as…I have put out the fires of the upcoming start of the semester and have time to sit down and write it! Meanwhile, below is the ninth in our series of BEARS team member interviews, this time featuring known blogger of archaeological profundities and BEARS 2019 team member Kat Apokatanidis. Kat is a PhD student in Classics at the University of Toronto who recently switched from Philology to the Mediterranean archaeology/ancient history track in the department. As a result, I am now lucky to have her under my supervision! Kat was a first time fieldworker last summer, but took to archaeology like an octopodi to beach rock, and demonstrated her keen eye for spotting vegetation-obscured artifacts (a surveyor’s most important tool!) throughout the season. We recently chatted online from separate ends of Greece about all things ancient and especially BEARS related – keep an eye out for a brutally honest Greek’s eye view of our modest seaside project home of Porto Rafti.

SCM: You are currently a PhD student in the Classics department at the University of Toronto. Can you tell me what got you interested in Classics and why you decided to come to Toronto for a PhD in the subject?

KA: We are taught Classical texts in junior high school and high school in Greece, so we always have this connection to the texts from very early on. Ancient Greek is compulsory from Junior High school. Usually we use a text, as well as a textbook with grammar. So we start very early on learning ancient Greek literature, which is considered a crucial part of the upbringing of Greek children. So from a young age we get a familiarity with those texts. They’ve always seemed really interesting to me.

To be honest I guess the reason that I got into philology in the beginning was because of life circumstances really. I was not good at math – or maths, rather! I can’t even say it correctly…and so that really limited my options for university. In Greece we have Panhellenic exams, which are basically entrance exams, and everyone takes them, because universities in Greece are public institutions. Everyone has the chance to get in, but you have to pass these exams with a specific grade, depending on which subject you want to pursue for your BA. So you have to know really early on what you want to do in your life! You go through a 2-year intensive training into the specific material for the exams and then, hopefully, you get into what you want to do. Fortunately, in my specific experience the exam was very closely tied to what I wanted to do. People who want to go to law school in Greece, e.g., go through the same material – Greek and Latin – and then never do it again! So maybe it’s not ideal as a system. But for me it was great. I did Aristotle and Plato and stuff like that in high school before even getting into philology.

Then I got into philology and I loved Classics, partly because it was the hardest and most challenging of the courses. In Greece there are 3 specializations, where you do linguistics, medieval/modern Greek, and then the ancient languages. You do 2 years of everything and then you specialize in one of those three. I was choosing between linguistics and Classical philology. I chose ancient Greek because I wanted to become a Homerist.

After that I just never got it out of my system. It depends on if you like what you study for your BA, but if you like it, you realize that you always want to learn more, and there is basically an infinite amount of material to learn. So I kept on and did a first Master’s in Durham – I wanted to do epic poetry at the time – then did another Master’s degree at Waterloo. I just loved the texts so much, I wanted to keep going with school and I didn’t want to let it go. I had the idea that I wanted to do Academia…so I guess that’s how I ended up in Classics and doing a PhD. I love learning! I’m a nerd!

SCM: I think that’s a good point, that at some point you realize that no matter how many degrees you get, you will never have learned everything! And if you like learning you could just keep on getting degrees! Barring certain practical concerns, of course. What about Toronto – why did you come here for the PhD.

KA: Well, I’m a Canadian citizen, so Toronto was always at the top of my list. It’s in Canada, and I have extended family in Toronto, so I wouldn’t be completely alone on a different continent from my family. So it was a less scary option than something in the States or wherever, coming from Greece. It’s also a really big program, so it has a lot of specializations, which is good because you can keep your options open.

I went into philology thinking I wanted to be a Homerist, as I said, but it’s hard to find something new or original to do for Homer! So that’s why I thought that going into a larger program would give me a chance to figure out what exactly I wanted to do, since I suspected it would be challenging to identify a good, new topic on Homer.

But then I ended up realizing that I really liked archaeology, so I’ve switched into a new track now – and I think it makes sense to me, because I had always approached ancient Greece from an anthropological view rather than a literary one. I’ve always had issues with finding something to say. Even though I love the texts, I always found it challenging to identify an original argument about a literary text. So for me moving into archaeology is exciting, because everything is about the cultural context and I think it’s a bit easier to find new ways to contribute.

SCM: Right, so officially you have now come over to the dark side – switching from philology to history/archaeology in terms of the streams in the program. Where are you exactly in progressing through the PhD and what kind of research are you thinking of pursuing?

KA: I am entering my 3rd year in the PhD program, and I switched streams last year into the MACS specialization. The reason was partly my experience working in the field on BEARS, but I also realized that this stream gives me an opportunity to do something that I really wanted to investigate but felt I couldn’t before – that is the bigger cultural and anthropological context of ancient texts. I’m now starting a research project on the Orphic gold tablets, trying to position these texts as material objects rather than just philological objects, which is how they have been approached before. I first encountered the tablets in a course on Greek Epigraphy during my BA. I thought they were really cool already then, and that they were quite unlike most other texts – a more direct connection to the divine, especially, given the mortuary context. While the texts have been translated, they haven’t really been treated that thoroughly archaeologically in their cultural context, so I thought it would be interesting to give that a try.

SCM: Super cool – I think it is a promising angle. Generally, there are lots of fresh, innovative things that can done with objects, and although there has been a lot of archaeological research, I think that ground is at least somewhat less-trodden than the textual evidence. Anyway, I am biased, but I support this decision to switch specializations!

