Cucina italiano e Ελληνική αγόρια: To antiquity and beyond!

Bear with me, this post covers two days so it's a bit longer than usual....

Monday

Behind the scenes tour of the Greek Agora excavation project by head archaeologist John Camp. For those just joining my blog, the Agora is the "marketplace" of ancient Greece: it contained various shops as well as political buildings and houses skirted the exterior; it also housed part of the Panathenaic way that held the Panathenaic procession from the Karameikos to the Akropolis.

Unlike our previous behind-the-scenes tour at the Akropolis, John Camp did not take us around the site and talk about it; instead, he took us into the sheds and showed us all the work (physical and paper) that goes into excavating a site. We started in the offices where he showed us various historical records of the project ranging from books to file cards. He showed us a book from the 1930s and then one from this year and the style, technique and book itself was exactly the same. He then showed us the file cabinets filled with millions of file cards about individual objects and I started to get extremely frustrated. Why on earth would you continue to document an excavation project in the same fashion people did in the 1930s? Are you actually going to sit there for hours hand writing every detail and creating file cards for every artifact you find? Then what if you want to look up information on the object later? You're going to weed through millions of file cards to find a book reference, then go searching for the book until you find it? I never want to be an archaeologist.

Luckily, my frustration was quickly abated.

John Camp, it turns out, hates computers. But others are a bit more accepting of the modern age and archaeological digs have adjusted accordingly. Nowadays, in addition to a supervisor who hands write everything, they have someone out their with an iPad documenting every detail, and it seems like most (if not all) of the paper documents now exist in electronic form as well. And, even though he knows that his tech people can look up what he needs in a nanosecond, John prefers to sit there for an hour or so and find it himself. But I don't have a strong opinion on the subject.

Blasted books

Next, we went downstairs into the store rooms where they keep all the stuff not cool enough to make it in a museum: aisles lined with pots (some reconstructed, some scraps), chotchkies and stones with inscriptions. The ancient greeks used marble slabs and tablets to record everything from politics to daily life; you can really learn a lot from these stones. At one point, he opened a drawer and pulled out a full human skull...no big deal. It's fascinating how much you can learn about a person and their lives by looking at their bones thousands of years later.

Pots in the Agora storeroom

John Camp with human skull

He also took us on site of a current excavation and told us a little about the process and project. Really interesting and smart guy and we were very lucky to be able to get one-on-one time with him in the basements of the Agora.

I spent the afternoon and evening wandering around Plaka. I got really yummy Greek yogurt at this place called Fresko that reminded me of Pinkberry and all those FroYo places back in the states. This wasn't frozen, but it was delicious--they had loads of toppings from honey, fresh fruit and sauces to nuts, granola and chocolate chips...and it was one price, regardless of how many toppings you got! Om nom. I had the sheep yogurt with forest berry sauce, granola, mango, hazlenuts, walnuts and chocolate chips and it was delicious. Sheep yogurt is awesome.

Went to dinner at a cute cafe/restaurant in Monastraki. There was a funny Australian man who kept talking to us and the place was dominated by English-speakers but that's bound to happen in a tourist city :-/.

Tuesday

Temple of Olympian Zeus
-I walk by this temple almost daily, but it was nice to finally enter the site and learn a bit about the temple.
-Wow. In its full glory the platform was 134.5 x 353.5 feet and contained three rows of eight columns across the front and back of the temple and a double row of twenty on the flanks---104 columns at 55.5 ft high and 6.5 ft in diameter. (Thank you, Wikipedia)
-I find it huge and beautiful in its destroyed state; I can't even imagine how incredible it must've been.

Temple of Olympian Zeus
Hadrian's Gate
-We also walk by this daily and when I met my dad's friend he taught me a bit about it. It was built by Hadrian when he ruled and created the "newer" part of Athens. On the side of the arch that faces the Akropolis it says "This is the city of Thesius," and on the other side it says "This is the city of Hadrian."
Tower of the Winds and the Roman Agora
-The Tower of the Winds served as both a water tower and a clock--you can still see the posts and lines used as some form of sun dial.

Tower of the Winds

-The Roman Agora was built by Julius Caesar and finished by Augustus (no big deal).
-After seeing and learning so much Greek architecture, it was interesting (and exciting) to see (and recognize) what the Romans did differently. For example, the columns are not fluted and are made with marbled marble, and they're walls are easily distinguished because they are made with bricks and rubble filled with some form of cement.
Library of Hadrian
-The Roman features were also clearly visible at this site.
-We walked around and saw where they used to hold lectures, keep books and do other library-esque things.
-The guy working the ticket office knew someone who our teacher knew and was very very excited about it. He kept saying "I stayed at his house in Indiana for 22 days. He is a very nice man."

Roman Columns, Library of Hadrian