Category: 2023 Photos of the Day

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Drone’s Eye Views

As part of our campaign of architectural documentation in the 2023 season, the BEARS team conducted some drone photography. This was particularly helpful on Raftis and Koroni, where steep slopes, gnarly vegetation, and large features combined to present considerable obstacles for terrestrial documentation. While useful, flying the drone is also kind of fun (or frightening, depending on your tolerance for sending a $3,000 lump of plastic with a short battery life zooming around over open water). Here are some drone’s eye out-takes from the season including a few ‘classic’ drone-operator selfies featuring team members staring intently at the drone or its remote controller.

Drone's eye view as the pilot futzes about with the controller or is nervous about taking off in high winds.
Drone selfie with the steep southern slope of Raftis with Shannon, Rob, and Taylor.
Overhead spy plane shot of exciting dGPS mapping of what might be a wall.
Raftis statue covered in photogrammetry targets and ready for its closeup. Note that Phil is demonstrating perfect drone pilot posture in this quintessential drone selfie.
Special exclusive drone perspective on some of the architecture and stratigraphy eroding out of the southwestern slope of Raftis.
Praso looking its blobbiest in drone's eye view.
The drone gets the drop on Murray & Rob as they ponder the mysteries of architectural foundations on Raftis on a bright summer day.
Eleni and Matthias seem to have discovered something of interest near the so-called "nose" of Raftis. What could it be? Alas, the drone is too far away to help us answer this question.
Miriam and assistant get some aerial shots of feature d899, a round tower on the outer Koroni slopes.
A stretch of cliff-side fortification wall and inviting blue Aegean beaches beyond as seen from a hovering position to the northwest of the Koroni acropolis.
Vertiginous slopes and sea, what life on Raftis is all about.
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2023 Study Season Begins!

The 2023 BEARS study season is upon us! Starting on May 15, a small crew of Athens-based team members started commuting to the Brauron museum to get things started fleshing out the finds catalog, continuing the long process of bulk cataloging Praso pottery, and analysing groundstone objects. This week we welcome the season’s first arrivals from near and far, including various materials experts who will study artifacts in Brauron and a crew of expert architectural mappers who will tackle the remaining ruins. To kick off the blogging action, here is a photo of the museum team from May 22 fuelling up with donuts offered to us by one of our lovely and wonderful colleagues in the work rooms. Hooray for archaeology – we look forward to sharing additional updates as the work progresses this month and next.

Archaeology runs on Nanou donut house??