| Entry: | The Greeks arrived yesterday and today started to show them around and explain the system. They have some very interesting differences of approach. For example, they like to have a 'layer' which is a group of units - something we would define in phasing the matrix. And they like to dig in trenches - for them open plan digging is associated with classical archaeology and so is 'bad', whereas for us it is trench or box digging which is associated with Wheeler and is 'bad'. I dont know how that is going to work out. Also, they dont wet sieve all units. A real tension emerged with the bot people who feel overloaded as it is and Julie feels some propierty with the data etc. I guess these tensions will continue. Carolyn talks now of 'fault lines' and necessry contradictions. I guess all disciplines need the conflict in order to 'resolve' it. many other interesting differences with the Greeks - eg the notion of a grid, and the notion of counting finds as they come off site etc. The human remains people also arrived today. There are lots of skeletons emerging in Building 1, all around the edges of the floors. So their timing is good. The aim is that the Greeks will dig to the southeast of the Mell area in an area called Summit. I wanted to look at this area because a) we need to reduce the cliff of soil left by Mellaart in order to reduce erosion; b) at the same time we can fill up the deep hole at the bottom of the cliff; c) there is a wonderfully preserved house we had recorded in section at this point - with 2m high walls and well burned - possibly Level VIA; d) the Greeks will thus be digging through Levels V (the surface in Summit) to VIA and this will give a useful contrast to the V-VI levels in North. The new building here will be called Building 10.Entered By: Ian Hodder |
