Our work during the first week at Antiochia has been divided (somewhat unevenly, it’s true) between the acropolis and the northeast temple. I’ve been very fortunate in getting to work at both sites. The first two days on the acropolis were exhausting but rewarding, as we cleared away massive quantities of scrub, roots, and rocks. That labor was not complex or mentally taxing, and so all of us had the opportunity to ask questions of our TAs in a low-pressure environment, without fear that we were destroying precious artifacts through ignorance or carelessness. Because we had been instantly immersed in an archaeological environment, we absorbed a great deal of information quickly: how to identify worked stone, how to distinguish between stones (e.g. marble, limestone, schist), and the rudiments and terminology of record-keeping (what is a locus/SU, how to write a daily report). It was a great environment to begin to get to know each other. On the third day, however, I was reassigned to the temple, and that’s where I really started to have fun. The ground at the temple had already been cleared, so we could begin the more exacting labor of bringing the soil level down by 8 cm to clear away the topsoil. It is, of course, soil: only heathens call it dirt. Our trench, north of the temple, thus far in our excavation has provided more questions than answers. One of the most central points of confusion is that within the walls of the structure, we appear to be hitting bedrock much sooner than anticipated, above the base of the walls. What is that bedrock doing there? Is it possible that in one section of the structure we’ll be forced to stop excavation at the inexplicable bedrock, while in other sections we’ll be able to excavate through to a floor? Have we already hit the floor? The questions abound. Despite having seen enough bedrock already to last me through the season, I’ve loved working and learning at the temple. I already feel so much more comfortable with the techniques and terminology, and I’m excited to keep excavating and trying to answer some of the (many) questions posed by our (delightfully confuzzling) trench.
