An underappreciated perk of directing archaeological projects is getting to design cool swag for the team at the end of each season. Usually, this is a favorite July activity, as there are many quiet, boring days of checking the database and writing up reports following the season that can be spiced up with a little graphic design. Unfortunately, I had to prepare my tenure portfolio in July 2022, and somehow with the chaos of the following academic year I never got ’round to getting BEARS 2022 t-shirts rigged up until late last month.
Better late than never, anyway! With the original “Porto Rafti island” silhouette design inspiration from team member Joseph Frankl as a base, the BEARS 2022 shirts follow a “War of the Worlds” theme, a brilliant suggestion from Grace Erny inspired by our discovery of nearly infinite tripod-type things (stone and ceramic) on Raftis island in 2022. The Raftis survey team is therefore appropriately under siege by a triad of three-legged attackers. To capture the range of environments the teams worked in this year, there are also two other themes – the Koroni squad’s adversaries come in the form of survey/dGPS tripods, and the town survey people are amongst the spindly legs of unfinished concrete country houses with rebar sticking out of the top. For the team members who found these goofy designs to be too silly, we also offered a simple version of Joey’s original design. Hooray for swag!
