Malahini in Greece and Turkey

I hope I didn’t give the impression that Dig Dog (aka, Norma) is a stray dog. She is actually owned by Guy Sanders and much loved by the various people who pass through the American School here in Corinth. I also didn’t tell you about Melos, the other Dig Dog. Melos is a big black dog and is owned by the James and Iulia who are the Architect and Curator of the Museum here at Corinth. Melos is a big, sweet and sort of dumb dog, but he looks a bit scarey. He is not looking scarey at all in this picture. It is just too hot.

There are many stray dogs wandering around Corinth and when I visited Athens I saw even more. These dogs seem pretty friendly, but they are very skinny and just go around freely. They also sleep all of the time. When we were first here there was a scandal because one of the stray dogs was found killed. No one knows who killed the dog, but they say that some of the people in the villages do not like these stray dogs. Sometimes they set out poisons for them to eat and Norma has almost died because of this.

Here is a picture of a birthday card sent by my sister who did not even know about Melos. I thought it was perfect!

Yesterday we went to the beach again. It is so hot that by the late afternoon I am coated with sweat and it feels SO good to jump into the water. The salt water is a comfortable temperature. I don’t think that there are any jelly fish or anything to be concerned about in the water. Sometimes a bit of seaweed flows by and rubs you.

This morning I went to visit an orphanage here with a friend who is an artist. The orphanage was started by a group called Childern’s Ark. He is helping the kids there to create a sculpture. It will be a column in two halves. It starts with a form that the artist, John, created lined with clay. Then the kids came and decorated the clay by pressing toys and their hands into it. Then cement was poured into the mold and after two days of drying the clay will be removed and the columns will be done and ready to put up. I wish I had a picture of the final project, but here are some pictures of the orphanage and the process of making the sculpture.

I promised you more bones today and I am going to do what I said. We went for a visit to a very special place today called Kenchreai. It is not a place like Corinth that a lot of people have heard about and that has a museum. There are no tour busses visiting here, but there are some fascinating things happening.

Joe Rife and Tom Tartaron, archaeologists from the United States are working with the Greek Archaeological Service on an ancient graveyard. In this particular area there are lots and lots of tombs. Each tomb has several big chambers for burial and smaller niches in the top where ashes or urns can be placed for cremation. The problem here is that there are lots of looters who dig around to find the tombs and then steal anything of value from them. There is a lot of money in selling ancient finds which sometimes even end up in museums. These theives find pots and jewelry, but leave the bones. Archaeologists also like to find these things of value, but they are even more interested in what they can learn from the tombs, so even though they don’t like the looting, they can go in after the looters and clean up what is left and make sense of it. The looters are not interested in the bones, so they leave them and lots of other evidence of what the tombs were like originally.

Would you like to go down this hole? It would not be my first choice of an activity, but since I was with other people I went down. All over this hillside there are underground tombs. Joe and others think that people built the tombs for themselves, their families. their descendents and and possibly for servants working for them. Right now they have only been allowed by the government to dig out the tombs that had already been looted. Next year they will be allowed to do their own excavation and hopefully find tombs that are fully intact.

Once you step down through the hole it is pretty nice inside the tomb. This tomb was painted all over the inside with beautiful designs. One part of it used a paint that was very rare called Egyptian blue. Most of the tombs were plastered and left white.

There were some really nice people working on the tombs that invited us to eat lunch with them. I asked them if they ever saw ghosts and unfortunately they had no good ghost stories for me. However, they did tell me two stories that are unique to their dig. They also had a mysterious discovery while I was there.

Story 1: Everyone who digs at Kenchreai gets a rash. They are not sure what causes it and people who are more sensitive seem to get it worse. Their main theory is that there are caterpillars that crawl on the pine trees in the area and they have dust in their hairs that drops onto the pine trees and then onto people. These people look OK to me. I don’t see any rashes. They might have been pulling my leg.
Story 2: This goat head is their mascot. If any of them gets a scratch that bleeds they must rub some blood on the mascots head or else, it is said, it will cloud over and rain and they will not be able to swim in the beautiful beach in the afternoon. This actually did happen to one of the girls who works there, so they do have some proof that it is true. The site that they are working on is up on a cliff, but right down below is VERY beautiful beach and EVERY afternoon after working hard all day they get to go swimming. Maybe it is not so bad being an archaeologist and climbing in those holes and digging up bones.

