6/29 - Crete Day Six, Siteia Museum, Kato Zakro, Palaikastro, Itanos

Still no photos. Gotta figure out something with laptop's charger/hotel wifi.  

We got to wake up at 7 again, which was great. We walked to the Siteia museum, which was a convenient ten-minute stroll from the hotel. The main attraction of the museum is the Palaikastro kouros, which is the first known example of an extremely common sculptural type in the ancient world. In general, the statues depict a boy with one foot forward and the other behind. The hairstyles change over time as well. The hand positioning on this kouros is abnormal, as it has its hands raised to the chest rather than straight down to the sides. The statuette is made out of ivory, again showing indications of trade off the island. The statue would have had gold leaf covering it, making it an incredibly wealthy figurine. The rest of the museum was nice, if a little bit undersigned for my taste. We hopped back on the bus and headed for the palace at Kato Zakro.

The painstakingly reconstructed Palaikastro Kouros.

Kato Zakro is a small palace on the east end of the island. It’s situated in a flat lie between three hills, on which the associated town perched. The palace is the “economy model” of the palaces we’ve seen thus far. There is no theatre area near the main court and the palace’s wings do not follow the orientation we typically see in Minoan palaces. Talia, who gave the site report, suggested that the non-standard orientation could have been due to the harbor and the desire to put the administrative offices closer to the shoreline.

There are apparently structures now submerged that could possibly be ship sheds, although until proper excavations are done (read: not soon) we will be unable to do more than just speculate. The palace was on a trade route from North Africa and the East, which was indicated by the multiple elephant tusks found in several locations there. There was also an incredible rock crystal vase with amethyst beads (read the previous post for more on amethyst) that was found in more than 300 fragments and took 3 years to put back together. Both some of the tusks and the rock crystal vase are on display in the Herakleion Archaeological Museum, so I’ll dig my pictures out from that visit.  

The rock crystal rhyton. Pieced together out of hundreds of fragments.

Elephant tusk from Kato Zakro. Restored from a fragmentary state. 

We also saw turtles! Lots and lots of turtles. As we moved across the site towards the actual archaeological stuff, we passed by the huge cistern on the southeast side of the palace. The cistern, which is fed by a natural spring and is also speculated to have been a swimming pool, had tons of turtles in it! We ooh’ed and ahhh’ed at them for some time before Talia got us moving again. As we were leaving the site, I saw a mother take her young daughter over to the cistern to gaze in the same way that 19 undergraduate and higher students had just been doing. Props to Talia for such a kickass site report, it was extremely thorough and she had obviously really familiarized herself with the publications about the site. We moved back to the bus quickly and headed for Palaikastro, to see another site.

The turtle well at Kato Zakro.

Palaikastro is a little bizarre. For 150 years, archaeologists have been poking around to try to find a palace, and it either doesn’t exist or has eluded the best efforts to find it. Palaikastro was actually what seems to have been a very large town. Large main streets divide “blocks” of houses that seem to have been similar sizes. Dr. Catherine Pratt, the co-director of the excavation, showed us the site and we started off talking about the kouros from the Siteia museum.

The kouros was found in fragments, in two different general areas. The statue was smashed up pretty badly and took a long time to put back together. As near as archaeologists can tell, the statue was smashed, one half was thrown back into the house whence it came. Then that part of the house was burned. The fire was so hot that the base of the statue is scorched almost black, while the top of the statue is the more normal color. We walked back among the excavations to the new buildings that were recently excavated. They were located using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), which is a relatively new technology that scans below the surface of the soil. It’s noninvasive and less labor intensive than digging a bunch of exploratory trenches. When the GPR uncovered what seemed to be two large buildings. This of course signaled, according to Dr. Pratt, “We found the palace!” but she followed up with “Then it…wasn’t,” to laughs. The complex they had uncovered was an interesting amalgamation of periods. One of the most salient features were the 9 meter deep wells placed directly in the center of the ruins of the old buildings. Dr. Pratt suggested that the wells could have been dug in a time of crisis, when a new water supply was needed.

Palaikastro also has an unexplored peak sanctuary at the top of a nearby hill. But Linear A fragments have been found up there near the altar! Luke and I were astonished at this news. Summer 2k17? We concluded our tour of the new excavation and walked to the beach. The swimming was incredible. The water was a little chilly, but the beach, sandy bottom, and picturesque view more than compensated for that. We swam and ate for almost an hour and a half before heading back to the bus and heading to Itanos.

Itanos is also a confusing site, but we were guided through it by the expert knowledge of Marie de Wit, a graduate student at the University of Belgium. She took us to the necropolis, which shows evidence of graves almost continuously between 1000 BCE and 100 BCE. An early Roman grave she showed us contained several enclosures, probably each for a family. Across the street from it was a building that appears to have acted as a feasting space associated with the burials. However, there is also evidence for sacrificial rituals and manufacturing, oddly enough, so the building may have been multi-purpose.

