Today was awesome compared to what we've found so far! We started out with some pictures and planning out the few rocks in trench 33 and the Red Death corner. I got to try my hand at planning on a grid square. It's meticulous work, if not a little difficult. You take a plumb bob and basically try to get as completely over what you were drawing as possible. Then you have a grid square and you transfer each feature,  square for square. I got lucky, I only had to draw four rocks and a little outline in the northwest corner of the Red Death section. Somehow I managed to draw four circles, roughly the proper size and shape of the rocks in the middle of the grid.
That's when things started getting interesting. The Red Death section was given the context number 321, while the rest of the soil was context 320. When we started digging, we found part of a plaster floor and that got context 329. Along with the plaster floor, we found two stone pavers, including one that I helped the workman remove that was pratically intact. It looked a bit like a puzzle, but we pulled out all the pieces and put them in their own bag so that at the museum they could be easily pieced back together. The wall so far is looking like a series of rocks, but we haven't taken them out yet because we found more rocks underneath. They don't exactly line up nicely, but we're holding out for a connection.
In Trench 34, to the east of 33, we found a lamb bone, possibly part of a leg I think...? It was really cool because there were two pieces that could fit together and we had the end, where the joint would've been. They also found a bronze piece in that trench and I pulled out an ancient, rusty nail from the sift. Again, supper cool. Unfortunately now that we are in a real context and not on the surface layer, we have to send buckets to the sift, which means the majority of our trench spent most of our time down there. I got to come up and help supervise and run paperwork at the end, which is a bit more interesting since you are there when they make these really cool finds.
Right now they are leaning towards the Geometric period with the pottery we've been finding. I found this beautiful base piece with painted lines and an orange and black, rimmed base that they dated, likely to the Geometric Period. This is really cool because, until our excavation of the Lower Town, most archaeologists believed that Mycenae was completely abandoned after the Mycenaeans and remained uninhabited. But since we're finding walls and pottery and other really cool stuff in the Geometric Period (around 900-700 BC), that is obviously not the case! Take THAT Schliemann!
Tomorrow I have no idea what we will find, but I'm super excited. If it's anything like today, it promises to be awesome.

Day 1 of excavations:
Happy Fourth of July! We started the first day of excavations, which reminded me a lot of weeding at first. In order to dig you have to get rid of all the dead and living plants over the area where you believe there may be ancient whatevers. How do we know there are ancient whatevers before we've even broken ground? The miracle of technology! We use a variety of techniques that can give us a general idea of what is under the soil. It's not a very descriptive idea, but most of the time we are not just digging without any sort of clue as to what's exactly down there.
My trenchmaster (how awesome is that title, really?) is also named Katie, which is very confusing most of the time, and with her direction we cleared about 500 square meters, give or take. I'm not talking just a little bit of grass. I'm talking lots of hay and thistles that get stuck in your hand. Once more, when you're clearing, you aren't necessarily under a shade. So clearing is a lot like gardening, but with shovels and brushes rather than rakes. Not that we didn't have rakes; there are just four trenches and only two rakes. Those who wait don't get a toolbox. Sucks, but that's archaeology. So, I learned how to rake with the side of a shovel. A little difficult, but you get the hang of it after the first ten square meters or so...
After we cleared most of the larger debris from the area, we marked out one grid (which would be dubbed trench 33 in the computer and in our hearts) of five meters by five meters. Across the north side is 1-5 and down the east side is A-E. But column 1 and row E is always set aside as a "bulk". Basically, it isn't dug and will serve as a walkway between trenches until the area is excavated. The only reason they'd take out a bulk is because they need to, i.e. there's a wall that runs straight into the bulk. If we do our math right, that gives us 16 1m x 1m squares within a trench. These are called E.Us, or Excavation Units. A single person might work in an E.U. at a time, and E.U.s are used when something is found to denote placement and to sketch diagrams of fixtures.
After marking out our grid, we cleared off the smaller bits and pieces with straw brushes (think a smaller version of a sawed off straw broom) and dustpans, and then took preliminary readings with the total station. A total station takes,well, everything. Geographic coordinates, distances, and depth. It's basically this eye-looking machine on a tripod and you hold a staff with a mirror sensor on the head. Then the eye moves around until it finds the sensor. You hold the rod level at the point for a few seconds until the GIS guys say "okay" and then you move onto the next point. The really cool thing is that when you move, the eye of the machine moves with the "magic staff", provided you don't get in the way of the eye's view of the sensor. Yes, I stood there and moved the magic staff up down and all around and watched the total station move and it was really the hightlight of my day. Well actually, maybe that was when the workmen decided if they were going to dig in that grid the next day, they'd want a tarp up so they weren't out in the hot, Grecian sun.