A question I often ask people is about their favorite text or object from the ancient world. But now I already know that you love Homer, and that this is a longstanding passion – what is it about Homer that you like so much?

KA: Honestly my choice as a favorite wouldn’t necessarily be Homer as we have him, but one of the cyclical epics that we don’t have! And also, the Orphic theogonic text to which the Derveni papyrus refers to, but, in its entirety.

SCM: Okay, okay! So what is it about early epic that gets you?

KA: Apart from the fact that the narratives are so original and gripping. I was watching a tv show on Greek television awhile back, and I remember that a point was made that if we were to lose Homer, there would literally be nothing like it ever produced again! I thought that was a good point – these epics have an odd form because of the oral nature of the composition and original circulation. It’s also amazing that they can really inspire anyone even to this day. Every time I read Homer I get so many original ideas and thoughts that can be explored creatively. Aside from their merit from a literary point of view or the cultural insights we get from them, I always think that these early Greek texts have an amazing quality of fertile ground for personal inspiration. They make me think about things differently. Only Homer has done that for me, and I read a lot. Then I wonder about those stories that inspired the Homeric epics – the lost nostoi and the other stories! Maybe they were even more inspiring…

SCM: Or maybe they were terrible and super lame! We’ll never know!

KA: That is what people have said…but I bet not.

SCM: It is definitely a great point that Homer is amazingly poignant even so many thousands of years later. I never cry in life, really, but I always get really sad when I read the Iliad. Maybe close to crying sometimes. But don’t tell anyone I said that. I have a reputation to maintain! Anyway, I definitely never feel that way when I read…Livy or Virgil or whatever. Maybe there is someone out there that cries at Livy.

Now, returning to the topic of archeology, last summer you came out for BEARS, and this was your first time working on an archaeological field project. You already wrote some great posts about BEARS on the blog, but I wanted to see if you had any other general impressions or comments about work on the project to add to those profound reflections?

KA: Well, BEARS was, in one word, amazing. It was so, so different from what I am used to. I had no idea how much I wanted to do something like that, until I did it. I knew I always wanted to do something like what archaeologists did, but I did not really know what that meant. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t done it what the experience is like. It is really awe-inspiring to uncover or find these things from so long ago, or even to visit an archaeological site. But really being an archaeologist is an experience beyond this kind of awe-inspiring idea, that everyone gets. Doing BEARS was very satisfying to me because in archaeology you go out into the world and really DO something, which was not the same as my experience in philology. You really see a place and try to understand the real lived experiences of actual people and societies. Then you take the data and build an idea around that information. I did not understand the nature of that process until working in the field. Even though I was really new to this kind of work, and I still have a lot of catching up to do, I just really wanted to be a part of this process and to think of things in a cultural context instead of just a text as its own special thing, independent of the people that surrounded it.

SCM: Interesting, yeah, I guess I’ve never been even close to thinking like or being a real philologist, so I’ve never really thought of it from that perspective.

KA: I don’t mean to throw shade on philology!

SCM: I mean, I think that everyone has their own deal – and it’s good that there are lots of people that like to do all kinds of different scholarship.

KA: Yeah, I find I really like having the more hands on work.

SCM: Then I think you will definitely get more of that in archaeology. We put our hands on a lot of stuff! To put it in a very concrete way. Speaking of concrete, I often ask students about their experience of living in Greece, but of course you have lived most of your whole life in Greece, so that would be a silly question to ask! How about Porto Rafti – give me your honest impressions of our BEARS home town!

KA: Okay, you asked for a Greek point of view, and I am going to give it to you!

SCM: Give it to me straight!

KA: I mean, the whole town is very totally illegal! The way it’s built…no, no no! There is no structure, people just built whatever they wanted wherever they wanted. These were decisions made back when Greece was governed by a dictatorship and we are still paying the price. But, I mean, other than that, it is a “charming seaside town”….but I mean…the driving! Why? Athenians, man, I just can’t with the way they drive in Porto Rafti. Again, just doing whatever they want. What rules? But that’s kind of home for me, so I’m not really complaining too much.

SCM: I have seen at least 3 collisions in front of Giorgos’ house just this summer in Porto Rafti! But I kind of love the chaos about Porto Rafti. Somehow it is refreshing compared to all of the rule-based rule-following Canadian lifestyle that is characteristic of life the rest of the year. I like to do whatever I want whenever I want, so I guess maybe it’s a personal thing.

KA: There is a certain harmony in it.

SCM: It reminds me of when I was much younger and rented a car in Naples. And the car rental guys told me absolutely under no circumstances should I stop at a red light or a stop sign, because nobody would expect it, and you would cause a bunch of accidents. So the rule was that you had to not follow the rules! I was pretty terrified by this advice – I was quite young then and hadn’t driven much in big European cities – but, you know, there was a harmony in the unruliness that somehow worked out.

KA: You just have to hone your reflexes! I am a much better driver because of my experiences driving in Porto Rafti. But for me it was just good to be home all summer. Obviously, Porto Rafti is not my home, but still, all of Greece kind of is your home when you are Greek. For Greeks, at least the way I see it, wherever they are doesn’t matter too much, as long as we are in Greece. We are sentimental about our country.

SCM: I would be, too. It is the best place. What do you miss the most about Greece when you are in Toronto?

