I don’t feel like a lot has changed from the previous weeks in terms of the literal work, but I’m definitely getting into the groove of things. In the first week I always checked my watch, and these days I feel like the time flies by. Learning there are only about 8 more work days left made me sad. It’s going to be hard to walk away. Didn’t know I’d be so into dirt, but here we are. I also didn’t anticipate how much endurance I’d build for working in this kind of heat and humidity. In the earliest days (granted, without the shades over the site) I couldn’t do much without constant water breaks. Now I get so into it I have to actively remind myself to hydrate. My excitement towards finding little pottery bits has actually increased now that I understand more about how artifacts accumulate. My feelings toward schist oscillates. It’s very pretty and cool, but it needs to stop chipping into my eyes when I hit it. Getting down this far in our unit is definitely satisfying, same with seeing the progress everyone else has made.
It’s been really interesting to get a better picture of Antiochia through how it changed over time. Repurposed rooms, walled up doorways, older walls attached to newer ones, etc. Especially getting a larger picture of our structure(s) as a whole. Before coming here, I could picture a lot of the physical labor, but it’s been new to learn about the surveying, technology, and all the different experts that collaborate to produce an excavation. I don’t have a big background in education on classics, so I sometimes feel like I’m playing catch-up on understanding all the context. At the same time, it feels extra fun to learn history from scratch while doing history from scratch.