Interning Abroad: It's all Greek to Me

When I discovered that I was chosen as the Laurier student to intern abroad this semester I was thrilled, and almost couldn’t believe it was real. I had heard about this opportunity in my first year, but didn’t expect to able to come to Athens myself. The months leading up to it were filled with excitement, and anxiety about living abroad alone for the first time. Before I left, my friends would joke around and say that I would get lost and not be able to understand anything because it will “All be Greek to me.” They weren’t wrong. Even though that phrase previously filled me with anxiety, that feeling has been replaced with excitement as I hear it again. Getting lost in a foreign country and mispronouncing Greek words so badly you get the wrong coffee is part of the journey. I am so grateful that I had this opportunity to intern at the Canadian Institute in Greece. It has allowed me to expand on my personal and professional growth.

During my time at the Canadian Institute I had two main tasks to complete. The first one was reorganizing, and digitizing documents for the institute’s archives. Some of the documents were scanned, and others were not. The first step in this process was creating an excel sheet to take an inventory to see if the electronic and physical copy of the documents were both present. If they were not, then often the physical copy had to be scanned. Once all of the papers were accounted for they had to be placed in an organized manner. The institute has been through various name changes in Greece and Canada. I placed the documents in the corresponding category, based on the chronology of the institute’s name changes, physically and electronically. The second task included odd jobs such as preparing food for the lectures, hostel laundry, and picking up books for the library.

When I was finished working for the day I took the time to explore Athens. I loved living in a city much bigger than Waterloo. Luckily the Metro was easy to figure out and was my main mode of transportation in the city. There was an abundance of new food, tavernas, and shopping to try. On top of this, living here is an archaeologist's dream with all of the ancient sites to explore. There are far too many places to mention that I traveled to in the city but the highlights include the Parthenon, both Agoras, the Temple of Zeus, the National Archaeological Museum, the Cycladic Museum, and the National Gardens. During my time here I met a previous intern, Holly, from 2017, who liked Athens so much she never left and now considers herself a local. It was nice knowing someone who was already familiar with Greece to show me around. She introduced me to my favorite experience in Athens which was seeing a concert at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus under the Acropolis. We saw a symphony performed, and they used no microphones, to mimic the ancient acoustics. It was truly an amazing experience.

My work week was Monday to Friday which left me with weekends to explore other parts of Greece. Some were solo trips and others were with the Fellow at the institute, my roommate, Holly, or someone from home. The highlights of my weekend trips away include Aegina, Cape Sounion, Hydra, Nafplio, Vouliagmeni Lake, Mycenae, Epidaurus, Knossos, Delphi, and Mykonos. One of my favorite places from this list was Hydra. It was the most charming island, with no modes of transportation other than donkeys or water taxis. I never mastered the Greek way of crossing streets, making it a relief to not have a fear of getting hit by a scooter for a weekend! The island itself was also beautiful.

I really enjoyed my time at the Canadian Institute. I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to experience a new culture, and visit so many beautiful, interesting places while gaining knowledge about them. Working here also allowed me to make friends and meet so many new people while falling in love with Greece. It made me more independent as a person and sharpened my sense of direction as well! I definitely want to return to Greece in the future!

Heather Robinson
Wilfrid Laurier University intern, autumn-winter 2018

The Fred Winter Collection

Kandyla-Skotini pass: view down on W to Kandyla valley, Orchomenos hill, and Mt. Mainaloos (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

Happy Holidays!

The Canadian Institute in Greece will close for the holidays at 1 pm today. We will reopen on Monday 7 January 2019 at 9 am.

Best wishes to all!

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Miletos: views from Theatre Hill: SE over Faustina Baths to Ilyas Bey mosque (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

The Fred Winter Collection

Miletos: theatre: orchestra and stagehouse (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

The Fred Winter Collection

Miletos: N Agora area: L-shaped Harbour Stoa from S (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

Shopping for Books in Classical Athens

The Institute’s third lecture of this academic year will take place on Wednesday 5 December, starting at 7.30 pm in the library of the Institute (Dionysiou Aiginitou 7, ground floor, Ilisia. Metro: Megaro Mousikis). Dr. Hallie Marshall (Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre & Film, University of British Columbia) will give a talk entitled, "How to Shop for Books in late 5th-Century Athens".