KA: The sun! Not a hard question – definitely the sun. Toronto is not the best when it comes to sunlight. And just the climate in general, and the mountains.

SCM: I hear that. Toronto is very, very not mountainous.

KA: While Canada does have mountains, Toronto does not have them. I miss looking out at the landscape, and seeing something: a body of water, or topography. Even though Toronto has the lake, nobody can afford those views. In Greece, almost everyone has a view of something nice. In other places it’s like some kind of commodity. Here we are poor, but we get to see the mountains every day.

SCM: That is a great point. You have to be pretty rich in Toronto to see anything nice from your window. Otherwise you just look at trash and sewer drains and concrete. But Greece is democracy for views! I never thought of it this way.

Well, unfortunately, the team is not experiencing the many joys and pains of life in glamorous Porto Rafti this summer. What are you looking forward to the most of getting back out into fieldwork in 2021, presuming that we can?

KA: For me the best part of the fieldwork is the anticipation and the process of finding actual things. It’s very satisfying. It’s hard to describe the feeling. I also enjoy the way that all of the hard parts – climbing and being hot – fade away in your memory after that day: you only remember the excitement and the amazing views – which we had from everywhere we worked – and how great the experience is. I think I miss everything about working there, and that being ‘the work’. I have had some terrible jobs in my life, and when this is your ‘job’ for the day, to go into this amazing landscape and look for ancient stuff, I mean, give me a break. I miss that feeling.

SCM: Well said! Let’s leave it at that – thanks for your time and enjoy the tiny remainder of the summer!

August 17, 2020August 17, 2020

Archaeologist Confessionals Volume 8: Irum Chorghay

After a relatively lengthy hiatus for summer vacation, the BEARS blog is making a late-August return to life with the 8th in our series of team member interviews. This time we are featuring a subject well-known to faithful blog readers, Irum Chorghay, who already provided a series of captivating posts documenting life on the BEARS project in 2019. I have been happy to be pals with Irum since fall of 2017 when she was a student in my introductory Greek and Greek history classes, and have worked with her in many contexts since, including several other courses at U of T, a Jackman Humanities Institute summer research program, and a co-authored research article that she worked with fellow BEARSer Jenny MacPherson and myself to publish in the January 2020 issue of the American Journal of Archaeology. It has been a real privilege to get to know Irum over the last several years, and we had a great conversation about all things Classics and BEARS related, which I am sure you will enjoy reading! Be sure to check back soon for an update on our tiniest of 2020 study seasons, and more riveting interviews, in the coming weeks.

SCM: As you told me the other day via email, you are just finishing your degree at the U of Toronto this summer and taking some summer classes to wrap that up: how has it been taking classes this summer and what does it feel like to be entering a new phase of life after graduation?

IC: Classes this summer have been going really well! Right now I’m taking a course on the politics of girlhood. I’ve never really looked at children from an academic perspective so it’s really fascinating material, as well as really relevant to modern circumstances, such as the adultification of black girls…it’s very interesting to think about girlhood. Girls are so powerful! I think I might want to keep up with what is happening in girl studies going forward.

This is obviously quite different from what I’ve been studying in the Classics department, where the connection to modern times is not so straightforward. I guess it’s a nice way to end my degree because it brings things back to reality in a way. Otherwise, I’m not sure how I’m feeling about finishing my undergrad! I am definitely not processing a lot emotionally right now, it’s been a “go go go” kind of situation. I think maybe 4-5 years from now I’ll start unpacking everything that happened this summer, so then I’ll really know.

But I’m honestly excited. I’ve been in school for so long, it’s going to be nice to not do that for a while and see where it takes me. Also, kind of scary! But I think I’m ready for a new challenge.

SCM: Awesome! You’ll be great, no matter what, I am sure. Let’s cast an eye backwards, then, on your glorious career at the university of Toronto. You did an incredible amount of excellent work at the U of Toronto – a double major in Classics and Philosophy, is that right?

IC: Well, in my last year I realized that I had accidentally pretty much finished the Classical Civ major, so I ended up doing that alongside the Classics (Greek and Latin) major. I feel like my entire undergrad was very much me denying that I was trying to be a Classics major, because I just kept doing Classics courses, but then being a Math major, and then a Philosophy major – literally it was only at the very last minute in my fourth year that I actually clicked enroll. Now I am a double major: Classical Civilizations and Classics.

SCM: Ah ha, I see! A reluctant Classicist, but you couldn’t escape it as hard as you tried, like falling into a swamp. Despite this circumspect attitude, I recall that you were very active within the Classics department since I met you: you were the president of CLASSU, even. How was your experience with the people and the environment in the department, even as you tried to keep the major at arms-length?

IC: I think a big part of why I ended up in Classics even without actively pursuing was because of the professors I had, the friends I made, and generally the people I met. At the end of the day, I knew I wanted a degree, but it didn’t really matter to me what it was in. I wanted to follow where I felt I was growing a lot and having a good time in a lot of ways. And I felt like Classics really did become that for me. It wasn’t really until second year that I started getting involved in CLASSU events, then in third year I became really involved on CLASSU. That’s when I started making many of my friends and feeling like I was really a part of this community – Classics really brought me that. My peers will always bring up Professor Wohl in particular, how she remembers you, your name. I can’t imagine many other professors, particularly in first year, really doing that. And at a huge campus like UofT, it is really remarkable to have a professor remember, and I really respect that. More generally, CLASSU was a genuinely safe space for me to explore who I am in ways that unfortunately other places on campus don’t really encourage, so for me that was really an important part of my experience here!

