Well, it’s been a long winter with way too much going on, and the poor BEARS blog has been mightily neglected. If you’ve been missing that good old BEARS content, well, worry not – the exciting 2023 study season is coming up soon, and once the team is back in Porto Rafti, no doubt the creative minds of the project will come up with some fun and informative new posts to jam down the maw of the internet in due course. If you need a fix in the meantime, here is an update on tidbits of content from some of our team members!
Most directly relevant to the project, a short piece by Sarah Murray and Bartek Lis was recently published in Antiquity‘s Project Gallery. It offers some thoughts on the LH IIIC community in the bay. The little tidbit is open access, and a quick read, not even long enough to take up a full frappé-drinking session.
Along with Sarah Murray, Grace Erny & Melanie Godsey co-authored a conference paper on our new finds from Porto Rafti for the big Athens & Attica in the Iron Age and Archaic Period extravaganza at the American School of Classical Studies in December 2022. We had a great time enjoying wintry Athens for a mini BEARS reunion, along with Joseph Frankl who has been a member of the American School’s regular program this academic year and Athens resident Eleni Chreiazomenou. It doesn’t look like the video recording of the conference was made available online, but you can check out the program here. We are preparing a version of the paper for publication of the conference proceedings, so keep an eye out for that in the winter!
A few weeks later, to kick off January 2023, the team presented the 2022 survey’s main results in a short paper at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in New Orleans, Louisiana. This was the first in-person AIA meeting since the pandemic, and it was great to see everyone, drink overpriced beer in a soulless hotel lobby, and share our results in person. Although the hybrid format caused no end of technical difficulties, and the room was freezing due to a hyperactive air conditioner, a good time was had by all.
Also in December 2022 , an excellent paper by Grace Erny and Mel Godsey on professional networks and survey archaeology with an eye to gender and representation dropped in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies. The paper is followed by responses from a rich and distinguished array of scholars. If you are a fan of survey archaeology and curious about its disciplinary context, you won’t want to miss this important discussion! And if you need a pdf and don’t have access, just get in touch with Grace or Melanie, I am sure they’ll be happy to share.
Along the same lines, Grace was co-author on a meta-study in the prestigious American Journal of Archaeology on the demographics of the field. It’s open access, so there’s no excuse not to check it out!
Congrats to everyone for these great contributions to the wide world of scholarship. There are plenty more BEARS-related presentations and publications in the pipeline, so watch this space for further updates ahead of and during the coming season of work in Porto Rafti.