Potpourri – Page 2 – The Bays of East Attica Regional Survey

October 28, 2021October 28, 2021

a BEARS adjacent event on the ancient economy

Fans of BEARS might be interested to log into an online conference about the Ancient Economy coming up on November 5th and 6th. The conference proceedings will feature several friends of BEARS: the conference is organized in part by co-director Sarah Murray and features back-to-back talks by our intensive survey leader Maeve McHugh and itinerant drone wizard Dimitri Nakassis! It should be a good time with lots of brilliant scholars chewing on important problems in the field of ancient history. Details and instructions for registering can be found in the poster below, or just email sc.murray@utoronto.ca with any questions!

September 25, 2021September 25, 2021

Incoming BEARS merch

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! No I’m not talking about college football season or the chaotic (at least in my neighborhood) start of fall semester classes…I’m talking about BEARS 2021 t-shirt arrival season. I finally had time to poke my head out of a sea of work weeds to get these prototype threads printed up. World domination cannot be far behind.

July 19, 2021July 21, 2021

Fowl and Fuel in Porto Rafti circa 1800

It is always fun to read back through old travelers’ accounts of Greece, which I have been doing as part of the process of writing up the BEARS 2021 season report. Below is an amusing story recounted by Dodwell about trying to procure provisions prior to staying the night in Porto Rafti back on September 3rd, 1805.

“As we intended to pass the night at Port Raphte, which is uninhabited, we endeavoured to purchase some provisions at Brauna; but the villagers descrying our approach from a distance, with our associated Turks, had time to shut up all their fowls, which are almost the only food in Grecian villages; and in answer to our earnest application for a supply of this kind, gravely assured us, that they had no fowls, and that none were to be procured. We next directed our steps to the monastery, and begged the Hegoumenos to supply our wants. The venerable monk did not fail to give us his solemn assurance, that not a single fowl could be found in a circuit of many miles! He had however hardly finished his assertion, when, very provokingly for him, but fortunately for us…a treacherous cock, within the sacred walls, betrayed the holy ecclesiastic by crowing aloud, and was immediately answered by all the cocks in the village! This sudden and unexpected occurrence could not fail of exciting our unrestrained merriment; and indeed the circumstance was so ridiculous, as to relax the stern features even of the Hegoumenos himself, who…contented himself with uttering some imprecations against the cock and his evil voice, and desired the villagers to supply us, which they did on our paying double their value.”

Thanks to one rambunctious rooster, then, Dodwell & crew seem to have passed an uneventful night on the shores of the bay with ample chicken nuggets. The next morning a crew of fellows from the island of Tinos happened to be in the bay “cutting wood to carry to their island” and the sailors gave the travellers a full Captain Vasilis treatment, taking them around to the islets in the bay in order to investigate antiquities.

Must have been quite a wonderfully different world in the early 1800s – apparently there was not even one Gegos in town back then, let alone the modern wonder that is Sklavenidis; and treeless neighbors from Tinos were in the habit of sailing all the way over just to get some firewood!

Perhaps this small morsel of information holds some kinda clue as to why industrial production was a popular activity on Praso, since access to fuel is a major concern for any kind of pyrotechnological craftsperson. In an older account, from 1740, Charles Perry also discusses the GREAT VERDURE of Porto Rafti:

“This port is certainly one of the delighfullest Harbours in Nature; for it is encompassed almost all ‘round with charming Vales; and these, rising with a gradual and easy ascent, at last terminate in lofty mountains, which are covered all over with Pine-trees, and other sorts of Verdure.”

One of the Delightfullest Harbours in Nature indeed! Many on the BEARS team would certainly agree even if the ratios of Verdure to Cementure have probably shifted since Perry’s visit.

June 25, 2021June 25, 2021

Our Beleaguered Companions: the Ripped and Worn Clothing of BEARS

Survey archaeology in Porto Rafti is no walk in the park! The bedrock and vegetation we encounter, while beautiful, is also rugged and wears our body and clothing. During a very successful 2021 field season, our shoes, pants, and shirts have acquired a few new rips and tears. Here are a few highlights:

Carhartts, we’re disappointed in you.