SCM: That’s really cool to hear, actually, from a faculty point of view. I guess my impression is that this kind of thing happens a lot in Classics departments, maybe because they are small departments, so you tend to have a community of people that are really excited about the material but also it’s not some major of hundreds, so you see the same faces in a lot of classes. And the same situation with the professors – our classes are pretty small and we tend to build actual relationships with the students, which makes it easier to see students as individuals, you know, with a name and everything. I sort of ended up as a Classics major for similar reasons – I felt totally alienated as a first-year student but then some Classics professor actually remembered who I was and seemed to think I was smart. That was totally crazy and exciting to me at the time!

I suppose it’s also encouraging to hear that Classics, even though it does not necessarily have a universal reputation as the most open or welcoming discipline I guess, can provide this kind of safe and fun environment when you’ve got the right people around.

IC: Yeah, I am sure that other people have had different experiences! I’m sure not everyone has had the same positive experience in the department…but for me the timing was good. I think in the last few years CLASSU has been really consciously trying to be open and welcoming to all kinds of people, and that has been working.

SCM: That is super cool, and a major credit to you and the organization. I think CLASSU is an amazing asset to the department, and we’re all really thankful for your amazing work! What about the discipline or the work itself? Is there anything particular about the material that kept you coming back again and again despite your attempts to gravitate elsewhere?

IC: One of the first things that really drew me in was Catullus. I am a poet and I love poetry. With Catullus in particular…I guess you just end up seeing him a lot. He’s such a funny guy, and he’s got such range, too. One minute he’s cursing his friends out, the next I’m crying over his brother’s funeral. But to take up some of his crudest stuff in a university classroom was just so exciting and bizarre to me.

Sappho is, of course, another one of my favorites. I read Anne Carson’s essay on Eros the Bittersweet and that just tugged at my heartstrings (I am a really sentimental person). I guess it would be fair to say that the poetry is what really drew me in. Then my indecision is what helped me stay, because I got to do philosophy and literary analysis but also history and archaeology. Yeah, I basically can’t make up my mind, and Classics gave me a chance to do a lot of things. I think that’s why a lot of people end up doing Classics.

SCM: Yeah! That’s the whole model of liberal art’s education, right? You learn how to flex a lot of different muscles in your brain instead of just focusing on one thing, and Classics gives you a good opportunity to do that: lots of different work but within a single theme. It’s good that students still value that kind of education! Do you have a favorite text or object from the ancient world that you return to again and again? Or that always makes you very excited no matter how many times you encounter it?

IC: Ugh, hard question! I don’t know if this is exactly the ‘best’ thing, but I will always remember reading Seneca in Sex and Gender with Chiara Graf (A U of T grad student). That was a really good class – we incorporated critical theory in class, which was the first time I had done that. We looked at a passage about a character called Hostius Quadra. The whole text was super strange and very orgiastic and just generally fascinating. It felt quite random, being that it was in a scientific text, and that really stuck with me. It really showed me the range of Classics. I guess we always have this perception of fancy Englishmen wandering through fields and being all classy in Classics, and this is the exact opposite! This is what they are hiding! This is what they don’t want you to see! It felt very much like the underbelly of Classics, which was cool to see.

SCM: Right! That’s why you have to read the actual primary sources – the stuff you find out about in the textbooks or see in more general introductions is usually the fancy Englishman foppery – so you have to get in there and find the underbelly yourself! The stuff that doesn’t fit the model is usually the most interesting. Returning to the future, how do you think what you learned and encountered in university is going to contribute to your experience or growth in life? Are there particular skills or perspectives that you think will stick with you as you go forward to function in the world at large?

IC: I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I think one of the biggest things is that when you study a society from afar, you train yourself to be as objective (okay, with an asterisk) as possible, but you also learn all of these skills to try to remember our place in relation to what we’re studying, so that you remain aware of your own biases even as you try to come up with an objective analysis. That’s been a big focus in these last four years. I think that is really relevant in our day to day lives, because it’s so easy to take everything around us for granted. When we step back and look at ourselves as an object of study, then we can really become active contributors and better citizens of the world. That is probably the biggest skill that I think I’ll take away from my education – being super critical of myself and my role in society.

I also think the multidisciplinary nature of Classics is really pragmatically useful – being able to read, write, and think critically is huge. Also just being interesting? People want to work with interesting people…and thanks to Classics I know tons of random facts that I can tell people, should they wish to hear them.

SCM: Wise words! I think society would be much better off if more people were good at critically evaluating their own role in sophisticated ways. Now, to your last point – let’s say we’re at a cocktail party and I want to know an interesting fact: what’s your go to!?

IC: ……….Oh boy….I guess I set myself up for that one! I shouldn’t have said that!

SCM: You totally did! I’m putting you on the spot!

IC: I don’t know why, but when anyone says “interesting fact” for Classics the first thing that comes into my head is pederasty, and I always want to steer away from that….

