A week, already?

It's amazing how time flies when you're digging in the dirt eight hours a day!

Monday was our first day of digging (or preparing our trenches for digging) and it's been crazy non-stop ever since. I'm at the site closest to the coast (beautiful view, by the way) known as Koutsopetria (there are two other sites, Vigla and Kokkinokremos). There are six of us at the site, but only three in my trench: Sarah, our site advisor, and Nick, another student from Messiah, and myself. We're working on the western side of the site which is an annex to a Christian basillica (not really visible, but parts are). We're digging to figure out if a certain area of our trench is a room extension and, if so, what it might have been used for. Also, we're trying to figure out why the doorway was filled in and cemented over.

Or at least, that was the plan...

After a few days of digging (I've never had so much fun digging in the dirt before, it's glorious! Mom...don't get any ideas!) we realized two things which have changed our focus:

1. Our room extension does not appear to be a room extension. It actually looks more like the debris from a fallen wall. This hasn't been proven yet, and we're going down another 20 cm today to get even with another part of our trench, so that should give us a better idea of what is going on.
2. The cemented in doorway. Not so much. It's actually this really confusing compaction of dirt that appears to be cement. But alas, it is not! We'll get to this part next week and then I'll have more news on that.

So, as you can see, archaeological hypothesis really change. I've come to realize how very scientific archaeology is, which is strangely fun. Of course, finding ancient artifacts is pretty neat, too. Thus far we've found lots and lots of mortar, tile and pottery sherds. There are a few items we've sent in that are of interest, such as a few small stones that appear to have been worked (some type of bead or game piece, a small tool used for holding string and some fragment of a decorated stone object) but no dead bodies yet ;) Nick and I have had a lot of fun, and we've even come up with team names daily. Some of them have been: Trench Awesome, Trench Really Lazy (Tuesday and Thursday mornings were really tough), Trench Find Dead Bodies, Trench Better than Everyonce Else, Trench Really Really Good Looking, and Trench Humble. We even come up with theories about the person who resided in our trench, so far, this is all we have come up with (note: it's 100% most likely not true, but it keeps us mentally stimuated while sifting through dirt):

The man who lived in the room we are digging was a part-time bead maker (which explains all the pretty rocks) while his official occupation was groundskeeper for the basilica. He lived a happy life, taking care of the basilica and making beads in his spare time. Unfortunately, one day the Sea People came to Koutsopetria, attacking the townsfolk. In a show of great mercy, the King of the Sea People told the bead-maker that he would be spared if he could appease them. He went to make some beads, but was so nervous he forgot to put holes in the stones. Thus, the King was mad and stabbed the bead-maker with a bronze tipped stick (Nick wants to find a bronze spearpoint). The bead-maker stumbled back home where he thought he could tough it out and live, however, after setting a fire (to explain sections of ash we've found), he died. His house then started to burn, and the fire-brigade tried to put out the fire but accidentally poured too much water on the house (which explains large amounts of silt over one area, skipping another and then leading into the next area). Eventually the bead-makers abode fell into ruin and his wall fell (where we are currently digging), and on that wall were the stones he had yet to put holes in to make beads.

Our site (and our speecific trench) advisor humors us and tells us it's good to get thinking about why things are like they are, but I think it's a last-ditch attempt to deal with all of us ;)