Ellie Simon, Natalie Tatar, and I were SRPs with Professor Jake Morton on a two week trip to Greece. The broader focus of the project was the history of the Athemanian people, a small ethnic group who lived in the Pindus mountains. The sources we have identify the Athamanians by name from around 375-170 BCE, but their history before and after that period is unclear. Exactly where their territory stretched was part of what we sought to find out. Simply and broadly put, we wanted to know how they thought of themselves and who they considered their allies.
Each of the students selected a different individual question to investigate. We conducted preliminary research and learned the basics of modern Greek before we left to be well-prepared when we arrived. As an artist and photographer, I always have questions about how archaeological sites are documented. It’s especially important to be specific and thorough or information may be lost: once a grave is dug up, for example, you can’t bury it again! Artist’s renderings were a common medium of documentation before photography became publicly available, but after the rise of the photograph other mediums became less prevalent. In my eyes, however, one medium cannot replace another, each has its own strengths. When both are available, why take a photo instead of hiring an artist? I drew and photographed the sites we visited to answer my questions experientially.
Our days were split into driving days (we went to MANY sites all over mainland Greece, lots of driving) and hiking days. We visited local museums in Arta and Ioannina, famous sites like Dodona, and hiked as a group in search of smaller sites. These small sites were often hidden or obscured by brush, so climbs sometimes ended with some bushwhacking. Sometimes we found nothing at all or the brush was too thick to fight through. Though it may have annoyed some of my colleagues, I was given ample time to draw and take photos onsite, which gave me substantial material to answer my research question. Too much material, in fact, to include here. Here’s a hint though: photography isn’t as objective as you might think!
In my sophomore year I studied abroad for a term in Greece and visited some smaller sites during that trip. This experience was very different. Our team was small and dedicated, and that made every minute a delight. We were immersed as much as we could be in the culture and landscape. In my previous experience, we were there to learn a curriculum that had been assigned. To borrow parlance from Donald Rumsfeld, the unknowns were known. Here we were trying to discover something new: unknown unknowns.
Of course I learned a lot about the Athemanians, though most of it would be uninteresting to the unindoctrinated. The more rural parts of modern Greece and the small cities were very interesting. I was able to leverage my (admittedly mediocre) Greek language skills into a whole lot of amazing interactions with people I never would have met otherwise. Countless soft and hard skills were strengthened that will benefit me on future digs and throughout my life. Perseverance, inquisitiveness, and adaptability were some of the most important of these. Finally, I found out how much water 2L actually is, and how much sweat I can produce when required.