SCM: Yeah, I gave a guest lecture in a fashion history class at Ryerson University – the teacher asked me to come and give a lecture about why the Greeks were naked all the time – and I was explaining all of these complicated theories that scholars have put forward about athletic nudity, and one student raised her hand and asked “Isn’t it just because they liked staring at naked little boys because they had sex with them a lot?” And I said that was a very logical conclusion to draw! Anyway there were tons of questions. These kids could not get enough of dissecting the naked Greek dude imagery complex. So, I think this is definitely something that, if you bring it up at a cocktail party, people will want to talk about!

IC: I also really like the idea of the Herms, which we talked about in your Greek History class.

SCM: Also something that most people don’t necessarily think about when they imagine Classical Athens!

IC: And another thing that makes you question why people love Classics so much…

SCM: Depends on your perspective! The weird stuff is kind of the best part, to me – I think people come and start in Classics because of some fusty idea about the Parthenon or whatever, but the more you get into it, the more you realize there are all kinds of wacky and bizarre things going on that are really fascinating.

Another thing that you can bring up at cocktail parties is the fact that you’ve traveled to Greece and done archaeological fieldwork. Last summer you were in Greece working with BEARS, and I know you did some traveling around before the project, too. How was your experience of Greece and how did that fit into your career otherwise? Were there any favorite memories or sites that particularly stand out?

IC: Going to Greece was definitely the highlight of my Classics experience! I think it’s kind of wild how you can study a place for years and then it’s so different when you are actually there and you’re seeing where things happened, and you understand why, say, this war happened this way, because the geography kind of determines that. It was a very rewarding experience.

Okay, I don’t love change, so I tend to dislike travel. I get so overwhelmed and really nervous, so this was very much me going out of my comfort zone – all of last summer was out of my comfort zone for me. But because of this same reason, it was an incredibly rewarding experience as well. I definitely felt a shift in me when I came back. I also didn’t really love the outdoors so it was incredible that I was able to do all that fieldwork. But now I’ve grown quite fond of spending time outside; I don’t fear creepy insects and stuff anymore. Once you’ve seen so many spiders that big, everything else is a joke! I’m so glad I went, and really grateful that I had the opportunity.

We did travel around before the project. It was so wonderful. I am wary of romanticizing Greece too much but I will say that one of my favorite things was the graffiti in Athens, which is really, really good. Definitely still think about it now.

SCM: Oh boy, I totally didn’t realize how much you were uncomfortable with travel and being outdoors when I asked you to come and work on the project!! I shouldn’t have tortured you and subjected you to all that!

IC: No, no it was really great! It made me stronger.

SCM: Okay, okay. I’ll try not to feel guilty about being so oblivious to your discomfort. That’s an awesome point about the graffiti…it is really good! Students never mention this…you obviously have a keen eye. I was just wandering around Athens in July and it was totally empty and like a giant open-air graffiti museum. You would have loved it.

So, working on the BEARS project was probably very different probably than taking a course on say, Ancient Greek history or literature. You already wrote about your experiences of fieldwork very eloquently already on the blog, but I wanted to see if you had any other more informal thoughts about being out on the project and the whole situation? Any favorite or least favorite parts?

IC: Doing work with your hands is so underrated…that was really satisfying, to actually be productive with your body instead of your brain, which is not what happens in a classroom. It was also so cool to touch things that have been made by humans and sitting in the ground since forever. There is something very spiritual about that, it feels like you are connecting with something from very far away, which I thought was inspiring. I also thought obsidian was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen or dealt with. It’s also a great word for poetry, and now I feel like I have more authority to use it, so thank you! I guess the negatives would be maybe that you get hot and hungry and sweaty, but you don’t even remember that once the day is done because you are just excited about what you found. There are very few cons. I just felt so lucky to be able to do the work.

SCM: Yeah, that’s true, it’s a special experience! I’m glad you enjoyed it.

IC: We had a great team, too, and everyone took care of each other, so we didn’t really have any problems. I also think we were very well looked after by our director.

SCM: My main goal was for everyone to have a good time and not get hurt, so I’m happy to hear that was mostly the case. I also agree that obsidian is amazing! I find it to be inexplicably seductive! It is clear that we are on the same page.

IC: Wait, there are people who don’t care about obsidian? What’s the con?

SCM: Good question! I guess everyone’s got their own thing. I mean, it’s so shiny! I would like to sleep in a bed of obsidian, even if it would be uncomfortable, just so I could be around it all the time. How about collective life on the project? Any memories or impressions about living with the crew in Porto Rafti?

IC: I was nervous coming into it, because meeting people makes me anxious, but honestly it was so much fun and I had such a good time. I really miss the people this summer. I guess because you are spending so much time together and living together it can go either way. But I think it’s never in the middle – either you really love these people or you really can’t stand them, and we definitely fell on the love each other side. It was all new people, but because we were mostly from Toronto we had something in common to start from. We had a nice family vibe going. There was lots of bonding, being silly, drinking, there was a Dora the Explorer doll in the house that I really had a special connection with. It was just a really good time.

SCM: It sounds like fun was had! I wish I had lived with you guys! I was just boringly checking data and dealing with dumb management stuff the whole time…lame!

IC: My favorite part of the day was always right after we came home after work and my shoes would always be full of those little bur things and we were all emptying our shoes out on the porch and sitting, relaxing, making coffee, chatting about our day, in the beautiful yard. Those were just really nice moments, to be together and connect. And we always had things to say, since we always found exciting things.

