It was a hot day, like every other, in the land of Turkey when Kirbus the Great looked upon the dusty walls of his new home on the Cragos of Antiochia. Accompanied by his faithful, and wiser, companions Anna the Fearless and Lizzy the Mighty, Kirbus directed his eyes towards the humble trench of AC5 (Acropolis trench #5) whence he would work to teach and sharpen the minds of the students who would arrive in one week’s time. Upon arrival, the students of Olaf seized the reigns of Work and Duty and began their work upon clearing the mountain with the fervor of titans. Four students, who took the daring leap to join with Kirbus on his quest to understand the secrets of Antiochia ad Cragum, despite all of the students being the utmost worthy of handling the tasks at hand, approached their trench with trowels in hand and eagerness in their eyes. They were: Ben the Stalwart, Ellie the Beast, Joseph the Keen, and Mara the Ferocious. What lay before them was hundreds of years of rock having fallen from the towering walls around them. They had heard stories of the times before them of men and women of old shoveling and picking and groaning and weeping as they hefted the ancient rocks and dispersed the countless buckets of soil off the side of the mountain, yet the newcomers were not afraid. They saw the the vile plants and grueling sun and humid air, yet they did not flee in panic. They met the kindness of the village of Guney and they saw, in each other, that a force to be reckoned with always stood before them in their trench; they were the Filthy Five.
As Kirbus raised his arms over the trench, the four newcomers saw a seemingly insurmountable task before them. An apparent meter of wall-fall that demanded constant shoveling and bucket-tossing gazed forebodingly up at them as they stood on the ancient walls of the structure. With the help of his comrades, Kirbus had determined the walled structure to have been used for habitation or industrial work, for loom weights and pottery sherds had been uncovered in years past within the confines of the walls. It was the Filthy Five’s task to unravel the secrets of this structure with little clear evidence of complete certainty. Who lived here? Why this structure? What happened here? Questions outnumbered answers, and the imagination dominated the scientific mind.
It was Kirbus’s job to teach them the scientific importance of their manual labors (many which would have tuckered out the mighty Herakles). Days began with the taking of elevations from each corner and center of both trenches. Following the initially grueling task of leveling the level and holding the Stadia Rod straight as an arrow, the memorable labor ensued. The picking of picks and shoveling of shovels mixed with the humorous banter of his excited, yet dirty, comrades brought much delight to the heart of Kirbus. He taught them technique: how to pick a pick (the great Howe has spoken that “thou pick shall be pulled, not hacked”), how to shovel with a shovel, and how to trowel with a trowel (It is spoken that the trowel holds seniority and priority over all other forms of archaeological tools). With upturned hands and careful strokes, Kirbus’s four quickly mastered the essentials of their daily duties. Post laborem, the science of archaeology raised its eerie head. Kirbus knew of the trials of documentation and the numerous hours spent on keeping the recordings organized, and he feared that his partners would succumb to the infamous boredom or the ephemeral procrastination that usually accompanies such a task. Yet, like most times, Kirbus was wrong to doubt the abilities of his comrades, for after a short time of teaching them the most organized way of documenting their daily finds, Kirbus was amazed at how each member of the Filthy Five retained and recorded the information they had acquired the previous day. Notebooks consisted of Heights of Instruments, daily elevations, sketches, architectural pottery numbers, and weights. Kirbus was pleased, for the days to come mark a new chapter of AC5A; a chapter filled with new discoveries, questions, answers, and more questions.
It was not until the twenty second of July when charcoal was found lining the whole trench. The Filthy Five were puzzled, especially Kirbus, for he had not encountered this black substance in such large quantities before. He took it upon himself, with the curiosity of his comrades alongside him, to consult Howe. After some careful sleuthing, it was determined (thus far) that a wooden ceiling (or floor) had burned and fallen on large quantities of pottery and glassware. The Five were stunned, yet it all made sense; copious amounts of burnt pottery were found along the northern wall and the soil had changed in its consistency (all markers of a new and mysterious locus). Although this mystery was solved in short time, more questions arose from this unexpected discovery: how close are we to the floor? What caused the fire? When did the fire occur in relation to the rest of the surrounding structures? The Filthy Five were bewildered at the hidden truths before them, but they were not hindered in their efforts to uncover them with their own hands. Their next task was to find floor…