Greece 2007

You never know where you will end up. I ended up in the Lesser Cyclades in the spring and summer of 2007 excavating on a project headed by Lord Colin Renfrew. Every morning included a 30-minute commute just after sunrise from the Island of Koufonisi to the uninhabited hulking Keros. Sometimes dolphins followed. Sometimes there were sea turtles. On the boat ride home we could perch on the front of the small vessel and bounce in and out of the sea. Honestly, my copy of the Odyssey was splashed by the Aegean more than once.

On Keros I was a trench supervisor, which mainly means I was trusted to do my own digging. The site itself yields large amount of broken Cycladic figurines: some of the most valuable antiquities sold on the international art market. For that reason we had several Greek guards with us. Also for that reason, only we archaeologists may go to Keros. Here is a picture me holding a recently recovered Cycladic figurine head.

Another one of my duties on this project was to essentially come to Greece early and do back laboratory work. I and a few others sifted through work that was only partially done the year before and recorded many of these figurines for posterity in physical and computer databases. I also spent some time with the undergraduate field school students, both guiding them in the field and lecturing to them on the topic of illicit antiquities.

Indeed, my time at Keros was mostly to do with my interest in the study of Antiquities trafficking. The Cycladic figurine is the archetype of the looted antiquity and Keros is the archetype of the Cycladic figurine. Somehow, excavating these objects scientifically was like taking a stab at looting to me. It also was a Mediterranean vacation masked as work! For more about Keros do check out the McDonald Institute Monograph.