SCM: Such an idyllic scene…I love that feeling of good exhaustion after the end of a hard day of work too. Especially if you can share it with your friends. Now, obviously we’ve all had to find something else to do this summer and it’s been a bummer to miss all of those moments of human connection. What were your strategies for surviving the spring and summer of pseudo-lockdown in Toronto?

IC: Mostly I just tried not to think about it. Is that too depressing? It honestly feels like such a blur. I did summer school both semesters, so I did another course early in the summer a cinema course, so I watched a lot of movies. That’s basically all I did, watch a lot of tv and movies, read stuff, cry. And try to accept my new phase of life in very strange circumstances. I guess for me things really got turned on their head. I was going to move out of my apartment building in April, go to Greece, be away from home and explore things and have a spiritual awakening or whatever I expected to get out of it, and then come home and spend time with my parents and then move out. So the way that I had allotted my emotional capacities completely turned around. That was a challenge; it was pretty upsetting, but in the end, I guess it’s all fine!

SCM: I can’t imagine going through this at such an important inflection point in your life. I would be a total mess. But you’ve already picked up the pieces and have a job lined up starting next week! How about further in the future? I think you have basically infinite potential, but what are your visions for, say, five years from now?

IC: I’ve been watching finance videos in preparation for the real world, so one thing is that I want to have an emergency fund – or maybe in five years even more than that! I can see myself going back to school for a Master’s degree, so by five years from now I should have done that. Otherwise, I’d like to have a job and be able to afford an apartment in downtown Toronto. I also want to finish learning how to swim, which was interrupted by the pandemic, so by five years from now I want to be able to swim.

SCM: Simple like that! I guess in times like these it is good to keep things simple…my new objective is to quit my job and find a way to live in Greece and swim in the Aegean everyday – if I succeed you can join me for a swim once you take care of that goal. Thanks for a super insightful and fun interview…for now good luck with the new job and stay in touch: at the very least I will check in with you on these goals in about five years.

July 16, 2020July 16, 2020

Archaeologist Confessionals Volume 7: Cassandra Phang-Lyn

Our seventh in-depth BEARS participant profile of the season highlights the experience of Cassandra Phang-Lyn, a graduate student at Western University and protege of Catherine Pratt since her undergraduate days. The University of Toronto tried its best to recruit Cassandra into the MACS graduate program a couple of years back, but she could not be convinced to come over to the dark side, much to our faculty’s chagrin! Fortunately, we were still able to retain her services for the BEARS project, to which she brought many years of fieldwork and lab experience. Amid a busy schedule of fighting off recruitment offers, studying the ancient past, and taking care of two energetic dogs, Cassandra recently sat down for a BEARS interview to share some of her archaeological experiences of the past and plans for the future.

SCM: Aside from being a member of the BEARS project, you are currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in the Classics department at Western. Can you tell us what got you interested in Classics and why you decided to go on into grad school?

CP-L: I was always interested in myths as a kid, and I read all of the Percy Jackson books, but I never really thought more of that interest until I applied to go to university. Once I decided to go to Western, I was choosing classes, and I needed one more credit to fill out my schedule. I was looking around to see what I could take for fun to fill it in – and I saw Classics 1000, an intro class on Ancient Greece and Rome. It fit into my schedule and it looked really interesting, so I thought, “why not!?”. I took the class, and it turned out that this was also the first year that Western was running its study tour to Greece. I’d always wanted to go, and I was fortunate enough that my parents were willing to help me out with the costs, so I went ahead and did that. Once I was in Greece I just fell in love with everything, and was amazed by the idea that I could actually study this stuff and do research on ancient material rather than just visit as a tourist.

I’d also always been interested in archaeology, but the main thing that drove me to archaeology was talking to Catherine Pratt on the trip. I made a point of asking her what I would need to do to get into Classical Archaeology. She laid it all out for me, and I was totally convinced, so I kept on doing Classics in the fall and the rest of my time at university. I went and worked at the Vindolanda field school with Beth Greene and Alex Meyer, I went on the study tour to Rome, and I’ve been projects with Catherine Pratt in Greece as well, basically just trying to get my hands in any sort of fieldwork experience that I can. It is something that I really do enjoy, so I do want to continue into the field as a career. That’s why I decided to start with the Master’s degree, and work from there.

SCM: That sounds not too dissimilar from my experience – I went to Greece somewhat randomly on a study abroad thing, and thought it was totally amazing and that I needed to spend as much time as possible there for the rest of my life – like a mostly irrational love-at-first-sight sort of thing. You can tell that I am an excellent and mature adult decision maker! But that’s neither here nor there – where are you currently in the program and what kinds of research are you pursuing?

CP-L: Sure! Right now, I am finishing up the first year of my Master’s at Western. In our program, we have a full-year course that all first-year graduate students take. It’s a broad overview of the history, literature, and archaeology of Greece and Rome. It’s very compact! I was saddened that we did not spend as much time on archaeology as I would have liked. But it was a good course, a useful overview of a lot of things. It was nice to hear different perspectives from the other students, too. Then, obviously, I’ve been doing the required language courses, and I also took Catherine Pratt’s course on the topography of Athens, and a course on the Roman household with Kelly Olson, which covered a lot of social history, which was quite fun.

Currently, for my summer research project, I am working on Mycenaean figurines. My current plan is to do quite a lot of background work on the figurines and understand the palatial types and their use and context, then also try to dive into the postpalatial period, although I haven’t quite gotten there yet. My impression at the moment is that there is less postpalatial material, which is not so surprising.