“The book trade in fifth century Athens is rarely discussed, and issues of literacy in classical Athens, and indeed in later periods, generally focus on questions of what portion of the population would have been literate, education and literacy, degrees of literacy, and the place and function of writing in Athens. This paper will explore our evidence for the selling and buying of books in late fifth-century Athens and argue that, in light of that evidence, we need to reframe our conception of what a book was for Greeks of this period.”

You are all most welcome to join us next Wednesday evening for what promises to be a most interesting presentation.

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Miletos: "Harbour Blvd" from N (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

The Fred Winter Collection

Miletos: Bouleuterion view E from council-chamber over court to area of S Agora gate and Early Christian basilica (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

The Indians Who Rocked the World!

For our Canadian film night this autumn we will be screening the 2017 film “Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World” (1 hour 43 minutes; English).

This award-winning Canadian documentary profiles the impact of Indigenous musicians in Canada and the United States on the development of popular music (blues, jazz, folk, pop, rock, heavy metal). Artists profiled include Charley Patton, Mildred Bailey, Link Wray, Jimi Hendrix, Jesse Ed Davis, Stevie Salas, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson, Randy Castillo, Taboo and others. The title of the film is a reference to the pioneering instrumental "Rumble", released in 1958 by the American group Link Wray & His Ray Men. The instrumental piece was very significant for many artists.

The film features many influential musicians who discuss the musical contributions of Indigenous artists, including commentaries from Quincy Jones, George Clinton, Taj Mahal, Martin Scorsese, John Trudell, Steven Tyler, Marky Ramone, Slash, Iggy Pop, Buddy Guy and others.

Join us on Wednesday evening, November 21, at 19.30, in the library of the Institute, to learn more about the influence that Indigenous North Americans had on the popular music scene.

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Miletos: theatre: general view from W (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

The Fred Winter Collection

Miletos: S. Agora: panorama of area from W by N (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

The Fred Winter Collection

Klaros: temple of Apollo: entry to arched crypt under cella (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

Haunted Texts and Philo-xeni Archaeology

The Institute’s second lecture of this academic year will take place on Wednesday 31 October – Halloween! – starting at 7.30 pm in the library of the Institute (Dionysiou Aiginitou 7, ground floor, Ilisia. Metro: Megaro Mousikis). Dr. Judith Fletcher (Professor, Department of History and Ancient Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University) will give a talk with the suitably spooky title, “The haunted text: myths of the underworld in contemporary culture”.

“Stories of a visit to the realm of the dead and a return to the upper world are among the oldest narratives in European culture, beginning with Homer’s Odyssey and extending to contemporary fiction and art. Judith Fletcher examines a variety of different genres by twentieth- and twenty-first-century authors and artists, including Salman Rushdie, Neil Gaiman, Elena Ferrante, and Anish Kapoor, who deal in various ways with the descent to Hades in literary fiction, comics, film, sculpture, and children’s culture. The analyses of these “haunted texts,” consider how their retellings relate to earlier versions of the mythical theme, including their ancient precedents by Homer and Vergil, but also to post-classical receptions of underworld narratives by authors such as Dante, Ezra Pound, and Joseph Conrad.”

You are all most welcome to join us next Wednesday evening for what promises to be a fascinating presentation.

Conference and Exhibition, “Philo-xeni Archaiologia”

Last Thursday and Friday, October 18 and 19, the Institute took part in a conference – organized by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture to mark the European Year of Cultural Heritage, 2018 – entitled, “Philo-xeni Archaiologia. Foreign Archaeological Schools and Institutes in Greece”. The conference had three themes: (1) The beginnings of the institution of Foreign Archaeological Schools and the first archaeological missions in Greece; (2) Foreign Archaeological Schools today. Contribution and innovation in the area of research and education; and (3) Foreign Archaeological Schools and Society.

