Malahini in Greece and Turkey

Yesterday I visited the excavation site (it took me less than 5 minutes to walk there). I took pictures of tools that the archaeologists were using. They told me that in the past archaeologists were not very careful and just dug as much as they could to find hidden treasure. Many of the things they found were very nice, but it is very difficult to find information about their dates and so on because of the way that they were dug out.

Now they use tools like these:

Every morning they set up this survey equipment to measure EXACTLY where things are that they find.

There are workmen who use the pick to turn up about one inch of the soil at a time. They then use a hoe to move the dirt around to see if there is anything in it. After they have cleared an area they shovel it into a bucket or a wheelbarrow and then take it to the sifting table. The dirt is then sifted so that any small things are not missed.

I even saw people using a broom to sweep dirt and a plastic shovel to dig carefully with.

One of the most important things that archaeologists do is to observe in detail everything about what is happening. They have notebooks where they record information about each layer of earth that is dug. When they find something they draw it in their notebooks and do a sketch of the area where it was found. A very important person on a dig is an architect. The architect draws careful pictures of walls and other things that are found. They use exact measures and a plumb line to make sure that their drawings are accurate.

So, archaeologists today do much more detailed and slow work, but they provide the future with a much clearer picture of what they found. Sometimes it can be boring and hot and now and then they find really exciting things.

It was VERY hot today (I think around 100 degrees) so we went to the beach in the afternoon. Here are a few pictures of the beach nearest us. The beach has lots of pebbles, but the water was very pleasant. In the second picture the white you see is the city of new Corinth. The opening to the canal is just off the far left of the picture.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 at 1:12 am and is filed under Archaeology, Greece, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.