And that rounded off our day. I know it might seem like a whole lotta nothing, but it was preparation that is necessary to archaeology. Archaeologists don't just dig holes, we methodically remove layers of 5-10 centimeters each pass. Every bucket of soil is sifted through and two people have to rotate through at the sift each day. Sifting is where I did most of my heavy lifting. You have to go bucket by bucket and you're standing with a wire sift hanging over a wheelbarrow. Dump a bucket, you are your sift buddy lift the sift to about chest height (letting it hang while you sift tears at the ropes), shake it until every little particle is through, and then you go through with your hands, picking out everything: pottery sherds (that's the proper term, not 'shards'), bone fragments, sea shells, lithics (stone tools and whatnot), you name it. Sherds with paint on them or that are handles or bases are considered 'Diagnostic' (meaning they could actually tell us something important, as opposed to the hundreds of 'body sherds' that we find with nothing on them whatsoever) and they go in a seperate bag. The sift can get hectic, especially with four trenches going at once and Greek workmen powering through 10 centimeters at a time with big pick-axes. You have to keep each trench accounted for and each pass (5-10 centimeter increments) marked. It can get confusing, but never fear for the siftmaster is always here with his handy-dandy notebook and tick-marks. Coloured buckets help denote where each batch of soil came from, until they run out of a specific colour bucket and then all hell breaks loose.
So you see, an archaeological dig is packed with all sorts of things that require thinking. It's not just mindless digging. Like I said earlier, it's METHODICAL.
After the dig we didn't do much of interest and I promptly fell asleep after an entirely cold shower (that felt glorious). So there's my harping for the first day. I hope you enjoyed it!

Hello again everybody! So I know I'm a few days behind with this post, but there was no internet access in Athens and I therefore was unable to update this blog until just today when we left the capital of Greece and drove two hours on a bus for the tiny town outside of the Mycenaean citadel, aptly called by archaeologists and historians, Mycenae! Yes, I realize I have therefore already FAILED to update regularly, but in my defense, that was beyond my control. And I'm updating now.
I guess the first thing I'd like to tell you all is that everybody made it without anyone being pickpocketed or killed. Yay! For our efforts, Chris (one of the graduate students in charge) bought us all cookies. I think I'll avoid pickpockets from now on, especially if we're going to get free cookies out of it!
Since it is splashed all over CNN and every other news network (Greek or foreign) many of you likely know that there have been some riots in Greece over, of all things, money! I'd like to tell you all that we were right there in the middle of the action and were given gas masks on our pillows rather than those little mints...but that would be a big fat lie, and nobody likes a liar. Unles you're a really good liar, in which case people don't actually KNOW you're a liar, and then people might actually like you, but then I guess that whole "nobody likes a liar' phrase wouldn't TECHNICALLY apply to you...confused yet? What it all boiled down to was some interesting metro switches and a bit of walking, but other than that, Athens was still as loud and cramped as I remembered it. Of course everyone spoke Greek at you, and since my Greek is quite frankly atrocious, I did not communicate with many natives. I was however, able to order food by pointing and nodding, and most of the cafes had at least SOMEONE who knew some English, so I did not starve. Which is generally good...
In Athens we went and toured the Parthenon and the new museum, as well as the Ancient Agora and the National Archaeological Museum. All of them were great, just the Parthenon day was LOOOOOOOOONNG!!! It was the day after all of us had flown overnight into Athens and all of us were somewhere between Athens time and Home time (not necessarily the same times since we come from all over the place!). So it was a very quiet tour on our part. Not to mention it took a combined total of about 7 HOURS! Our tour guide, Maria, was a very nice lady, spoke fairly good Greeklish, but by the first hour or so, we were all ready for a nice long nap and maybe some γύρο με πίτα. The next day was the museum and wasn't so bad, mainly because this time she gave us a few highlights and let us free to roam. We all pressed our noses to the glass cases with the "Mask of Agamemnon", the Niello daggers, Vapheio cups A and B,  and countless other pieces that we'd all seen over and over again in Prof. Maggidis's slides for classes, but never in person. I'd just like to say, things look a lot bigger in photos than real life. For example, there were two rhytons (ritual drinking vessels) in the shape of a bull's head and a gold lion's head that we'd seen plenty before. In the pictures, these things seemed about as big as someone's head. Well... actually they were about as big as a wide-open hand. Still as cool as ever (especially the lion one, that one is still my favourite rhyton), but surprising.