The Canadian Institute contributed a paper relating to the third topic, prepared by the Institute’s Interim Director, Professor Brendan Burke, and entitled “The Canadian Institute in Greece: Social and Cultural Activities that Engage with the Past and the Present”. Since Professor Burke was unable to be present in Athens for the conference I presented his paper, which was well received by the good-sized audience in the auditorium of the Acropolis Museum. The programme of the conference can be seen here: www.culture.gr/DocLib/ΠΡΟΓΡΑΜΜΑ ΣΥΝΕΔΡΙΟΥ.pdf

The Ministry also organized a photographic exhibition to accompany the conference, and this opened on Thursday evening, October 18, in the Fethiye Mosque in the Roman Agora of Athens. A number of the Institute’s field projects contributed material for the exhibition, and some photos of the exhibition, focusing on the Institute’s contribution, can be seen in an album on the Institute’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/The-Canadian-Institute-in-Greece-173666819462/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10156673622034463.

Warm thanks to our colleagues in the Ministry for organising these events showcasing the work of the Foreign Archaeological Schools and Institutes.

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Pergamon: Traianeum: restored colonnade behind the temple (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

The Fred Winter Collection

Pergamon: Traianeum: restorations underway (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

Euripides' Hippolytus and Eros as a Killer Virus

The Institute’s first lecture of the 2018-2019 academic year will take place on Wednesday 17 October, starting at 7.30 pm in the library of the Institute (Dionysiou Aiginitou 7, ground floor, Ilisia. Metro: Megaro Mousikis). D. G. “Josh” Beer (Adjunct Professor, Dept. of Greek and Roman Studies, Carleton University) will give a talk entitled, “The Athenian Plague & Eros as a Killer Virus in Euripides’ Hippolytus”.

“In 430-29 B.C. a plague devastated the Athenian population. Pericles, the statesman, died of it; Thucydides, our main historical witness, caught it but survived. In 428 Euripides presented his Hippolytus and won the tragic prize. In the play Aphrodite decides to kill Hippolytus by making his young stepmother Phaedra fall in love with him because he rejects her godhead. For the Greeks Eros (Love) was a madness that first attacked the eyes before assailing the mind. In both Thucydides’ account and Euripides’ play, the main recurring thematic term is nosos, disease. Of the plague some believed that it had a divine cause, others a natural explanation. The same division of opinions is expressed by the chorus of women in Hippolytus about Phaedra’s illness. Similarly, Aphrodite can be viewed in two ways; 1) as a vindictive deity; 2) as a force of nature in the form of Eros. I shall treat Eros metaphorically as a virus. Although only Phaedra suffers the full effects of Eros’ madness, the contagion spreads by means of Phaedra’s nurse, her main caregiver, and deranges the minds of the other characters. The primary visual image of Hippolytus is Phaedra’s sick-bed which morphs into the bier on which the dead queen is laid out. As a piece of theatre the bed/bier has a numinous existence that is as vital as that of the human characters.”

You are all most welcome to join us next Wednesday evening for what promises to be a most interesting presentation.

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Pergamon, views of Stadtgrabung (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

David Jordan (13-2-1942 - 9-9-2018), former Director of the Canadian Institute

The passing of David Jordan is a great loss to the Canadian Institute in Greece (CIG). David served as the Director of the Canadian Archaeological Institute at Athens, the predecessor of CIG, from 1996 to 2000, during some of its most difficult years when its continuing existence was at stake. As in everything else he did, he performed this task selflessly, efficiently, and successfully.

His passing is also a great loss to scholarship. A commanding authority on ancient magic and Greek curse tablets, he traveled widely in the scholarly world, and his opinion was regularly sought on a wide variety of topics in epigraphy, philology, and ancient religion. He possessed a rare and special talent, a quintessential gift, simultaneously to read and interpret the most difficult of ancient Greek epigraphical writing, scratchings on lead curse tablets. With very apparent ease ... I often watched him in action ... he brought order to chaos, producing wholly convincing readings from the most desperate texts. In all his scholarship he was a perfectionist; his research was meticulous and thorough, his arguments were balanced and cogent, and his obvious mastery of his subject, a mastery sans pareil, was everywhere in evidence. Because of this pursuit of excellence he did not publish nearly so much as his friends and colleagues would wish; his extremely high standards would not allow him to let anything go to press until he had solved every problem and examined, verified, and approved every detail. His exceeding care reminded me of descriptions of the method of composition of one of his favorite authors, Virgil, about whose writings we corresponded on a number of occasions.

