Sadly, the helicopter ride never materialized today. Not entirely sure why, but there did seem to be something of a heightened security level at the base, with helicopters buzzing around more or less non-stop, which is unusual, so I suppose they couldn’t spare one for us to fly over sites. Fifteen years on Time Team and I never got a helicopter ride. Ah well, next time…
There’s a real sense that the project is starting to wind down now. The vets had their farewell barbecue up at the monastery site, and tomorrow the chairs, tents etc are due to be collected and packed away. Most of my morning was spent tagging along with Diarmaid, talking to people who can give us the required permissions to take the project to the next level, ie dig some holes before the Dreamer’s Bay sites all fall into the sea, and everything is looking very positive in that regard. The people we need onside appear to be very onside, and we’re taking them out to look at the sites tomorrow. I also spent a large chunk of the morning wrestling with my lap-top in an effort to get email working properly. After a fruitless hour or so I gave up, but have a workaround in place. I can receive in Outlook, but have to send using Yahoo. Have tried numerous fixes, all without success, but it appears that Microsoft Vista is indeed the pile of crap that everyone says it is.
After lunch, more research time. It might have looked like I was lying on a sunbed at the beach reading, but it was research. Honest. I’m certainly feeling a lot more familiar with the pottery than when I got here, and I’m happy that it is indeed all early Byzantine, broadly 5th – 7th century. More accurate dating will have to wait until we start digging. Interestingly, it turns out that a lot of the amphorae that we were getting at the Bay sites also turn up in really large quantities in Egypt, so that would seem to reinforce the suspected link between Dreamer’s Bay and Alexandria. We also suspect very strongly that they may have been making the amphorae on Akrotiri. It’s long been suspected there was a source of the type (LR1, pot-fans) on Cyprus, now all we’ve got to do is find it. Easier said than done, but another thing to think about.
The last hour before sundown was spent with one of our contacts off the base who reckoned he’d found some archaeology near the end of the main runway. We went and took a look, and indeed he had. He’d previously found Roman coins, and there was a steady scatter of Roman pottery and really good quality vessel glass throughout the scrub, but very little roof tile and no real sign of buildings. Odd. It’s very sandy there though as it’s very near the sea-front, so the whole thing may be buried under the sand. As it’s Roman, it’s not really our concern. We’ve probably already got about two centuries worth of digging with the Byzantine sites, so we’ll record the location of the finds, and leave it for somebody else, although we might stick a test-pit in at some point in the future to see how deeply it’s buried so the site can be managed properly in the future. It’s about 400m from a nice beach with a bar if anyone fancies it.
The Vets all went off to have a curry with the Gurkhas tonight, so the rest of us went out of the base to Akrotiri village and had a really nice Meze, finished off with a few Brandy Sours in the Sergeant’s Mess. Tomorrow will mainly be showing people around the sites, and hopefully getting the permissions we need for next year. All being well, I’m going to be back here next February for the next stage of work, for which we’re going to need a really good landscape archaeologist and a geophys team. If only I knew such people… :)
There’s a few photos to go with this on my Fabcebook page
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.762638453783628.1073741882.169284376452375&&uploaded=6
There’s a real sense that the project is starting to wind down now. The vets had their farewell barbecue up at the monastery site, and tomorrow the chairs, tents etc are due to be collected and packed away. Most of my morning was spent tagging along with Diarmaid, talking to people who can give us the required permissions to take the project to the next level, ie dig some holes before the Dreamer’s Bay sites all fall into the sea, and everything is looking very positive in that regard. The people we need onside appear to be very onside, and we’re taking them out to look at the sites tomorrow. I also spent a large chunk of the morning wrestling with my lap-top in an effort to get email working properly. After a fruitless hour or so I gave up, but have a workaround in place. I can receive in Outlook, but have to send using Yahoo. Have tried numerous fixes, all without success, but it appears that Microsoft Vista is indeed the pile of crap that everyone says it is.
After lunch, more research time. It might have looked like I was lying on a sunbed at the beach reading, but it was research. Honest. I’m certainly feeling a lot more familiar with the pottery than when I got here, and I’m happy that it is indeed all early Byzantine, broadly 5th – 7th century. More accurate dating will have to wait until we start digging. Interestingly, it turns out that a lot of the amphorae that we were getting at the Bay sites also turn up in really large quantities in Egypt, so that would seem to reinforce the suspected link between Dreamer’s Bay and Alexandria. We also suspect very strongly that they may have been making the amphorae on Akrotiri. It’s long been suspected there was a source of the type (LR1, pot-fans) on Cyprus, now all we’ve got to do is find it. Easier said than done, but another thing to think about.
The last hour before sundown was spent with one of our contacts off the base who reckoned he’d found some archaeology near the end of the main runway. We went and took a look, and indeed he had. He’d previously found Roman coins, and there was a steady scatter of Roman pottery and really good quality vessel glass throughout the scrub, but very little roof tile and no real sign of buildings. Odd. It’s very sandy there though as it’s very near the sea-front, so the whole thing may be buried under the sand. As it’s Roman, it’s not really our concern. We’ve probably already got about two centuries worth of digging with the Byzantine sites, so we’ll record the location of the finds, and leave it for somebody else, although we might stick a test-pit in at some point in the future to see how deeply it’s buried so the site can be managed properly in the future. It’s about 400m from a nice beach with a bar if anyone fancies it.
The Vets all went off to have a curry with the Gurkhas tonight, so the rest of us went out of the base to Akrotiri village and had a really nice Meze, finished off with a few Brandy Sours in the Sergeant’s Mess. Tomorrow will mainly be showing people around the sites, and hopefully getting the permissions we need for next year. All being well, I’m going to be back here next February for the next stage of work, for which we’re going to need a really good landscape archaeologist and a geophys team. If only I knew such people… :)
There’s a few photos to go with this on my Fabcebook page
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.762638453783628.1073741882.169284376452375&&uploaded=6
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