Looking back on the first week in Athens it has lived up to every one of my expectations from when I stepped off the plane and made my way to the CYA campus to the week of spending time getting to know the local area around the apartment where living in. Before coming to Greece I had only taken 1 classics class and no archeology class so I was not sure what to expect. One of the classes I’m taking is digital archelogy and virtual reality. Again with this I was not really sure what to expect given my lack of prior experience but on the first day our professor laid out the plans for the class which include creating 3d models, flying drones to map landscapes, and working on GIS. All of these things I wouldn’t have associated with an archelogy class but it was a pleasant surprise when I heard we would be working on so many cool projects. Coming into Athens one of the things I looked forward to the most was the food. In the first week I believe I went to a different restaurant a almost every night trying different Greek foods and they were all amazing. The portions here are all sharing size and very inexpensive so you get to try a lot of everything which makes the experience diverse. Our first class trip was to the Acropolis in Athens and I believe that was the best one to do first because of the significance and the number of individual sites located on its grounds. At the bottom of the Acropolis in Image 1 you can see the hill that the acropolis is positioned on. Throughout the site there consists theaters, stoas, religious temples and more. Coming into this visit I knew about the religious importance of this site but not the economic and military applications as well. On our walk up we passed many places that used to be markets and shops where people could buy or trade goods. There were shops for food, jewelry and even one for if you wanted to get a statue made. Right before the ancient entrance where the pantheon is located we saw the Dionysus theater (Image 2). An interesting fact about this was that it was actually a roofed theater which the roof was made out of cedar which is not an easy material to come by in Greece. Even to this day there are performances held in this theater. Everybody knows about the pantheon but one of the most interesting buildings, to me, on the top of the acropolis was the old temple to Athena. I enjoyed this building due to the unique statues and the intricacy of the design and the layout of the rooms. Beyond the buildings it was interesting to learn about the importance of the site with records to the ancient civilizations. On the site there are more than just Greek building. There are several roman ones as well has kings from different lands that donated/built there. This speaks to the importance of the region not only during the Greek period but also for many century’s after. It also speaks to the identity of the people and what was most important to them based off of which temples were designated to which gods which could give incite into their beliefs and everyday lives. Lastly this site speaks to the empire that controlled this site based off of what was taken from other locations and given shower the power they had in the Mediterranean.
Our next trip was to the Mazi plain where we began at the settlement of Oinoe. This was a deme of Athens located in this fertilized field with mountains sounding it on all sides. Because fertile land where you could grow food lead to wealth this acted as a fortress used in times of war. This was a very important location to Athens because it was the closest fertile fields within the area which is a scarce occurrence in the geography of Greece. It was also the shortest way to travel from Athens to the Peloponnese so it held a strategic purpose for trade movement and military application. The colt statue of Dionysus that is now at the Acropolis was actually located here before. This location was really cool because you were able to see the stages of the settlement through multiple century’s based on which materials were used and the styles of the buildings. Our next stop was the fortress of Eleutherai which is one of the biggest fortifications in Greece. I learned more about the process of archelogy discovery here and how people reconstruct what might have happened based on the evidence presented from findings on the archeological site mixed with literature available. Alex discussed how there was a debate on who built this fortress and walked us thought the evidence for both sides and how they fought back and forth until they found what was unrefutably evidence ( a cup that had a Boetian stamp along with architectural designs of the fortress). We then stopped for lunch at beautiful small town names Vilia where I had these traditional Greek meatballs with an amazing tomato sauce. One thing i have notice about Greece is that about anywhere you go there will be cats around restaurants waiting for some food or just looking for some company. Our Last stop on the trip was maybe my favorite just because of the view that came along with it. This was the fortress of Aigasthena. This was a fortress located on a bay surrounded by mountains with islands off in the distance (image 7). During the earthquake the large 3 story tower had collapsed and many other parts of the site had been damaged. This is one of the only sites to have a complete restoration done on parts of it. We learned about the whole process and and how long it took the different types of people that needed to be apart of it to get this tye of work done as well as a step by step process over many months to compete it. At the end we were able to go in and walk to the top of the tower and get to put our self in the shoes of the ancient world which is not available at many other locations.