Shannon’s shirt, or a ghost? You decide!

No caption needed.

They often start small…

Aspirational shorts.

NO SHOE IS SAFE.

June 20, 2021June 20, 2021

How has COVID-19 changed the way we think about archaeology and history? A BEARS Reflection

As students of the past, the BEARS team knows that disruptive and catastrophic events like COVID-19 occurred at many points in history. But the experience of living through such an event can fundamentally alter how one interprets historical and archaeological evidence. To dig a little deeper on the potential intellectual ripples of the pandemic, we asked BEARS team members to reflect and respond to the following question: “How has COVID-19 changed the way you think about archaeology and history?”

Sarah:

During the early phases of the pandemic I was thinking a lot about demography, and how late 20th and early 21st century humanity is a crazily unprecedented experiment in what happens when you have an extremely elderly and largely unhealthy, sedentary population constantly being poisoned by greedy corporations. People kept comparing COVID-19 to the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, but in a way it is inappropriate to suggest much of a parallel because the demographics of the societies on which the diseases operated are wildly different. Back in 1918 the normal life expectancy was about 40 – young and healthy active people died from terrible, incurable diseases all the time: typhoid, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, tuberculosis, etc. It’s sort of weird to say, but if COVID-19 landed in the 19th century or even in 1918, maybe nobody would have noticed what was going on, because the kinds of people who get really sick and die from it just didn’t exist in significant quantities. I guess it’s sort of a reminder that all of the humans who lived in the past had much, much, much worse problems to deal with all the time. We’re pretty lucky not to be generally surrounded by death and sickness all the time.

The other thing I have been struck by is that a lot of archaeological and historical interpretation assumes that human beings behave in ways that are somewhat rational, that communities and individuals at least have a general idea of what is in their best interest, and act accordingly. But living through a pandemic has definitely made jarringly clear just how terrible we are at behaving in any kind of sensible fashion whatsoever, especially when faced with new or unfamiliar circumstances. I guess that maybe should put paid to a lot of functionalist or rationalist frameworks for assessing past behavior at both the individual and the group level.

Melanie:

From a disciplinary standpoint, the covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated how important collaboration is in archaeology. Without working together in the same space during the summers the real benefits of collaboration, discussion, and team workflow dissipated and the work was just less fun. We archaeologists are pack animals who don’t thrive in isolation.

While no one can say that any earlier period can rival the waste production of the 21st century, the drastic and immediate change in the types and quantity of waste produced as a result of the pandemic – the multitudes of paper masks, medical waste, and test kits – has reminded me that although the archaeological record is often the result of cyclical mundane processes, the effects of major events might have, in fact, be materially visible. I’ve always been resistant to this idea, and it certainly happened more slowly and on a smaller scale in antiquity, but the pandemic has shown me how much material change can result from particular events in the community.

"But living through a pandemic has definitely made jarringly clear just how terrible we are at behaving in any kind of sensible fashion whatsoever, especially when faced with new or unfamiliar circumstances."

Sarah Murray

Grace:

Aside from inspiring some speculation about the paper mask, cotton swab, and test chemical stratum of 2020-21 (to be excavated by future archaeologists someday, no doubt), living through a pandemic has made me reflect to a greater extent than I ever have before on the social effects of contagious disease on communities. Wearing masks, sheltering in place, and maintaining social distance really affects the way that humans interact with each other and our sense of appropriate personal space. I’ve also thought a lot about how the social existence of a pandemic is contingent to some degree on how much a society understands about germ theory and disease transmission, as well as the degree to which local and global inequalities intersect with the virus to produce certain outcomes. I’m not sure how much of this is directly relevant to the study of the past, but I do think I had given contagious disease somewhat short shrift in my previous thinking about historical change… and I don’t think I will in the future!

Shannon:

The pandemic has certainly changed the way I think about Time, in a few ways. In archaeology we are used to dating things to within a few decades (longer in prehistory) and looking at gradual changes over time. Barring some major events, there are fewer big years or sudden shifts that we see clear evidence of. But the pandemic has made it clear how LONG a year can feel, how quickly people’s lifestyles and behaviors can change, how quickly new technologies can become normal, and why you would refer to a year as “the year of the drought” or “the year of the plague.”