The graves are marked with white stones, which to me is an elegant way to show where they were.

Finally, we went to the apotiki, or office, of the site. One of Marie’s colleagues was also there and we were allowed to look at and handle some ancient pottery. One that we saw but did not pick up was a large pot whose lip around the mouth had been deliberately removed for some reason. The pot was filled with ash, so it may have been some sort of funerary practice.

Finally, all tuckered out, we got back in the bus and to Siteia. Tomorrow is our last day in Crete, but the sites we’re visiting are certainly not just places were hoping to duck in and duck out of. One place we’re going is the Institute for Aegean Prehistory, which runs scientific operations for many archaeological sites on Crete and elsewhere. I’m sad that my time on Crete is coming to an end, but I also don’t have many clean clothes left in my suitcase, so I guess it’s for the best.

Thanks for reading.

Note: I won’t be posting the 6/30 post until 7/1 because I won’t have WiFi on the boat. I may also do it when we land in the morning on 7/1 but I may be a little too zonked out for that. 

6/28 - Crete Day Four, Herakleion Museum, Mallia, Mochlos

 Still figuring out photos, will work on it for tomorrow.

The alarm rang at 7:00, which was a nice change of pace from the 6 am-ish alarms from the last few days. I grabbed breakfast quickly and headed out into Herakleion to buy food for lunch. One really nice thing here in Greece is that prices are exactly as displayed. The taxes are all built in to the prices shown on the shelves and it’s way easier to figure out how much money to take out to pay. I’m aware that there are reasons why this doesn’t work in the U.S. due to taxes being more subdivided within states, cities, and municipalities. Back from digressing, I snagged some sandwiches, chips and 2/3 of a kilogram of cherries (so many cherries).

We loaded our stuff into the bus and took a short drive to the Herakleion Archaeological Museum, which houses much of the “good stuff” from the palace sites that we had visited in previous days. We were guided through the lecture by Dr. John Younger, a scholar with diverse interests in antiquity. We focused a lot on Minoan and Mycenaean art. John described the difference between the Minoans and Mycenaeans as “nuts and wild” vs. “conventional and organized” in what we can glean from their cultures.

One practice in particular that we talked about was bull leaping. This practice is hotly, hotly debated in classical fields, but from what we can tell, the practice involved some form of interacting with a bull and performing gymnastics. The Minoans appear to have provoked the bull to charge and then grabbed its horns to get tossed over the back of the bull. The Mycenaeans used a slightly less risky method, which seems to have involved jumping down from a raised platform onto the back of the bull and then somersaulting off.

The fresco.

This fresco is the Mycenaean style, which shows the central figure pushing off of the bull’s back while two white figures appear to interact with the bull, perhaps by holding it. It’s also possible that the figures on either end are depictions of the jumper before, during, and after the jump. There is another theory that the people to the left and right of the bull are women, their purpose unknown. This is because in Minoan art, only women are depicted in white. The specifics of bull leaping remain unknown to us, but the topic drives significant discussion still in academic circles.

Another really cool artifact that we saw was the elephant tusk from the palace at Zakros. This is concrete evidence of trade with Africa or the Near East. In the second millennium BCE!!! It’s crazy how luxury goods like this get transferred from place to place in the ancient world. There are also some indications of Egyptian influences on Minoan art, which is even crazier. Unlike a luxury good that can be traded outside of its place of origin, the artist would have had to have seen or talked to someone who had seen such art. It’s possible that the art could have been on traded objects as well and this whole observation is obviously not particularly exciting from an academic standpoint, but to me it’s really really cool how trade happened so long ago.

A truly massive tusk.

We also went upstairs in the museum and saw the famous frescoes of the blue monkeys. They are depicted gathering crocus blooms, which will eventually become saffron. According to Dr. Younger, the Minoans have other depictions of animals acting like people as well, which is not common in the ancient world. It certainly shows a different view of animals than many later cultures and there are probably interesting comparative articles about Minoan vs. conventional western attitudes towards animals based on art.

The famous monkeys.

While I won’t summarize the rest of the lecture here, it was very well done and I left feeling edified. We headed back to the bus and got on the road to Mallia. At Mallia, we met Dr. Younger again and he showed us around the site. In the courtyard at the palace, there’s a hemispherical stone with an indent in it. As we were walking into the courtyard, I asked Dr. Younger the function of the stone. He responded, “I’ll talk about it over in the shade.” I’ll put the next part of episode in a script (and also third person, because first person scripts are weird).

Dr. Younger (DY): Who asked that question about the rock in the courtyard?

Matthew (M) raises his hand.

DY: Okay. Go over to it, on the far side, and, before you get whistled at by the guard, take a running start and launch yourself using the dimple on the back of the stone.

