This week I was fortunate to have a change in scenery and got to work at the temple for four days. The beautiful marble temple is a pretty stark contrast to our far less excavated and more rag-tag little village on the acropolis. I was excited to be assigned my own project — an extension trench off of the larger one at the base if the temple. There is a strange wall (a BIG hunking wall) that intersects diagonally with the foundation wall of the temple and at the point where they almost intersect the foundation wall is cut away to allow the diagonal wall to continue. My assignment was to excavate a trench of about 1.5×1.5m around the part that was cut away to see if the two walls actually intersected or continued, or did something totally new and different. It took me about three and a half days doing about 5cm at a time before I finally reached the wall. After more time spent articulating the walls, which was very minute, meticulous work that I enjoyed very greatly, it was soon clear that the two walls never quite intersected, and in my trench neither wall ended, so it is still uncertain why they are the way the are. I have to say, I felt like the work I was doing was pretty significant when Professor Hoff and Professor Townsend came over multiple times to discuss what was going on in my area – both seeming pretty confused. When two real archaeologists sounded so stumped about my trench, I knew that there really must be something interesting going on. I was very glad to have the chance to uncover more of those two walls, which might lead to more excavation in future seasons.