But the pandemic has made it clear how LONG a year can feel, how quickly people’s lifestyles and behaviors can change, how quickly new technologies can become normal, and why you would refer to a year as “the year of the drought” or “the year of the plague."

Shannon Dunn

Rob:

The whole pandemic has made me think of how ephemeral something like a pandemic could be in the archaeological record. Seven billion people have been focused on this for the past year and a half, and my guess is that in another year or so there will be little evidence that we were all stuck inside for 15 months. And when you’re dealing with things 2,000 or 3,000 years old, the chance you find material traces of that single year seem pretty slim. So I guess it’s made me think there’s probably a lot more year-to-year variation for the groups we study than probably shows up in the archaeological record.

Other than that – and I know this sounds incredibly privileged (and it is) – it’s highlighted how much getting to travel and do fieldwork improves my overall well-being the rest of the year. I think not getting to travel made me feel more cooped up than missing restaurants or gyms or anything on a day-to-day level. It’s great to be back.

Joey:

As an archaeologist, I am used to travelling and seeing lots of different types of places, meeting different types of people, and using different types of objects. But, for the period of the pandemic, especially during its first few months, I was restricted to only interacting with the people, things, and place of my household. During that time, the introduction of any kind of novelty, whether a new book or a new specialty food ingredient, elicited strong cognitive and emotional responses. This really illustrated to me the power of interaction with “the new” and the possible motivations, aside from strict utilitarian needs, for wanting to interact with others outside one’s community. It also makes more evident the possibility of manipulating such novelty in the service of different ideology (especially inequality).

Also, an obligatory collapse related thought: nowadays, it’s pretty common to hear scholars say that the collapse of states or communities is always the result of multiple factors. Although COVID hasn’t quite led to widespread social and political collapse, the wreckage of the pandemic has very clearly been interwoven with dysfunctional political institutions, a changing climate, and the corruption of individual political actors.

June 7, 2021

Praso Boat Swim

After a full week of hard work on Praso, today it was time to check out the view of our new little diachronic site from the sea. Here are a couple of photos of the team enjoying the season’s first afternoon boat swim from the Solaris, just off the south coast of the islet where we’d been toiling amidst the weeds and seagulls just a few hours before.

February 28, 2021September 6, 2023

BEARS-adjacent research on the BBC

Perhaps of interest: research on the role of women in Greek pottery production during the Early Iron Age by three BEARS team members (Murray, Chorghay, and MacPherson) will be featured on a BBC radio program called The Conversation tomorrow.

The show will air on the BBC World Service radio March 1st (Monday) at 9:30, 13:30, 21:30 and 23:30 GMT. A podcast will be available online here.

February 17, 2021February 17, 2021

Canadian winter comes to Raftis

Alex Clapp, renowned Balkan journalist, Athenian resident, and longtime accomplice/friend of BEARS, sent me this photo of Raftis this week with a dusting of snow, which might be of interest to fans of all things Porto Rafti. I dunno how often this happens, but it is comforting to know that even though we in Canada can’t visit Greece right now, at least the Canadian winter made it over for a little R&R on the beaches of eastern Attica.

I’m pretty sure Athens got more snow than Toronto this week, which makes me quite envious! Here the winter has mostly just been cold, grey, and kinda tedious. The view from several months into a city-wide lockdown: something else we have in common with our friends in Athens!

November 26, 2020November 26, 2020

Hibernating BEARS

As winter descends in earnest and our team members look ahead to a long, dreary season of hunkering down at home (at least that seems to be the way things are heading here in Toronto), it seems like a good time (in line with what I hear is a major holiday down south of the border) to remember how lucky we are to have such a Number One Top Rated team of students and collaborators on the BEARS project, not to mention how fortunate we are to have the chance to work as archaeologists in Greece full stop. Whatever happens in the next couple of years, at least we’ll always have heaps of fun memories (and obsidian, and LH IIIC pottery, and data about rooftiles) from 2019.

For now, it seems like an opportune time to figure out how to actually hibernate for a few months. Someone wake us up in April when the snow melts and we’ll figure things out from there.

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).