M: with trepidation Sure….

I executed the actions asked of me and for my efforts received a round of applause from the rest of the group. Dr. Younger then explained that the stone was used in a proto-Mycenaean variation of the ritual that didn’t involve grabbing the horns. On the way across the site, he also told Luke and me about depictions of essentially ancient picadores who are shown stabbing the bulls to weaken them. This was an element that we were not previously aware of, but given the parallels with bullfighting in Spain, we had speculated to exist.

The speculated bull-leaping stone.

We also saw a workshop where it appears an audit of some kind was being conducted on the goods paid to the central palace as tribute. The paraphernalia of the audit was put down extremely suddenly and so archaeologists found medallions that were hung on individual pithoi, massive (I could sit in one) jugs, of tribute. The information on those medallions was being recorded on 4 sided bar tablets, which were in turn summarized by the tablet found in the next room over. This level of sophistication, while implied to have existed elsewhere, does not have the physical presence like Mallia.

Following the site lecture, we retired to the café and ate lunch using the foods that we had purchased in Herakleion. I chatted for most of lunch with Elliot and Cole, students working on research nearby. After lunch, they joined our band on the bus, as we were going to where they needed to be next. Amy made an executive decision to skip Dreros and Lato, and so we headed for Mochlos after dropping off Elliot and Cole.

Mochlos was, to put it succinctly, a rollercoaster. We rolled into town and piled off the bus quickly, as we thought were late to meet our guide, Dr. Jeffrey Soles. However, he had not yet arrived and we hit the beach for some swimming. Mochlos is an island a short distance off the coast of mainland Crete, although according to geoarchaeologists it was probably connected to the mainland in antiquity. Luke decided to swim to the island instead of waiting for the boat to take us and was followed by Brad, Asia, Cassia, Melanie, Abi, Amy, Sally, and me. We got to the island after a decent swim. It wasn’t the easiest swim for me, as I haven’t kept up with my fitness as well as I should have since frisbee ended in the spring.

Mochlos from the shore.

We hung out on the shore for a bit while we waited for boat to bring the rest of the group across. After the rest of group was ferried across, Dr. Soles gave us a tour. Mochlos has an incredible amount of archaeologically relevant finds. Preserved between two layers of Minoan flooring is ash from the eruption at Thera. This means that Minoan civilization survived the eruption at Thera.

Additionally, incredibly wealthy goods of someone who appears to have been a priestess were found in the main Minoan building. These goods include 80 amethyst beads, which is nearly a quarter of all beads found to date on Crete. There was also a bronze trident, fully intact, from the Levant, and a tin ingot. Now, the tin ingot might not be the most impressive appearing item, but it’s important to understand that it came from so far away. As in, speculated to have come from Afghanistan far away. The tin started at its theoretical source somewhere far to the east, moved into the Levant through Iran and Iraq, and was traded for in the Levant. So it came from a looong way away and that’s really cool.

The shore from Mochlos.

Dr. Soles was a funny and articulate speaker and told us about a practice on the island that was completely off my radar until this point. There is a tour service, run by a former Berkeley classics faculty member, which brings women on a tour through Crete to follow the Minoan goddess across the island. Apparently, there is a triangular stone at Mochlos which people believe to represent the pubic triangle of said goddess, and so this tour conducts pagan rites on the island.

Then it was time to go back. I rang a bell three times to signal the town that we wanted to go on the boat back and then was persuaded by some of my colleagues to swim back as well. I climbed out of the water onto the beach as the boat was pulling in. Tim added his name to the list of people who swam the distance on the way back. We all piled on to the bus and headed for Siteia. Shoutouts to Jessica, Claudia, and one other person who grabbed all our stuff before getting on the boat, I would not have been able to walk around Mochlos without my shoes. Also, Mom, I’m totally fine you don’t have to worry about me swimming distance like that.

Thanks for reading. Tomorrow we start with the Siteia archaeological museum and then move on to a few other sites, including the “Gorge of the Dead,” which I’m hoping will live up to its spooky name.

6/27 - Crete Day Three, Kommos, Agia Triadha, Gortyn, Archanes/Phanouri, Knossos, Herakleion

Note: Due to slow hotel Wi-Fi I can't really upload all the pictures I want to put up in a timely manner. I'll do so when the wifi is better. In the meantime, enjoy these descriptions of what eventually will be pictures. 

The alarm went off way too early at 6:40. The shower wasn’t particularly warm, but the breakfast was pretty tasty. We gathered everything together and piled onto the bus. We’ve got a new method not to leave people behind using a countoff system of the Greek numbers one through nineteen. We drove to Kommos and were greeted by James Stratis, a Colorado based architect who is working on a conservation plan for the site.