Mystery: At lunch there was a hole that I did not really want to go down because there were no stairs cut and I am not much of a climber, but several of the people working at the dig went down. When they got inside they found several picks and shovels and also a little booklet (from the USA) to help identify what type of rocks and soils there are. Where did they come from? Why were they in that hole? It was a tomb that they had done some work on last year and it was not changed, so no one was using the tools in that particular tomb, The tools could have been from a looter, but the book was something that scholars would use??? mysterious!? I would love to read your guesses on where these things came from.

When I wrote about traffic here one comment asked about bicycles. In the US more and more adults are using bicycles as a mode of transportation. Since I saw the question I have been looking around and seen VERY few bikes. I have seen kids on bikes.There are lots of motorcycles, but no adults on bikes. I asked someone and they said that it was probably because the streets are so narrow that it would be really dangerous to ride a bike here. Also, it is seen as something that children do and adults would much rather ride in a car or on the bus.

The last couple days of the excavation were exciting. In the trench that Steve was in they discovered the top of a basin with a ladder. They dug down as far as two steps, but there were more steps. At the end they came to the bottom of the well… five steps later. In the dirt filling the basin they found lots of coins and lots of broken pottery. Here is a picture of the basin. They have only excavated about a third of it because there was not time to do all of it.

The walls of the basin and the stairs were covered with plaster originally. This picture shows some of the remains of the plaster.

A few days ago I wrote about the types of things that they find at the dig and I was asked after that if they ever find bones. They find lots of bones. They find both the bones of animal and of people. Here is a picture of what is probably an animal bone that is just sticking out, not excavated.

I wrote in October about Mr. Hook. If you look at the link below and go to the bottom of the blog you will see his picture. He was killed in a greusome way with this hook which was still buried with his bones. http://malahinitx.blogspot.com/2005/10/archaeology.html

Tomorrow there will be more about bones when I tell you about a visit I am doing today to a graveyard they are excavating in Kenchrea (about 10 miles away!)

p.s. I was pretty surprised when I walked into the archaeological house this afternoon and there was a package for us for our birthdays! Thanks Susie and Tim!

NOTE: This was actually yesterday’s blog written on the weekend, but I could not connect yesterday for some reason.

Plateia is your Greek word today. It means the central part of a city. In Kansas City they have “the plaza” which is a similar idea. Here in Old Corinth it is where three roads come together and there are a bunch of restaurants and bars right there where people congregate. There are also two small grocery stores and quite a few shops selling items for tourists.
Here is a picture of each of the views of the plateia from the three roads:

Saturday evening we wandered down to the plateia at about 7 pm to see what was going on. The first thing we see every time we walk down to the plateia is the columns. These are the columns of a temple called the Archaic Temple built for Apollo. They are huge! I am including a picture of some people next to them (someone taking wedding pictures) so that you can see how huge the columns are.
First we visited with Paniotis who was in the first shop where he sells pots that he has painted. You can see is shopon the left in the picture. These are replicas of ancient pottery and are not made in the same way as in ancient times, but are souvenirs that a lot of people buy. He offered us apricots (which are in season right now) and so we sat and ate some apricots with him. He told us that there was a race coming to town and that the finish line was just down the street and it should be coming any time, so after that we wandered down the street and found a place at a restaurant where we could sit outside and wait for the runners to come.

This was quite amusing. No one seemed to know what time to expect people to come. First a bunch of people showed up with red t-shirts and hats that were (I guess) volunteers helping out with the race. Then a police car came. Then two policemen and one policewoman came walking up the street. They found one car parked in the way and whistled loudly, but then did not wait for anyone to come and move the car, but walked on. A bunch of cars kept going either way through the area. It only takes three cars to make a traffic jam in the plateia. Then the bus came. Here is a picture of the bus coming through the platea.

You can see that there is not really room for a race and the bus. The bus is bigger than the van in the picture and it passes through the plateia and then does a loop through the next village and comes back through, so we knew that most likely the runners would not be arriving until the bus did its run through town.

Finally, the first runner came, then the second and much later the third. Much later the rest of them came one at a time (maybe 20 racers total)hjv .. Then there was a small ceremony giving awards to the winners. They got a medal and a large gold cup. We are guessing that it was a 10k run. It was from Kenchrea to Corinth and was called the St. Paul race because that is a trip that Paul (from the New Testament of the Bible) made when he was here.

We ended the evening by watching the sunset (and the bats) from the upstairs veranda of a restaurant whle we ate pizza and Greek salad. It has been very hot out during the day, but it cools off and there is a pleasant breeze in the evening. A nice end to another interesting day.

