It is amazing to me how each off-season (archaeologically speaking) goes by so quickly. When I get back to PA in July, I spend the summer teaching summer school and breaking myself of all the bad habits and PKAPisms I picked up over the field season. Then the fall semester begins with grant writing and teaching. Once we get to the AIA in early January, it feels like things start accelerating towards the summer. I actually had a panic attack today over the summer fieldseason, worrying about the usual (expenses, grants, falling dollar, students, etc.). One bright spot is that we received our permit for the summer fieldwork recently and we even received permission to "ground truth" our resistivity survey results on Vigla and Kokkinokremos by conducting limited soundings.
This is shaping up to be our largest and most ambitious fieldseasons to date. We were 17 at our largest last summer and this year could reach 25, if everyone who says they are planning on going actually shows up. For me, one of the first things is figuring out how many, if any, IUP students are going with me. My first step is a matter of going back through the list of IUP students who have approached me about going and seeing if they are still interested, or if other things have come up for them. For example, in the fall of 2006 I had 6 students approach me about going to Cyprus and all assured me that they were going and nothing would change their minds. By January, all 6 had other commitments or had changed their mind and the 3 who actually went with me to Cyprus were a different 3. This year, so far, I have had 7 talk to me about going this summer and I encouraged all 7 to come back to see me in January after we had finalized our plans – if they were still interested. So I started contacting them to see if they are still interested and should have a better grasp on how many still want to go in the next few days. I was hoping to know for sure by Friday since David Pettegrew, Bill Caraher, and myself are going to hold a PKAP SL meeting to finalize our summer plans, or at least start finalizing them.
RSM
Ancient History Ramblings 