Stars and Lamps

I don’t have much to report for myself today. Yesterday evening we were treated to a lecture on the constellations by the conservation professor. It was fun to lean back on the columns at the site and peer at the same stars and constellations the Greeks used to achieve their phenomenal navigation at sea. (Side note: those clever Greeks managed to circumnavigate Africa in about 600 BC. I’m very impressed – especially since the constellations are not the same in the Southern Hemisphere. I really wonder how they managed that?) It was very interesting. On the other hand, the last time I gazed at the stars in Greece I was 18 and sitting on a beach with a cute boy and a bottle of wine chilling at the edge of the surf. The electricity went out on the island and the three islands surrounding it, so I was able to see the Milky Way for the very first time. “Turning to my companion, this East Coast girl said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could see this in our own country?” The cute boy from Illinois replied, “Um,. Yeah. About that. We can.”

Doh.

Anyway, with 12 other people, this was considerably less dreamy, but it was fun. You can’t take photos of stars, though, so here’s a nice photo of a lamp. One is molded, one is wheelmade. Any guesses? You too can be an ancient Greek pottery expert…

Fair Weather

Today I am feeling much better. Rather than napping, I was able to work on my thesis for a few hours. Yay! Twelve pages down, another 13 + editing + citing to go!

We had a nice game of scrabble last night despite a ferocious and sudden wind storm that upset the board and broke a few glasses, scattering beach floats and bathing suits down the hall in its wake. The sudden and mercurial changes in weather here are part of the charm, I am told. It is apparently not unusual that at ouzo hour I felt warm in my new Samothracian Jungle-Print Jumper dress (just wait until I get a photo of this specimen from the 1972 dig) and that only a half hour later we all grabbed sweaters before dinner.

Today I have spent most of my time cataloguing lamps. The existence of a large number of lamps at a sanctuary points to nocturnal cult rites and activity, so we are hoping to get a sense of which buildings might have housed evening rituals based on the concentrations of lamps found within or near specific building sites. In the abstract, I think this is very interesting. In actuality, it involves a lot of typing into FileMaker. Thanks to my IPod, this isn’t so torturous, and hopefully we will find an interesting answer in a day or two.