On many levels this year’s project is similar to the previous ones. There is an international team of 14 archaeologists (undergraduate and graduate students mostly from Greece, Canada, the US and Spain), two osteoarchaeologists (from the University of Thessaloniki) and one architect/GIS specialist (from the US) along with eight local workmen who assist with the heavy work. After two weeks of digging there are five concentrations of bones from secondary burials dating from Early Minoan III through Middle Minoan IIA. Portions of previously discovered and new house tombs are coming to light. I have finished off after almost three years of excavation an Early Minoan IIB ritual deposit in a large room. In the 12th century BC a complex was built over a portion of the ruins of the house tombs. This year more evidence was revealed on the architectural details of the so-called Late Minoan IIIC “megaron” and of feasting activities in this complex. In the remaining weeks we have high hopes for important discoveries and information to assist in answering the many questions that are outstanding about the cemetery.
Canadian Content
Most years at Petras, our son Romanos (as excavator) and I are the only Canadians on the project. This summer, however, we have the pleasure of three more Canucks. At the moment they are all working in adjacent trenches in the southwest corner of the site in the “Canadian Sector”. Metaxia’s lectures in Canada in January on Petras enticed them to come to Crete this summer for this adventure.
Dr. Alexandra (Alex) Lesk and Dr. Paul Blomerus have travelled with their two sons and “aunty” all the way from Vancouver for another one of their “digging vacations”. Alex dug with Metaxia and me at the Late Minoan IIIC settlement at Halasmenos (near Ierapetra) in 2001. Since 1994 she has dug at the Athenian Agora, ancient Corinth, ancient Halai, Troy and in Rome. With an undergraduate degree in Classics from Dartmouth College and a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati she “loves being a dilettante” on her holidays from teaching Latin and ancient civilization at West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver. Her husband Paul is “an archaeologist by marriage”. They met when they were graduate students at Oxford. He has joined her at the Athenian Agora, ancient Halai and Troy. With his Ph.D, in mechanical engineering he has created a 3D digital reconstruction of the Erechtheion on the Akropolis in Athens. He works for a very understanding Vancouver company, West Port Innovations, which specializes in converting vehicles to run on natural gas. If working long, hot hours five days a week on an excavation is not enough Paul gets on a rented bike with his riding togs and does the “Tour de la Crète Orientale” with Alex driving the team vehicle behind him.
East Crete Realities
The above is the usual “archaeological normal”. The summer of 2015 in Greece, however, is by no means normal or what its citizens surely want for themselves and their children. The unending melodrama over the past six months with the present government’s attempts to come to an agreement with the “institutions”, the distinct possibility of a “Grexit” from the Euro and the introduction of a new national monetary unit and now “capital controls” along with banks closed for almost a month has created a heavy atmosphere of uncertainty, gloom and fear. Public infrastructure works have stopped and the stores have few customers. Who would have thought that in the 21st century a European country would suffer this unsettling economic experience? The inability of excavation projects to pay for their weekly expenses via cash because of the extreme withdrawal limits in place has made already stressed project directors even more so. Web banking at the moment offers the only hope to transfer funds between accounts.
Last week the award winning documentary “Agora: From Democracy to the Market” (http://agorathedoc.com/) by the well-known director and journalist Yorgos Avgeropoulos was shown in Siteia at its simple outdoor theatrical area by the port. This showing was very timely as it unravels the origins of the present economic and political crisis in the 1990s and how the country ended up where it did in late December, 2014. All of the well-known Greek and European “actors” and some lesser known had their say. Which of them, if any, told the “truth” in front of the camera?
If all of this was not enough on Wednesday morning as we started to dig at 7 am we saw a small animal transport ship pulling what looked like an old “water taxi” from the Bosphoros straits being escorted into the Siteia port by a Hellenic Coast Guard vessel. These two vessels were packed with 189 refugees fleeing from Syria via Turkey. As they had thought that they would be delivered to Italy for the exorbitant amount of money that they had paid to the human traffickers, most refused to disembark. Many on the project joined local citizens in donating basic supplies and food to them. Their final destination is unknown at this point.
Ironically, that evening there was a “body theater” production by the Cretan “Killing the Fly” company (www.killingthefly.com) entitled “Angeliki” with three “physical actors” and some props. It dramatized with few words, some music and mostly stylized body movements the memoire of a young Greek girl, Angeliki Matthaiou, and her family from Smyrna who were caught up in the chaos after the catastrophe in Asia Minor in the early fall of 1922 when Kemal Ataturk’s army pushed the Greek occupation forces into the sea. Their tragic experiences and gross mistreatment as refugees before the formal exchange of populations must have been very similar to those huddled on the decrepit boat just 100 m away. What does the past inform us about the present, let alone the future?
What will the fall bring to this country?
Kalo Kalokairi
David Rupp
Director
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