Helike Project - Archaeological Excavation (by Jennifer Weeks)

In late April, I was extremely excited to discover that I had received the Kathleen Nixon Award to fund my travel and participation in the Helike Project, an archaeological excavation in the middle of the Corinthian gulf in Greece. This was a completely new experience for me volunteering on an excavation, in a part of Europe that I had never explored but had longed to ever since I first touched on the philosophies of Aristotle.

I was able to contribute to a week's excavation at the beginning of August in the remote village of Nikolaika. In this area covering an 8km plain, the project had uncovered evidence of at least three ancient settlements, spanning from early Helladic to Roman times. This was part of the topographical survey we conducted on our first day. I had the opportunity to travel up to the surrounding hill with the rest of the group and the head archaeologist Dora Katsonopoulou. We surveyed the remnants of ancient walls, community buildings and even fireplaces that may have been part of a village square. We could see that this hill was used as an ideal place of pilgrimage and worship by the local settlers, as well as a place of fortification in times of invasion.

The rest of the week was split between working at one of the geometric sites, and doing research in the project lab. On the site, I learnt to do a variety of tasks from cleaning the stone walls to measuring and recording accurate drawings of the site for use in the lab. Our work paid off in the end as the little details were significant in discovering how this house was destroyed. Sediments found in the trenches of parts of the building material strongly suggested that this house was destroyed by a flood, possibly as the result of the earthquake in 373 BC.

In the lab our main tasks was to properly catalogue any materials that we had found earlier on the site, which were mainly fragments of pithoi (large storage jars). We would all spend at least a few hours each day going through the fragments and trying to assemble different jars. All these tasks showed me the wide variety of work for an archaeologist and how all of it required patience and perseverance. Again, the effort we went through meant that we made other exciting discoveries such as an inscription of an individual signature on a fragment, which helped us to date the pithos and note its individual design. We discussed the possibility that they may have simply been damaged over time, but the distinct pattern of the signature seemed too perfect to come from damage by archaeological tools. These prompted discussions about the use of archaeology as objective evidence for ancient communities. It has been something I've always loved to discuss in the classroom, but in the lab I was able to apply my arguments to real objects that I was handling as part of my work, which I found very exciting!

Overall, the trip was a great success. I learnt a great deal from just a week about how challenging it was to manage an archaeological project even on a local scale. Apart from the physical problems, we were also made aware of legal issues. Whilst the project wishes for their sites to be expanded, they always have the problem of companies and local people hindering their progress because they simply do not want to lose their property. It was a very good insight into the cultural attitudes to these kinds of projects in Greece. I am so unbelievably grateful to Royal Holloway for funding my trip, which I would not have been able to afford otherwise. The university has done so well in supporting students in travelling beyond the UK to learn different skills and create new experiences which will of course benefit them in later life.