Luke asked me how they made boats. I decided to write just a little about the Athenians because their boats (triremes) were very important to them. In the Classical period there was no state of Greece like there is now. Instead there were cities that had their own governments called city-states. Athens was one of them. They were very powerful because of their triremes. I am putting a timeline back in so you can look at what time I am talking about. It was a long time ago. Remember that on the side of the blog there is a link where you can download this same timeline in Excel format and change it or add to it. If you find out something that should be added please let me know!

I am going to give you a few URLs to look up to find out more if you are interested. That is what I would do to find out more than I know now! If you find anything interesting PLEASE write it as a comment on the blog!
All of these pages look pretty good, but since anyone can put anything up on the Internet look at more than one to be sure they are accurate (three that agree and don’t refer to each other as references are a good number)

Wikipedia Article on Triremes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trireme

The Classics Pages
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/trireme.htm
Official Trireme Page (modern rebuilding of trireme)
http://www.atm.ox.ac.uk/rowing/trireme/
Coventry Boat Builders (build replicas of wooden ships. This page tells exactly how they did it.)
http://www.covboat.demon.co.uk/
How was a trireme built?
http://home-3.tiscali.nl/~meester7/engtrireme.html

I have a few other pictures that I have taken and wanted to share sometime, so here they are:
An orange tree-right now there are lots of orange trees with fruit around old Corinth. When I was here before there were a lot of pomegranate trees full of pomegranates. Right now you can also see grapevines that are full of grapes (green ones), but they aren’t ripe yet. We are eating lots of fresh cherries and apricots.

While walking to the dig yesterday I was thinking about how it can be that so much stuff is left for archaeologists to dig up. It seems like our houses are so solid that it is hard to imagine them falling apart. How do you think that a house, like the picture on the left becomes a dig like the picture on the right?

One other picture I took was of a place called the Demeter Sanctuary. This was a site that was excavated many years ago. It is up on Acrocorinth. The archaeologists found lots of small dining rooms, sort of like a restaurant, but this was a special one where they came to sacrifice to a god (Demeter). They ate on couches lying down. Maybe my friend Al can write a bit more about it, since that is about the extent of my knowledge!

Today is the last day of digging. Next week is clean up time. The excavation season usually lasts from 6-9 weeks and is usually in May and June because that is when students can come to help dig. The rest of the year there is time to catalog all of the things that were found, put the pot shards together, and write articles about the new information found.

This morning I went out to watch the dig for a while and I found out something REALLY important. The archaeologists are NOT looking for pots, statues, bones or inscriptions! They are looking for information and I have proof. In one of the trenches there was this pot sticking up from the ground. My first impulse would be to dig it right out so that I could see the whole pot…but not the archaeologists! They dig by stratas or layers. I waited and waited for them to get back to the pot, but an hour later they were still digging the same inch layer of the trench! They may find the top of something really curious, but they dig the whole layer and then the next and so on to see what is happening all around the item before coming to where the item can be removed!

One of the important things to find is a coin. When archaeologists find them they are happy. Coins have pictures and dates on them and you can tell a lot about the date of a location by what coins are found around it.

Here is a coin in the ground. I don’t think I would even recognize it and pick it up, but the archaeologists and workers at the dig know what they are looking for. When a coin is found it looks like this:

When a coin is found it is brought into the museum and a card is filled out with information about it and then it is given to a coin specialist. He cleans the coin and fills out more information about what type it is and when it was made. Here is the SAME coin after it is clean!

The other thing that can help to predict the date is the pottery that is found. Archaeologists have learned more and more about pottery and now it is even more helpful than coins in dating what they are working on. Even just shards of broken pottery can help because the materials and types of pots from different centuries were different.

Here are some other things that are found:

Walls

Wells

Drains

All of these things tell archaeologits about the history of an area.
Sean asked me about houses. It was unclear to me whether he wanted to know about modern houses or ancient ones. They have not found remains of ancient houses at Corinth yet, but in a week or so I will be going to Ephesus, Turkey and there are remains of ancient houses there. Sean, let me know what you are interested in and I will write about it.

I haven’t had many questions lately (except from Susie who asks great ones!), so I hope that all of you are thinking and will send me questions by clicking on comment at the bottom.

I was asked if the site will stay up during the school year. It will stay up indefinitely and I hope that it continues to be useful!

I am ending the blog today with a special picture of Norma, the dig dog.

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.