Kommos might be my favorite site that we’ve visited thus far. It was known to and used by at least five civilizations – Minoans, Mycenaeans, Phoenicians, Hellenistic Greeks, and Romans. It contains the largest foundation stone known in the Minoan world - a massive rectangular block 1 x 1 x 3 meters in dimension (Pictured below). The site served as the port for Phaistos (we visited yesterday) and later Agia Triadha, which we visited immediately after Kommos. Another fantastic feature of Kommos was the tromboe (sp?), which James described to us as a natural pier. If you look out into the water at Kommos, there is a reef-like structure some distance off shore. There is also a natural limestone spur that runs from the structure to the shore. This was used as a pier in ancient times, which would have made moving commerce from ship to shore very efficient.

A massive stone used in the construction. It dwarfs other individual building components.

Kommos is built in distinct layers which ascend both due to time and the fact that in the ancient world, sites used continuously tend to have buildings built on top of other, older buildings. One amazing discovery at Kommos is the presence of a Phoenician altar. This altar, between the Mycenaean and the Hellenistic layer of construction, contained Ancient Egyptian religious symbols. The altar is a three-post construction, which is a uniquely Phoenician worship implement throughout the ancient world.

The complex at Kommos also housed mixed industries. There is a massive, tri-partition kiln on the south side of the site, obviously indicating pottery production. There are also clusters of houses and workshops where goods like cloth would have been woven or grapes and olives pressed. One such press, left in situ, is pictured below.

The press in situ.

The Kommos plan for the site is incredibly ambitious and the site is in a race against time. The proximity to the sea means that sand is slowly burying the site and eroding the exposed limestone. The other problem is that Joseph and Maria Shaw, the two world leading experts on the site who supervised the initial excavations are both in their eighties. If you want to throw an archaeological site that gets no support from the Greek Archaeological Service a bone, check out kommosconservancy.org. The site also has loads of information about the project and the cool ways, including drone surveys, that research has progressed in the 21^st century.

We left Kommos for a short bus ride to Agia Triadha, one of the inland sites associated with the port at Kommos. There we heard a site report from Clinton.

Some of the notable things about Agia Triadha include that it was continuously inhabited from roughly 2600 BCE until around the 13^th century CE, when the Venetians built a church there. It was rediscovered and excavated in the early 1900s by students from the Italian School of Archaeology. In a spectacular case of Murphy’s Law striking before you’ve made a backup, the original plans and notes made by these students were destroyed in a flood in Florence in 1966. The site was remarkably unsigned and only one monitor was on duty for the entire site, taking tickets.

Looking over Agia Triadha.

Found at the site also was a massive stockpile of 150 Linear A tablets. Written in a script that we do not have the ability to currently decipher, this cache is the largest ever found in one location. It is likely, based on what similar tablets in Linear B record, that the Linear A tablets detail supplies and administrative details of the settlements at Agia Triadha. More on Linear A and B in the Prehistoric Aegean essay which is still under construction. After poking around Agia Triadha for a bit longer, we headed back to the bus got on the road to Gortyn.

Gortyn (known both by this name and several variations) is a sprawling site with several sections. The most salient find at the site is the Gortynian Law Code, which dates to somewhere between 500 and 450 BCE. The law code details procedures for many important topics, many of which focus on citizenship and marriage. For instance, when a father dies, his property was to be divided equally among his children, with sons receiving two parts and daughters receiving one. Jason presented on the topic and did an excellent job getting the group to chime in and discuss the relevance of each of the sections he picked out.

It's hard to make out, but the whole wall is inscribed with the code.

After the law code talk, we hiked down the road a ways and into field to see some more structures. The first, the Temple of Apollo, had a large fragment of the roof on the ground, which prompted us to search for an find the guttae, a formerly functional, now decorative element that allows someone with the proper formula to calculate every dimension of a Doric temple.

We also hiked to the praetorium, which housed the Roman administrator for all of Crete and Cyrenaica (located in Northern Africa). The structure would have also housed the provincial governor’s family. During the course of the hike we were followed by an adorable stray puppy.

After that it was back to the bus for the hilly trip to Archanes. Crete is a wonderful country to drive through if you’re not driving. The scenery is picturesque and the towns are pretty cute. As I write this though, we’ve just executed a three point turn and are headed back the way we came. So hopefully we’ll get there.

We did get there! After two wrong turns. Melanie presented on the bus about Archanes-Phourni, the town and its associated necropolis. There has been continuous habitation here since 2600 BCE all the way down to today. Then we made it to town and the accompanying museum. It was small as many museums in small towns here are. Reminded me of the small, one room museums that every town in France has to commemorate WWII. Still, there was some cool stuff, including a display of what is speculated to be a human sacrifice and an amazing fragment of an ivory pyxis (type of jar) that was found in the Mycenaean graves. Now, how did ivory get there? Again, I’m gonna geek out about this in my Aegean Prehistory, but that ivory is evidence of a wide ranging trade across the Aegean that has really caught my interest this trip.