After the museum, we were turned loose on Greece and told to shoot Erica or Chris a text of where we were and what we were doing for supper when the time came. Marjorie, Ella, and I did some shopping in the Plaka, the touristy, flea market area where you can get all the fake vases and mini models of the Parthenon. Needless to say, I ended my day with my wallet a bit lighter and gifts for everyone on my list. ;-)
Today we got to sleep in and then boarded a coach bus and drove down to Mykines (the Greek name for Mycenae). It wasn't that long of a ride, but we got to pass over the canal that cuts through the isthmus between the main part of Greece and the Peloponnese, where Mycenae is located. A big ditch, would probably be a big enough understatement to describe the canal. It's basically a straight-shot  with huge, rocky clifs carved out of the ground. People bungee off the bridge over the canal. It's such a straight drop that, if you don't know it's coming up, you can totally miss the canal itself. It's just, tree, tree, tree, tree, WHOOPS CLIFF!, tree, tree, tree, tree... They even gave us fair warning and some people actually missed the canal.
The town were staying in is close to the dig, but we still have to be shuttled up and back to and from the site. There are only around 200 people in this town and one road which everything is off of. Compared to Athens, it's like a ghost town! Marjorie, my sometimes-woefully-confused-but-generally-fun roommate, and I went exploring, found two gift shops and three restaurants/taverns, and saw only four people. I think it might be just because it's a Sunday and, like usual, bloody hot outside, but I'm not sure. Something just tells me this place doesn't exactly have a hopping night-life. But then, Marjorie and I are SUCH party-animals...
Tomorrow is a half-day and is orientation. I'll meet my trenchmaster (how cool does that title sound?), find out which sector I'll be working in, and then Prof. Maggidis will give us troops a rally speech (possibly) before we have to really start the main work. Yes, I know tomorrow is the Fourth of July, but it's Greece!
Okay, I think I've blathered on enough, so I'll leave you for now.  Check out the photo gallery because I'll be posting pics from Athens!
Για σας!

Hello anyone who is here!
When I was accepted into the D.E.P.A.S. Program at Mycenae, Greece this spring, I decided that I wanted to keep a journal of my time there. I'd write everyday, keep things in between the pages, even takes notes and draw pictures. It was going to be awesome!
Then I realized that, although I am a good writer, I am complete CRAP when it comes to drawing ANYTHING, let alone the details of an archaeological excavation. So I decided that, although I enjoy ancient things, it was time to bring myself into the 21st century. I decided to create this blog, hopefully chronicling my days in the D.E.P.A.S. program. I have no idea if I will be able to do it (keep up each day, that is) but I figured the first place to start it with a first post. I still have little over a month until I get in a big steel bird and fly across an ocean and a sea to start my adventure, but like my fellow undergraduate archaeology majors, I am STOKED!
To give a little background, this program is one that I have been looking forward to since I first started college. I had visited Mycenae in 2008 as a tourist (see the slideshow on my "Background" page for proof!) but I had not known about the D.E.P.A.S. program. All I'd known was that it was an ongoing archaeological dig and looked pretty darn cool! Believe it or not, I'd wanted to be a NASA flight controller (Mission Control and all that stuff) and was pretty set on becoming a rocket scientist. But I spent two weeks touring as many archaeological sites throughout Greece as I could and, well the rest is history (pun intended =) ).
So here I am, three years later, preparing to go back to Greece, this time as an undergraduate archaeology student and NOT a prospective rocket scientist. Funny how things change, huh? To prepare for D.E.P.A.S. all students have to take specific courses. One is Pre-historic Aegean Art and Archaeology, which I took in the Fall of 2010,and the other is an intensive Modern Greek language course, which I happily finished just a few weeks ago. Both are designed to help you when you go to Mycenae, to understand the context of the ruins you are unearthing and to at least partially communicate with the locals. Well...I guess I'm happy I can say "Please", "Thank you", and "My name is Katie" (or Κατερίνα if you want to be REALLY Greek).
I don't really know what it will be like over there, but talking to other majors who have gone on this program just makes me more and more excited to go.