Summer fieldwork has begun for me. I arrived in Cyprus last Tuesday afternoon to begin a six week archaeological fieldseason. I am the co-director of a small archaeological survey on Cyprus, the Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project. The project has been primarily funded by funds from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and the University of North Dakota. In addition, we have been fortunate in securing some outside grant monies.
We are examining the remains of a Late Roman settlement along the southern coast of Cyprus. This is the project’s fifth season and we seem to be growing every year. The project’s goal is to examine the remains in the area and see if it is possible to determine the settlement’s role in the local and regional economy. It is a lot of fun, but also a lot of work. This season, for example, there are 4 undergraduate students from IUP, 4 graduate students, 9 senior staff or specialists, and 1 videographer. Joe Patrow, from PatrowVisuals, is here to film a documentary about our project. We are hoping to turn his work into several different multimedia projects that we can use in the classroom, or online – in addition to the creation of a feature length documentary.
To catch up on the last week, we have been picking up people from the airport and trying to make sure that everything is organized for the first day of fieldwork – which starts tomorrow. We have also been taking the students to visit some other important sites on the island (Amathus, Kurion, Pyla, Kiti, etc.) to help them better understand what villages and towns looked like on Cyprus. The goal is that this will help them make important connections when we begin working on our site.
Ancient History Ramblings 