SCM: That sounds quite promising – surely there’s plenty to be said about Mycenaean figurines and their evolution after the palatial period that hasn’t been said yet. But you’ll have to let me know what you find out! Now, aside from these figurines, do you have a favorite text or object or category of material from the ancient world? And what is it about it that gets you really excited?

CP-L: Oh, that is a really tough one! I’ve always been really fascinated by wall paintings. I took an ancient painting course with David Wilson when he was still at Western, and I was so enamored of that material. The paintings are just beautiful and it’s so cool how well some have been preserved over many thousands of years. I like the Roman paintings, but I was able to go to Akrotiri and also Knossos, and I really love those Minoan paintings especially. They are just awesome.

SCM: That’s a good choice! I find that those paintings do portray a kind of psychedelic natural world that really draws one in. Although I do not envy the people that work on them! I do not think I could do all of that painstaking jigsaw work of conservation and reconstruction.

CP-L: For sure! Let alone trying to figure out what they mean, which seems so difficult.

SCM: Totally – and then for Knossos you have to also un-think all of the made up stuff that Evans imposed on the material, which is an additional challenge! Speaking of different types of analysis we do as archaeologists, it sounds like you have had a lot of fieldwork experiences all over the place and have done all kinds of things, from excavation to lab work – it’s hard to keep track. So give me the rundown!

CP-L: The first experience I had was the Vindolanda field school up in northern Britain. That was really cool because I was in the trench – on hands and knees, shoveling dirt, opening new trenches, all that stuff. The year I went (I wasn’t in the trench where this happened) they found a bunch of writing tablets, and I got to see them coming out one by one as they were getting rushed down to the museum and the lab to be conserved. That was a really fun experience. And it’s a cool site up there because there are so many volunteers from around the world – you talk to people from all over the world and of varying ages. They are also very serious about the tea breaks. When it was the afternoon, the trench leader would be very concerned that we get cleaned up and ready for the tea break when it was our turn, because the team was so large that we had to split the tea into shifts, and we did NOT want to miss our shift.

SCM: Priorities! British style.

CP-L: Yeah! So that was one of the more physically intense projects I’ve worked on – there was a lot of shoveling barrels of dirt, that kind of thing. It was a fun challenge to try to get the barrel up the plank and out of the trench without any accidents.

SCM: That’s not the kind of thing that your usual schoolwork trains you for – getting the barrel up the ramp without squashing someone! That’s some real-world type of experience.

CP-L: Exactly. Then the following year I started my work with Catherine Pratt in the Agora of Athens, which was more like working through old archival material. We were searching through the old catalogues and figuring out how the system works, and thinking about what we wanted to find and how we would organize our data. It was really interesting to see how this kind of process worked – analyzing things that you didn’t necessarily dig up yourself. Then I did a month with Carl Knappett at Palaikastro. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to dig that year, so we were doing post-processing of material that had been excavated a year or two before – organizing and cataloging. That gave me a lot of experience looking at pottery and identifying clay types and all that kind of stuff. Then last summer, I started on the BEARS project, which was my first experience surveying, and that was good, too. It was fun to be out in the field and looking at the landscape, and I liked getting a different view of the many facets of fieldwork that I didn’t even know existed. That is one thing you learn as an archaeologist as you go through your career – just how varied the work is.

SCM: Yeah, that’s a great point – there are many, many ways to be a practicing archaeologist, even though the popular ‘type’ is usually someone digging holes in the ground or whatever. And it’s really a testament to the quality of the program and your mentors at Western that you’ve already been able to experience so many kinds of methods and have participated in work behind and in front of the curtain, so to speak. Thinking back on my fieldwork career, I’m pretty sure I didn’t get much of a view of that behind the scenes work that people do in a lab until very late in grad school, so you’re way ahead of the game in that sense. So far, what would you say is your favorite type of hands-on work and what do you like particularly about that?

CP-L: Another tough question! I think being in the trench for me was the best experience so far. Just being down in a trench carefully – or sometimes maybe with topsoil not so carefully! – exposing something you don’t know will or will not be there, and then finding something. That’s just so satisfying and rewarding. I’ve not dug in Greece yet, though, so maybe I’ll have a different view after I’ve dug in more contexts! But I really liked excavating a lot.

SCM: Of course, we both know that there’s much more to an archaeological project than just the work! As you mentioned before, when you go on a field project, you’re thrown into this strange life situation, usually with people from around the world and all different backgrounds. From all of your various experiences in the field, do you have any crazy stories or random things that have happened that stand out as memorable or unexpected?

CP-L: One of my favorite things from Vindolanda was that if we didn’t get a ride down into the town to go grocery shopping, we had to walk through farmers’ fields, which is totally allowed up in Britain. Now, in those fields, there were some horses. And I LIKE horses, but those were some nasty looking horses! They did NOT like us walking through those fields! There was an electric fence separating us from them, but even so, they were very mean-looking horses and this caused a lot of concern. That was something that I was not expecting or anticipating that I would encounter in my fieldwork project. There was much hurrying to get over the stone fence and get outta there on the grocery run.

SCM: Haha – usually I think of horses as friends to the human, rather than a terrifying and aggressive predator!

CP-L: Yeah, every time we would scout it out and check if the horses were there, and if the coast was clear we’d basically run through the field.