After the museum, we had a short break for lunch. Luke and I elected to hit the grocery store and walked out with meat, feta, cherries, pomegranate juice, and a few snacks for later on the bus. We ate it in the plaza, soaked up edges of the sunbeams, and then hopped back on the bus. A word to the wise – 100 grams of feta is SO MUCH FETA. I should have ordered 50 grams for sure. Anyways, we got back on the bus and headed for Knossos. Paniatos, our bus driver, bought a Greek dessert for the bus as well, which was roundly cheered by all of us. According to Talia, it’s called gelatoboureko (sp?) custard wrapped in pastry soaked in honey. It was a fantastic finish to lunch as we headed up the road to our last site of the day.

The final site was the palace at Knossos, one of if not the most famous sites on Crete. Dr. Caroline Thurston, who oversees the excavations the British School of Archaeology is currently undertaking in the area, gave us a look around two sites slightly off the beaten path before we headed to Knossos for the more popular attraction. The first place we went was the Villa of Dionysus. This Roman villa, constructed between the 1^st and 2^nd centuries AD, has beautiful mosaics depicting Dionysus in almost every room off of the central peristyle garden. Unfortunately, they’re currently covered with layers of gravel and cloth as the funds to restore them have not yet become available. There was one mosaic still uncovered, which showed a fairly pedestrian geometric pattern. The central peristyle had water ducts that fueled a fountain in the room. The aqueduct, which was some distance away along the ridgeline was an excellent testament to the absolute shenanigans the Romans pulled off with water movement. That may be something I look to expand on in the future. Pictures of the villa are below.

Wide shot of the Villa and its roof.

Up next were two somewhat puzzling buildings, stacked right next to each other. They are known as the Little Palace and the Unexplored Mansion. The names originate from Sir Arthur Evans, the legendary and controversial British archaeological tour de force of the early 1900s. Both structures are originally Minoan and were potentially used for storage for the palace at Knossos. Puzzlingly, the Unexplored Mansion (now explored) was built directly next to the Little Palace, less than 100 years after the Little Palace was constructed. The sites are both pretty enigmatic although research is currently being prepared for publication that may help clarify both the mysteries of the site and puzzling questions related to the way the original excavations were (mis)handled.

After a brief stop at Villa Ariadne, where Sir Arthur Evans built his house from where he ran the Knossos excavations and the Germans headquartered their command staff during the WWII occupation of Crete, we were off to the main palace at Knossos. Knossos is very similar to the other Minoan palaces scattered around Crete. Big areas of procession, apartments for the people in charge, etc. What’s different about Knossos is that portions of the frescoes and the palace have been “reconstructed” based on the best guesses of archaeologists and other researchers. Some find it garish, some think it’s a nice touch to make viewers think harder. I’m somewhere in the middle. I really do think that structural reconstructions put the scale of these buildings into perspective in a way that is valuable to the modern observer. It’s so easy to look at the ground level, or in many cases, below ground level foundation of an ancient building and not think about how grandiose it would have been in the past.

Some of the restored architecture at Knossos.

Finally, hot and sweaty, we got back on the bus one more time for the trip to Herakleion and the hotel. We arrived, hung out, and then Luke and I headed out to seek sustenance. We wound up at a gyro place, joined by Talia, and feasted on the delicious combination of meat, pita, vegetables, and yogurt. Our waiter was super friendly and we chatted him up about Hollywood flicks and Euro 2016 while we ate. Abi came by as we were finishing and we hit up what was reviewed to us as the “Best bougatsa in the city” for a slice of the pastry. I got back to the hotel and chowed down with Asia and Sally, who had, coincidentally, been to the same place.

[Picture of Bougatsa]

This one clocked in at just shy of 2k words in Word, which is a lot. Hit me up via email or the comments if you want to talk about things related to the trip or history.

Thanks for reading.

6/26 - Crete Day Two, Rethymno, Eleutherna, and Phaistos

We woke up at 0630 and hit the hotel for breakfast. The composition of the buffet was slightly different from what you’d expect at an American hotel. Notably, American hotels will often have big tubs of scrambled eggs, but eggs were conspicuously absent this morning. The protein was also different – there was a tin of cold cuts where you would expect sausage or bacon if you were in the States. Overall, breakfast was serviceable and we piled into the bus for an hour long ride across the island to Rethymno.

At Rethymno we switched up our normal course of study to hear a lecture from Dr. Marinos Sariyannis, a local expert on the more modern history (read: not 2000 years old) of the town and researcher at the local university. Starting from the port, we walked into the city through the old town. Much of the lecture focused on the fusion of Ottoman Empire building customs and the earlier Venetian building conventions. The Venetians purchased the rights to Crete following the Fourth Crusade, which saw the Western European powers essentially carve up the Byzantine Empire on their way to the Holy Land. The Ottomans, who conquered the Byzantine Empire in 1453, arrived at Crete in 1645 with a hankering for conquering. The conquest was completed in 1669. The Ottomans set about remaking the towns of Crete in their preferred fashion. One of the first things that was done was to convert existing churches to mosques. For example, this minaret was added to a church.