I told you that today I would show you some modern toys and that fits in well with yesterday because it was my birthday! I am very sorry that I did not get a picture of it, but my friends here at the Corinth Archaeological Dig surprised me with a cake last night after dinner. During the day some friends sang the Greek version of Happy Birthday to me and so I recorded it. You can listen to it also. They think that they don’t sing so well, but I thought it was terrific.

Our friends here have a daughter who is 2 1/2. She agreed to show me some of her toys. Here is a picture of her doll. She also has a stroller that you can see in the bottom right side of the picture. She put her doll into it, but only for a second and I missed the picture.

She also has a toy cell phone. It makes different noises when you press the buttons. Her dad explained that here in Greece you can get just about all of the same toys that you have in the United States. They may play more soccer than in the US, but less basketball. They love Play Station and other video games.

This week they are beginning to set up for a huge holiday that is coming at the end of June. One of the things that is already active is the carnival. The big attraction is the bumper cars, which I have heard they drive differently than most of us would. We think that the whole idea of bumper cars is bumping into each other. I have been told that here they try NOT to bump into each other and just drive in circles!

Greek words for today: Ti ka ne te? Kala (the spelling might not be right because I am writing what I hear. It means: How are you? Good.

p.s. I did get a picture of everyone at the table in the morning so you could see our sleepy diningroom!

Sean asked a very interesting question about what toys they played with (I assume he meant the ancient Greeks and Romans). I asked one of the archaeologists here if there were any toys that she could show me. Here are pictures of some of the toys.

They had dolls

Babies had rattles.

They had toy carts.

and they had other toys. This is a picture of a tiny chair, a tiny dog and a top (you know the kind that spins). This top is missing some parts, but was painted hot pink when it was new!

Today I hope to take some pictures of modern toys to give you an idea of what kids today play with. If I can do that I will include it in tomorrow’s blog.

I just want to point out that in one of the comments it was mentioned that “The True Story of Alexander” will be on the History Channel on June 24th (Saturday) at 8 pm. I won’t see it here in Greece, so I hope that someone who watches it will comment on what they thought about it!
Susie asked about “the picture with the children facing each other, holding on to the front person’s waist. The two middle children have their arms held up like an arch and another looks like she/he is going under the arch”. Wasn’t that cute! They were the first grade students. The game that they played went like this. First two students formed an arch and all of the other students lined up and started going through the arch in a circle while they sang a song. When they got to a certain part the arms of the bridge went down and caught one of the kids. The bridge then asked them which side they wanted to go on. They said right or left (I think… it was Greek and I don’t know the words!) and then the bridge let them join. After all of them had been caught and chosen a side they played a tug of war where each side of the arch pulled their direction. I guess the winners were those who pulled the others the farthest??? I liked that one.
The other game “with one child in the middle and the others walking in a ring around him/her was a little hardert to figure out. They were also singing something and somehow a different person was chosen to be in the middle and the one in the middle went and joined the ring that was singing.

The Alien play had a script to it that the teacher had and so I am pretty sure that there is one “official” ending, but I think it would be a great idea to rewrite the play (or to write it as a story) with a different ending.

The Greek word for today is yassas. I hear it all the time. It means ‘hi’ and people that recognize me say it to me if I walk into a room or as I walk down the street and I say it back to them.

I was going to write about toys next, but I had the most exciting dinner last night and I need to tell you about it and show you some pictures.

Steve and I were invited to eat out with some friends who have a car, so they drove us to this restaurant, which is at the west side of the Corinth Canal. It was a BEAUTIFUL evening and so we sat outside and watched the sun set and watched boats go through the canal!

First of all… I have never seen a bridge like this one. There are low bridges like this at either end of the canal. Instead of being a drawbridge that pulls up the middle when a boat goes through, this one drops the middle way under the water! Here are two pictures of the bridge with its middle down:

I was told that sometimes when the bridge comes back up there are fish on it and the man who operates the bridge runs out and gets them. A very interesting way of fishing! There were no fish on it that we saw last night.

Then there was the beautiful view of the canal itself and of the diolkos (the path where they transported the boats before there was a canal).

Can you imagine bungie jumping off of one of those bridges?

Then there was the beautiful sunset.

Finally, there was the food. Do you see that purple looking thing with tenticles? That is pickled octopus! I actually ate it! The other stuff is small fish and calamari (or squid). Others at the table said that grilled octopus is delicious. hmmmm… To me all of the food was OK, but I think I would rather have a giro J. The pickled octopus was not bad. I didn’t even feel the tenticles. Would you have tried it?