SCM: Did you try to make friends with them, like bringing them some snacks or something?

CP-L: I thought about it, because I like horses, but everyone else was very nervous and I figured it was best just not to mess with them. I didn’t want to get everyone into a panic!

SCM: Perhaps there is an obscure northern English proverb about this: ‘nasty horses eyer be panicking gentyl archyologistes’, or something like that. I don’t think I’ve ever met an aggressive horse, but perhaps it’s a local Vindolanda thing.

CP-L: Yeah, it was weird. I did not expect that. But these horses definitely did not like people. Or they didn’t like us anyway.

SCM: Anti-archaeologist horses! Cool. That is definitely not a story I’ve heard before, dangerous attack horses. Other than perilous livestock encounters, what is your feeling about life on an archaeological project?

CP-L: I love working on field projects. It’s always so fun to either meet a new group of people or go back to see people that you know from previous seasons. It’s wonderful to be surrounded by people that are interested in what you are interested in, and everyone shares their stories from the day over beer at the end of the day, which is so much fun. You get to find out what’s happening with the other teams – of course sometimes you do get a little jealous when another group finds something cooler than you did! But, in general, I really love the camaraderie of projects the most.

SCM: Right, it is always great to have a cohesive team working together to do something relatively unusual and living together in relatively unusual circumstances. Speaking of going to far-away places, you mentioned earlier that one thing that got you into this career originally was going to Greece and immediately wanting to spend a lot more time there. What is it that gets you about Greece specifically?

CP-L: It’s so hard to pinpoint any particular thing…I just remember that when I first got there, I had this feeling – ‘this is a good place.’ I guess it’s more the vibe of it more than anything else. Life feels much more laid back and less rushed than North America, which is very inviting. It’s also just so incredible to be surrounded by all of this material that I’ve read so much and thought so much about. It always amazes me how the modern and ancient worlds are so integrated together. Sometimes you are just walking down the street in Athens and the glass under your feet is covering over these ancient ruins. I think that is just really cool.

SCM: Not so much of that going around in London Ontario!

CP-L: Nope, not so much!

SCM: Jenny made that point too – how it’s kind of mind-blowing for a North American that you can get a coffee at a café then walk across the street to an ancient temple that’s thousands of years old.

CP-L: Yeah, and after a while it seems like a lot of people don’t even notice that stuff anymore. Like you’re just wandering around and there’s the acropolis but you don’t even look at it! How could that happen?

SCM: I think I’m totally at that point with Athens – it’s just another part of the city that I don’t even think about too much when I’m there. Although probably after all of this pandemic stuff I will have a new, fresh appreciation of the many wonders of the Mediterranean and how lucky we are to spend so much time there. Meanwhile, what have you been up to during the lockdown and how have you been staying sane over the last several months? And here, really, I’m just looking for advice from people who are doing a better job of staying sane than I am!

CP-L: When I am home with my family I can go out for walks with my dogs, which has been really helpful – just to make sure I have one outing per day. But now it’s actually too hot for them to go out except early in the morning or in the evening. We are talking about a Boston Terrier and a Bulldog, so very short faces – very hot heat, they cannot do that. Other than research and stuff, I’ve mainly been reading books and playing video games. I actually reread the Percy Jackson series because I found them in a box at home, and I figured that since I wasn’t going to Greece I might as well read about a fantasy adventure related to Classics!

I really do enjoy video games, so that’s been a good way to pass the time. I have a lot of friends that play similar games, so we’re online relatively frequently playing together, and that’s also a way to talk to my friends and catch up with them.

SCM: Video games have an incredible ability to suck you in while entire days pass without you even noticing. As a tweenager I went through a phase of playing days and days on end of the original Civilization. I eventually had to quit because it was like destroying my life from playing so much. Since then I have tried to stay away from video games, especially now because I’m supposed to be a productive researcher and work all of the time so I can keep my job!

CP-L: I actually have been playing CIV 6 lately! It was available for free somewhere. Yeah, you don’t realize how many hours have passed and you just keep thinking ‘Well, I can do one more turn. Just one more!’

SCM: And then you keep going until eternity! It’s not something I feel like I can allow myself to do, or anyway, best not to go there at this point in my life. But you should enjoy it while you can! You are young and free! Speaking of freedom, anything you’re super excited to do in the coming months as restrictions lift in Canada and elsewhere?

CP-L: Aside from going back to Greece, which is number one on the list, I’m honestly just excited to get back to school and be in class and have my routine again. I would like to go back to a more structured lifestyle. I’ve tried to make myself a routine at home, but I’m excited to get back to something that feels more real and productive in terms of a daily framework.

SCM: Yes! It is strange to have a bunch of days all piling up on each other, with each one more or less the same as the next. It will be nice to have an actual schedule and things to be done in a concrete way. Only a couple of months left! Meanwhile, I will let you get back to the video games and the dog walking. Thanks for taking the time to do this interview – and hope to see you back over in Greece one of these days!

July 9, 2020July 11, 2020

Update: Photos of Rob’s Armenian Haircut

Faithful readers of the BEARS blog will recall one of many entertaining anecdotes recounted by Rob in his genre-defining BEARS interview from early June, in which he had an exciting haircut adventure in Armenia. Just down the pipeline for those who were left wanting more are these documentary photos of the haircut in question, thanks to Chris Cloke and Emily Egan, who were present when it all went down.