One of the other really cool pieces of evidence we saw was the remnants of an Ottoman dome over a Venetian fountain. While only a fragment of the bottom edge of the dome remains, it would have covered a large chunk of the area near the fountain.

Our lecture ended at the monument in a plaza a few blocks from the sea. The monument honors the Anatolian Greeks who were forced out of Turkey in 1923. A little backstory on this. Following World War I, Greek populations in Asia Minor, especially Anatolia, experienced brutal campaigns of violence against them. Likewise, Muslims in Greece were treated with repression as well. To stem the rising tide of casualties, the Greeks and Turks signed the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 that effectively swapped the populations of Greeks and Muslims in the other country. There were some exceptions where the subpopulations of the different groups refused to leave, such as the Thracian Muslims and Greeks of Istanbul. Millions were displaced however, and the monument in Rethymno commemorates the names of the villages whence the Anatolian Greeks came.

After the lecture, I grabbed delicious strawberry gelato from a shop on the corner and the group got back on the bus to head to the Arkadi monastery. Amy gave us some background on the monastery, which survived Ottoman rule by swearing allegiance to the Sultan. It was sieged during the Greek rebellion against the Ottomans in the early 19^th century and ended rather spectacularly with the Greek defenders blowing themselves up with a cache of gunpowder as the Ottomans stormed the compound. This day is commemorated in Rethymno and the surrounding area.

  

We took a few wrong turns on the way to the monastery but eventually managed to get there. It’s always comforting to feel the bus stop while Amy and the driver, Paniatos, consult a map. We only had a short amount of time to poke around, but people snapped some pics and then we jumped back on the bus. We picked up a potter at the Eleutherna archaeological museum named Geogios Delamvelas and he took us on a tour of his ceramic producing facilities. We hiked into the woods off the road to his kiln and clay production trays. The clay that he uses is dug out of the mountain a 3 km hike away. The kiln, which was cooling down after a firing, has a 1 m^3 capacity. The process that George uses is called reduction, where the oxygen in the clay is used to fuel the fire after the kiln is sealed. We also walked to another, massive ruined kiln, where pithoi (massive pots) were fired.

Then we went to George’s workshop and saw one of the coolest things I’ve seen so far on the trip. George showed us some of his “clever” ceramics before he gave us a demonstration. There was a “salt shaker” design, which doesn’t dispense salt unless it is shaken in a specific manner, a jug that has to have a hole in the exterior covered to drink from it, a small vase that makes a noise like a warbler when filled slightly with water, and the famous cup of Pythagoras, which punishes a greedy drinker by emptying their cup if they take too much wine. And then he threw clay and created a cup of Pythagoras. It was incredible. The fluidity of his motion, the efficiency and skill with which he threw, and the amazing quality of the final product all attested to his 20+ years of making pots by hand. The whole thing took at most 10 minutes. We’ve had a lot of very gifted lecturers talk to us already, but George’s discussion of the clay and his process of creating ceramics was the most impressive lecture thus far. He obviously had such deep knowledge of his process and the history of pottery in the area was extensive.

After the demonstration, Talia and I grabbed lunch at a café in Margaritas. There were adorable cats roaming the restaurant (yes we gave them some food), which had a beautiful view onto the gorge. The food was good, came quickly, and was quite tasty. The feta was actually the best I’ve eaten in Greece thus far. I’ve certainly found a new appreciation for feta, and it’s only been a week! I high-tailed it out of the restaurant to catch the bus, and nearly missed it while using the restroom. Fortunately, someone saw me and the bus stopped so I could get on.

Next up was the museum at Eleutherna, which had literally just opened this week. The highlights of the collection were a Homeric shield, bronze, from the 9^th or 8^th centuries BCE. It had been restored pretty fantastically and was rightfully situated at the front of the museum as the crown jewel. The other awesome display was from Eleutherna as well. While the actual artifacts are traveling as part of the museum exhibition “The Greeks,” the paragraph next to the display described it quite well. The funeral pyre contained the body of a man and his goods, including weapons and armor. But most interestingly it also contained the body of another man, missing his head. It is suggested that he was killed in revenge, as is attested in the Iliad where Achilles kills Trojan prisoners before the funeral of Patroclus.

After the museum we were back on the bus and headed for Phaistos. We arrived and Luke made a cat friend before being told that it was “Not. Nice.” to behave that way with the cat.

