|
|
Two weeks ago while digging on a site in downtown Athens, Greece, Amber Deluca stumbled upon a cracked jar with some pottery and small animal bones inside it.
"It's so amazing to find pottery and then realize that the shard you're holding may be older than Jesus," she wrote in an e-mailed response to questions.
For her second consecutive summer, Stafford resident and Randolph-Macon College fifth-year senior Deluca is working on the Athenian Agora Excavation, an eight-week archaeological dig.
Digging layers that run from around 1350 B.C. to A.D. 1000, Deluca is working with 39 graduate and undergraduate students.
Deluca speculates that the jar she found is an amphora, an ancient two-handled narrow-necked jar Athenians used for oil or wine. Finding an amphora on the site is common because the 25-acre open square served as a market place, as well as the location for many elections, processions, athletic contests, theatrical performances and military drills.
John Camp, director of the excavation and classics professor at Randolph-Macon College said the site was surrounded by government buildings, such as the senate, the senate headquarters and dining room, the archives, the chief magistrate's office, the mint and the law courts.
"What makes it special for us is that this is where the concept of democracy was first invented and practiced," Camp said.
According to the Agora Excavation Web site, "finds range from scattered pieces of pottery of the late Neolithic period (ca. 3000 B.C.) to the contents of 19th and early 20th century basements." When the excavations began in 1931, they had to remove 400 modern houses that were built on the site.
Camp, who has worked periodically on the site since 1966, said that students are rotated through the various areas under excavation. Deluca said she has participated in a variety of locations on the site, including climbing down a 40-foot well dating to about 500 B.C., and digging into a road surface. She is currently defining a wall, which consists of removing all of the excess dirt around the rocks so they can see where it's going.
"We're not sure if we have one wall or two walls, so we have to be extra careful while defining so we know what's up," she said.
A project of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the Athenian Agora excavations started in 1931. Camp said students interested in the excavation must go through an application process including writing a one-page essay, provide two letters of recommendation and, in some cases, an interview.
The students are provided with room and board, however they have to pay for their plane ticket. They work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. exposing the ruins, recovering artifacts and washing the pottery.
The excavations are privately funded, with principal support coming from the Packard Humanities Institute, he said.
He added that a local support group, the Panathenaic Society, was founded several years ago to help fund the project and to foster the Randolph-Macon College connection.
A music industry major, Deluca said that she does not know much about archaeology and is using the excavation as a learning experience.
"It's one of the most incredible experiences I've ever had," she said.