David and Jan Jordan at the Canadian Institute

The passing of David is most of all a tremendous loss to his many friends; we shall all miss him greatly. I first met him when we were both members of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens in the late ‘60s. We had much in common, a love of epigraphy, a love of Greece, and a love of the convivial vibrant life of modern Athens with its so many attachments to the ancient city. His accent and manners were those of a gracious southerner, a gentleman ... he was born in Georgia. He was engaging in conversation and good natured in disposition. He was generous in sharing his knowledge, the most generous scholar I have known. I cannot count the number of times he helped me ... no, I have a computer, I can count some of them: 227 citations among the curse tablets in PAA, and I have not counted elsewhere in Attic epigraphy, topography, and prosopography, to say nothing of the unrecorded number of times he saved me from error.

An epitome of our friendship may be found in our sharing of the organization and presentation of the conference Lettered Attica at the Canadian Institute on March 8, 2000. “Sharing” is hardly the correct word, as the idea of the conference was totally David's and, typically, he did the majority of the work. The papers were published 3 years later as volume #3 in the Institute’s series, “Lettered Attica” after the skillful editing and beautiful typesetting of our mutual friend of many years, Philippa Matheson.

John Traill (left) and David Jordan at the conference Lettered Attica

David was most loyal and unstinting in his help to all his friends. Unfortunately that virtue was not always reciprocated and for no apparent reason he was denied tenure at two universities in the US, after which he returned to Greece, where a 3-year interim appointment as a librarian, a position most congenial to David, a bibliophile, was not made permanent. These setbacks were great personal disappointments to David, but the loss to these institutions was the Canadian Institute’s gain, for he was in Athens and free to assume the directorship of the Institute when it most needed a person of his character, administrative ability, and academic stature.

A philhellene par excellence. David was a lover of both ancient and modern Greece, and it was here in Athens that he lived the majority of his life, and it is here that he died.

Ave atque Vale. STTL.

John Traill
University of Toronto

The Fred Winter Collection

Pergamon, acropolis: Demeter sanctuary from NW and above (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

Canadian Institute events, autumn 2018

The Canadian Institute in Greece has three lectures lined up for this autumn. First, on Wednesday October 17, Josh Beer (Adjunct Professor, Department of Greek and Roman Studies, Carleton University) will speak on “The Athenian Plague and Eros as a Killer Virus in Euripides’ Hippolytus”. Then, for Halloween, Wednesday October 31, Dr Judith Fletcher (Professor, Department of History and Ancient Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University) will spook us with “The haunted text: myths of the underworld in contemporary culture”. Finally, on Wednesday December 5, Dr Hallie Marshall (Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre & Film, University of British Columbia) will tell us “How to Shop for Books in late 5th-Century Athens”. In addition, we intend to screen a Canadian film one evening in November, so stay tuned for further announcements!

All events will take place in the Institute’s library, starting at 19.30. Abstracts for the three lectures can be seen on the Institute’s website, at: http://www.cig-icg.gr/events. Everyone is most welcome!

Sarah Nash returns!

One of the Institute’s former Fellows is back in Athens and is giving a talk next Tuesday, October 2, at the Norwegian Institute at Athens. Sarah Nash is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta and was the Institute’s Neda and Franz Leipen Fellow in 2015-2016. Her lecture is entitled, “Private Portraiture of Girls and Women as Artemis in the Roman Imperial Era”. The talk is scheduled to begin at 19.00. The Norwegian Institute is located at Tsami Karatasou 5 (5^th floor), Koukaki. Further details, including the abstract, can be seen here: https://norwinst.w.uib.no/event/lecture-sarah-nash-university-of-alberta/?instance_id=49.

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Samothrace, sanctuary: Heraion, general views from SW, S and SSW, and detail of apse at S (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

Welcome, Barbara and Heather!

The 2018-19 academic year has begun at the Institute, and I will shortly be announcing our programme of events for this autumn. This year we welcome the Institute’s 2018-19 Homer and Dorothy Thompson Fellow, Barbara Scarfo, and Wilfrid Laurier University intern, Heather Robinson, who will be with us in Athens until December.