Then we got into the main site and Eva did a site report. The report was pretty good – I think the strongest elements came out when we were asked to move through parts of the site while picturing its former glory in our minds. Phaistos was formerly a Minoan palace, a center of administration and commerce for the region. The first palace on the site was destroyed by an earthquake, but a new palace was constructed almost immediately. Eventually it was razed by the Gortynians. The site continues to be excavated by the Italian Academy of Archaeology.

After Phaistos we hopped back on the bus for the trip to Matala and our hotel. We arrived, piled into rooms, and then turned around quickly to grab dinner. Luke and I wound up separated from the group and grabbed gyros and fries at a small restaurant. After that, we found a large part of the group at a different restaurant with an ocean view. We pulled up chairs and helped several people finish their food. Shoutout to Melanie for offering me the biggest mussel I’ve ever seen in my life. Following the meal, we hit the beach. The ocean was gorgeous as usual and while I didn’t swim, I stood in the water for a while and it was wonderful. Slowly the crowd on the beach dwindled until it was just Asia, Abi, Luke, and me. Eventually it got too late for us too and we headed back to the hotel.

Another fantastic day. Amazing day learning, and a great time after that hanging out with people from the group. Tomorrow we’re back at it, hitting up more sites and museums.

Also, if I can’t upload photos due to hotel wifi, I’ll be leaving in a tag to remind myself and editing the post later. Upcoming still are the week one summary and the post about prehistoric Aegean civilization, which I'm slowly writing on the bus rides. 

Thanks for reading.

6/25 - Crete Day One, War Cemetery, Kissamos, Chania

Alright, so the Crete ferry and the first day there.

The ferry ride was extremely pleasant. We got our stuff into cabins and went up to the top deck to wait for departure. Then we realized that departure was in an hour and everyone went to various places on the ship to eat food. Before I left the deck I took this shot of the Parthenon. Blurry, yes, but I can assure you that that is indeed the Parthenon. 

I had a very middling burger, which was about what I expected. We all reconvened on the deck for departure and sat in a circle and just talked about stuff. At some point, Luke reminded me that we had to do our Titanic recreation pictures. So up we went to the top deck and tried and mostly succeeded at making me fly. Picture credits to Abi.

We continued chilling for a while before we went down to our cabins and went to sleep. Luke and I erred greatly by locking our door. Ergo, Jason was unable to get into the room and was forced to sleep in one of the other ASCSA cabins. Sorry about that Jason.

  

We landed on time at 6 am (so early) and staggered around Chania for a short while looking for breakfast. After that, it was off to the Commonwealth War Ceremony. The cemetery houses those killed during the Battle of Crete in 1941 from the British and Commonwealth Forces. Among the dead is John Pendlebury, who created some of the first archaeological guides to Knossos and other important sites on the island. He joined the British armed forces and was executed by the Germans during the Battle of Crete. The cemetery contains British flowers, which require quite a bit of water to grow in the Cretan climate. I also gave a brief talk about the Battle of Crete and the breakthroughs in airborne assaults made by the Germans in the battle. Lecturing on the spot was a little nerve-wracking, and definitely digressed too much into how airborne battle doctrine was affected by the battle, but ultimately I think I did a pretty alright job of things. The following picture is the cemetery. I think it's a nice touch that all the graves face the sea as if on watch, just like those who lie beneath them kept watch for Crete in the war. 

After the cemetery we were back on the bus to Aptara. I discovered that the air conditioning leaks above my seat. Aptara was an interesting site as well. Brad and I hiked backed a ways to get a look at the theatre, which has been partially restored. It was really impressive stand on the walls of the scena and look up at all the rows where people would have sat. After far too short a time poking around, we were back on the bus and headed for Kissamos.

Next up was the archaeological museum at Kissamos. We had a lecture from a colleague of Amy's, Dr. C. Pinci. The museum really emphasized the continuity of habitation at Kissamos, from the Minoans all the way through the Romans. Perhaps most impressive was the mosaic excavated from a Roman villa found near the center of the modern town. It’s a hunting scene with Dionysus featuring prominently in the middle and many animals around the sides.

There was also an example of Roman sculpture – a statue of the emperor Hadrian. Hadrian was a notorious Grecophile and portraits of him are common across the Greek world.

We also bought supplies for picnic lunch later in the day at the shops in Kissomos. Food is super cheap here on Crete and I was able to get 200 grams of meat, a huge loaf of bread, and a couple apples for 2.50 Euros. We got back on the bus after that, and headed for Phalasarna. Phalasarna is a site under current excavation located on the extreme west end of the island. It had two harbors in ancient times, but a huge earthquake raised the land under one of them and silted the area. We debarked from the bus and walked for 30 minutes only to find that the site was closed. Along with a few others, I headed back towards the bus and the beach. The beach was delightful. The water, although a bit chilly, was extremely refreshing. Lunch a potluck affair as people shared out the goods they had purchased earlier. We also learned about bee cognition, and this shall be the first, last, and only time this topic will ever be mentioned.

