Ella Arnold
This year, I was given the opportunity to return to Larnaca and the PKAP project to not only excavate as I did last year, but to also work on a student research project through the Ruby-Lankford grant. With the help of the project directors, myself and three returning students from MSU have been working on researching and comparing some of the stamped amphora handles, bowls with graffiti, lead sling bullets, and a game board found at Vigla. This research has included photographing, measuring, and reading the artifacts, which will ultimately result in us compiling the information into a research poster on examples of epigraphy found at site. By engaging in the part of archaeological study that involves pulling artifacts for study from the archives at Terra Ombra, I feel as though I have gained a better understanding as to the relevance of the pottery sherds, metal pieces, and other items that we find at Vigla and how they tie in to our greater understanding of the material and epigraphic culture of the Hellenistic period.
Furthermore, I have loved getting exposure to additional aspects of the field that I wish to pursue. I believe that all the practice that field school affords you with archaeology, especially if you get to participate in a research project like our epigraphy project, ensures that people who are genuinely interested in and passionate about archaeology find their way into the practice. With so much emphasis on non-humanities fields in the American school system, it is refreshing to be around students, PhDs, and professors who genuinely love archaeology and care about maintaining the field.
Beyond researching (and supervising a trench, as I mentioned in my last post), I have had so much fun getting to return to Larnaca. I have gotten to meet and get closer with people from Reed, as well as people from MSU, and it is so cool to watch a new group engage with the site and be so excited about what they are finding and learning. Getting to go back to the museums that I found incredible last year has easily been one of my favorite returning activities, as well as showing the others my favorite spots to eat, swim, and shop. I feel much more comfortable navigating around the city, which I think has enabled me to relax a bit more and really soak in the month a lot more.
Because I am graduating in the spring, this will probably be my last summer digging on the PKAP project (unless I can convince Tom to help me find a way to come back and finish digging my wildly confusing trench!). Before I came here last year, I had so many unanswered questions about what I wanted to do with a GLAM degree, if I could spend a month in Europe with people I didn’t really know, or if I even liked field archaeology at all. With graduation on the horizon, there are about a million more questions about what is next swirling around my head–but because of my two seasons in Larnaca working on the PKAP project, I at the very least feel determined to pursue graduate school and to make sure I find myself in a pile of mudbrick, in the blazing hot Mediterranean sun, getting excited over broken pieces of pottery, at least one more time.