Barbara Scarfo has a BA (Hons) in Classics and Italian Studies and an MA in Classics, both from McMaster University. She is currently in the process of completing her PhD thesis, also at McMaster, entitled, “The Socio-Cultural Construction of Maternity in the Roman World”. In her study she analyzes three aspects of child-bearing in the Roman era: the social context of Roman maternity, the significant relationship between slavery and Roman maternity, and the social issues associated with unwanted pregnancies. While her main sources are chiefly textual (Greek medical writers, Roman jurists, and literary evidence), throughout her dissertation she draws heavily on epigraphic evidence (above all, funerary inscriptions in Latin and Greek) as well as material culture, such as the figural reliefs that appear on commemorations and osteological evidence.

Over the course of researching the subject of Roman maternity, Barbara encountered significant Greek evidence in the funerary stelae that feature depictions of mothers and infants. Previous scholarship mentions the grouping of mother and infant in passing, with the presence of a young child interpreted as an iconographic element signifying motherhood, and their focus is primarily on the relationships of the deceased woman with her father and other male relatives. In her new project, Barbara hopes to explore the topic of mothers and infants on Classical Attic funerary commemoration from a new angle and on a larger scale.

Heather Robinson is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is majoring in Archaeology and Heritage Studies with an option in geomatics. Heather has had an interest in Greek mythology and ancient history since reading Percy Jackson in Grade 8. She has more recently developed an interest in bioarchaeology and wishes to focus on that field of study throughout her master’s degree.  Heather has participated in excavations on the Town of Nebo Archaeological Project in Jordan in 2016, and during her time in Greece she plans to explore various parts of the country, and experience new food, museums, and culture.

Jonathan Tomlinson
Assistant Director

The Fred Winter Collection

Samothrace, sanctuary: Heraion from NW (from Stoa terrace) (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

Survey says you not even close: the Western Argolid Regional Project, 2018

This year’s season was the second of our two planned study seasons, and so we returned to our usual summer digs in Myloi with a small team of faculty and graduate students. Our main priority was the study of the tens of thousands of artifacts that we collected in the field, housed in our αποθήκη (storage facility) in Argos. Sarah James and Scott Gallimore, the other directors of our project, organized a team composed of themselves, Grace Erny, Joseph Frankl, Alyssa Friedman, Melanie Godsey, Machal Gradoz, and Ginny Miglierina, joined by a number of visiting scholars: Daniel Pullen, for his expertise in prehistoric pottery, Guy Sanders, for Medieval and post-Medieval pottery, and Kim Shelton, for Mycenaean pottery. We were also joined by Christina Kolb, who illustrated pottery, and Susan Caraher, who helped us with artifact photography. [Figure 1: In the foreground Melanie Godsey (left) and Machal Gradoz (right) sort pottery; Alyssa Friedman, Scott Gallimore, and Guy Sanders work in the background.]

The αποθήκη team focused on reexamining artifacts from areas of interest, refining our identification of materials of all periods, and cataloguing artifacts of various types and from different parts of our survey area.  In the previous year, we had focused on material associated with 14 areas that we had preliminarily identified as “sites” – which we used not as a technical term, but rather as a kind of shorthand for large clusters of dense units – and pulled representative artifacts from each of them for cataloguing. This work continued in 2018, with a focus on two types of material: first, those that we hadn’t examined from the previous year, and second, objects that we initially assigned to the broadest chronological categories. There were big changes to our understanding, thanks especially to our visiting scholars, who helped us to refine our identifications of material from the Late Bronze, Medieval, and Ottoman periods.

The other main goal of the study season had to do with our data. Here, Bill Caraher, Rachel Fernandez, and I were the main participants, assisted by the other members of the project. Some of our work involved going out into our survey area to revisit areas of interest and to ensure that our documentation was sufficiently rich for our preliminary and final publications. [Figure 2: Rachel Fernandez (center) and Bill Caraher (left) at Palaiokastraki.]

We mainly worked on our digital data, however, in part to help guide the team working in our storage facility and in part to advance our analysis of the survey as a whole. Bill and Rachel prepared our survey data for publication, and worked on ways to analyze and visualize artifacts of the same (or similar) date that cluster in the landscape. We found, for instance, that 50 meter buffers around each unit with material of a particular date allowed us to identify clusters that could act as starting points for more detailed analyses. [Figure 3: Clusters of Archaic material (in blue) in the western part of our survey area.]