The time at the beach ended with us getting (you guessed it) back on the bus back to Chania, where we had landed at the start of the day. We checked into the hotel, dropped our stuff, and headed to the archaeological museum. The highlight of the collection there was the Mitsotakis collection. Mitsotakis was the prime minister of Greece from 1990-1993 (thanks Wikipedia) and a figure of controversy in the archaeological community. Using an obscure loophole in Greek law to skirt UNESCO rules, Mitsotakis collected over one thousand antique artifacts. Without contexts in which to place them, their archaeological value was significantly diminished. Still, the highlights of the collection were on display at the Chania museum. Perhaps most amazing was the bronze bowl shown below. According to its placard, it’s the only known bronze vessel inscribed with the Minoan Linear A script.

As the museum closed at 6 pm, we left for the Hotel Arkadi. Wi-Fi is fast, showers are warm, and the beds are soft. Would stay again. We reconvened in the lobby an hour and a half after arrival to go out for dinner, celebrating the birthdays of several Summer Session participants. After our first choice turned out to be closed, we found a backup restaurant on a cobblestone street with outdoor seating. With an antique minaret looking over the street, we feasted. There were probably 10 to 12 dishes that were delivered by the waitstaff and passed around the tables. My personal highlights were the pork with mustard and lemon and the lamb and cheese pie, which contained a cheese similar to a ricotta. Luke handled cleanup duty, consuming not just his table’s extra food, but also traveled to the other table to plead for their leftovers. After dinner we walked back to the hotel by way of the port, glittering with the lights of the buildings near the water. Pictures from dinner are below. 

In the end, an amazing day. The weather wasn’t as stifling as it had been on several occasions in Athens and the sites we saw were well worth the trip. Tomorrow we’re traveling again and I’ll have another post then. Thanks for reading!

One final note:

I think I’m going to stick to mostly travel narration on the daily update posts. Cool historical topics I’m looking to write up in separate, longer posts, mostly due to their length. Still not sure what to call the series, but the first on prehistoric Aegean civilization is not too far off. They’ll be pretty light and based on my lecture notes from the trip, so don’t expect too much bibliography.

6/24 - National Archaeological Museum and the National Museum of Epigraphy

Alright, a quick post on today before I dash out the door. I'm planning on consolidating my first week of blog into a summary post, tentative title "Week One Summary", which should be forthcoming in the next week or so. It'll just be a collection of my Facebook posts from the first week of stuff.

So on to today. Woke up at 6:30 a.m. to leave at 7:25. We managed to get out the door on time and arrived at the National Archaeological Museum. Dr. Jim Wright, an expert on Aegean pre-history and director of the American School of Classical Studies (ASCSA) gave a lecture on Minoan, Cycladic, and Mycenaean civilization in what we call "pre-history" before things were really written down.

Highlights of the lecture included the so called "Mask of Agamemnon," which is probably an inaccurate moniker.

This mask was found in a shaft grave at the palace at Mycenae, by Schliemann, a man I'm sure I will write about more in the future, but to keep it short, was both a controversial and important figure in defining the field of archaeology. He did have a tendency to try to tie finds to mythical sources though, which explains the moniker of the mask. I'd like to expand on the lecture we heard, which was absolutely fascinating, but it will have to wait because I need to get on a boat shortly. 

The other museum we visited was the National Museum of Epigraphy. This building houses rocks. Lots of rocks. Rocks with letters carved into them making them epigraphs. Epigraphs are an amazing way to learn about the past. There are thousands of epigraphs detailing everything from who was buried under the rock to a catalog of tribute given to Athens in a given year. One of the coolest and most controversial epigraphs we saw today is the Decree of Themistocles.

This Decree is extremely controversial, and I'll get into it when I have more time, but I have to catch a boat to Crete now! Hope y'all enjoyed the post and I'll do my best to keep updating on the regular. 

Welcome to the blog!

Hey readers!

I'm Matthew Cartier, a fourth year undergraduate in Classical Studies at the University of Chicago. I was lucky enough to be accepted into the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) Summer Session for six weeks of study and travel in Greece. 

This blog is (hopefully) going to have daily updates while I'm traveling. Access to the internet seems likely at the hotels we'll be staying at. 

Also, a brief explanation on the name of the blog - Pausanias was a Roman traveler extraordinaire, but he also wrote copiously about Greece in his book Description of Greece. This book has been used by modern archaeologists to find sites and confirm finds as well - Pausanias was no slouch about accuracy. Anyways, as I am also traveling around Greece and taking lots of pictures, I figured the shoutout in the name of the blog was appropriate.

If you have history questions or I completely get something wrong or you just want to nerd out about history, email me at mcartiermoc@gmail.com with Blog Inquiry - [topic here]. Thanks and happy reading!