People matter

We are inching toward the end of the second week. Things are falling into routine. One common feature of this excavation, like many, is people arriving and departing. Within the past week, we have seen the arrival of Tina Ross, our illustrator, Bartek Lis, one of our ceramicists, Camilla MacKay, our database and Medieval ceramicist, Nepheli Theotokou and Vicky Karas, our conservators, and tomorrow, Trevor Van Damme, our other ceramicist.  And today we say good-bye to Janet Jones, from Bucknell. Nick Blackwell and Kyle Jazwa returned to Athens after short visits.Yin Lam departed last week too. It's a lot to keep track of but everyone seems to fully understand that this undertaking is a massive team effort and everyone's contribution matters greatly. On site, digging everyday, we are fairly consistent with our supervisors and students/volunteers - these don't change too much. We are a very big work crew - the biggest we've ever fielded at EBAP and the amount of earth we are moving demonstrates this. The weather has also finally turned full-on SUMMER. Yesterday probably hit 35 degrees in some parts of the site. And unfortunately, the lower we dig, the hotter it is out of the breeze. We (Joe last year, with Spencer this year) have built sun shades made of aluminum pipes and green netting used for olive collection. These are coming in very handy. Teams will lift the four corners and rotate them during the course of the day as the sun moves, giving vital shade to the diggers and shovelers below. The wheelbarrowers, unfortunately, don't get much shade.

This project is co-directed by me and my very good friend and colleague Bryan Burns, Wellesley College. I think most would agree we work and co-direct very well together - on nearly everything we come to an easy agreement and have similar views on how we'd like things to happen. Perhaps it's telling that most people confuse our names and when we correct them, they sometimes just say, 'it doesn't really matter'. I kind of agree.

It's always been a key part of EBAP's success to have a very coherent and communicative team of people fully involved and engaged.  Soon the students will be posting blog posts here - and I'll be including more photos of them. For now, here's just one more and me and the other 'BB':