We also continued to work on the modern period. Ioanna Antoniadou returned to continue her invaluable ethnographic work, conducting interviews and consulting local archives. Kostis Kourelis visited us for a couple of days, helped us to interpret some recently-abandoned modern houses in our survey area, and consulted on how to document the modern villages on the edges of our survey.  [Figure 4: Kostis Kourelis illustrates an abandoned 20^th century house at Chelmis.]

All in all, it was an amazingly productive summer. We effectively finished analyzing the artifacts from the survey, thanks to a lot of hard work by a large and dedicated team, and readied our field data for publication. Closely working with this evidence has made us question many of our past narratives for the region, and encouraged us to come up with better interpretations for what we are finding. Yet for all of the incredible work that we did this summer, so much more remains to be done (hence the title of this post). In this coming winter, we’ll need to continue to work closely with our digital data and, most importantly, begin to write our contributions for the project’s publication. Fortunately all of this year’s efforts will give us a very solid foundation to build on!

Dimitri Nakassis
Professor, University of Colorado Boulder; co-director, Western Argolid Regional Project

The Fred Winter Collection

Samothrace, sanctuary: views to Arsinoeion area from SW (Professor Fred Winter, 1983)

Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project - Excavations at Ancient Eleon 2018

EBAP concluded its final excavation season at the site of ancient Eleon in the village of Arma on July 8, 2018 before a period of study and publication. This project is a synergasia between the CIG and Ephorate of Antiquities of Boeotia, under the direction of Dr. Alexandra Charami (Ephorate of Antiquities of Boeotia) and co-direction of Drs. Brendan Burke (University of Victoria) and Bryan Burns (Wellesley College). Dr. Kiriaki Kalliga is also a key partner in our research project. We are very grateful for the research funding we received in 2018 from an Insight Grant from the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada (#435 2018 0773), the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, and the University of Victoria and Wellesley College. The Canadian Institute in Greece has facilitated and supported the permit process each year and we are grateful to the scholars, students and volunteers who made our work possible.

Our season started off in late May and the weather was surprisingly cool and rainy. The site had been covered by a tarp all winter which prevented any serious damage and erosion. (Slide 1) On the few rainy workdays we had, the team visited the apothiki and learned about pottery sorting, processing and conservation. (Slide 2) We were also able to visit the amazing archaeological museum at Thebes. Once the sun came out by mid-June, the weather became very hot! With our team of about 20 student volunteers, we were able to remove the tarps (Slide3) and work was focused on the impressive Blue Stone Structure, an Early Mycenaean burial complex dating to about 1700 BCE (Slide 4).

With the hot weather (Slide 5) we made every effort we could to stay cool and in the shade, using umbrellas donated to our project by Café Contigo in Dilesi! (Slide 6) Work this year on site progressed very well. We made great progress in understanding the full extent of the Blue Stone Structure and recovered more burial remains. In the apothiki our team of conservators, illustrators, ceramicists and specialists made great progress on our finds. We had an active program of digitization, where 3D scans were made of certain vessels and small finds.

Every year our team of students and researchers have to live and work together for six weeks and we have been very fortunate over the years to get some truly excellent people on our team. (slide 7) We have a range of students, most from the University of Victoria and Wellesley College, but also students from Wilfrid Laurier, Carleton College, McGill University, University of Cincinnati, Rutgers University, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and Texas State University participated this year. (slide 8) We believe students enjoy the opportunities to share what their university experiences are like in Canada and the US. The work is challenging, with early morning sunrises, wild animals and mandatory social gatherings (Slide 9).

This year we were also able to participate in some very fun and rewarding community activities.  The local school children of the Tanagra area had an exhibition focused on the archaeology of the region – called the Tanagra Express (Slide 10) and they kindly invited us to participate. We in turn were also able to host a group from the town of Arma, where our project is based. (slide 11) We had nearly 100 people come to our Open House in July and were able to share our research results with the community (slide 12).

Brendan Burke
Associate Professor, University of Victoria; co-director, Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project