Plakias: 6/22

My first morning on the dig started at 7 am. We stopped at a local bakery to grab breakfast and lunch before I got my first glimpse of the dig.

Dr. Strasser chose the site for a few very specific reasons: Access to fresh, perennial water (rare in Crete), south-facing shelter and Miocene soil. The site has all of those, and is easily accessible by road. Perched on the edge of the cliffs dropping a dozen or so meters into the Libyan sea, is a small cave. A moderate slope stretches from the cave in the upper cliffs to the lower ones, and it is on this slope that the site is located.

While nothing specific can be revealed until publication, the site is extremely exciting. We are looking for artefacts from a small settlement of hunter-gatherers. Due to the low pH of the soil, we will probably only find stone and pottery, as most organic matter like seeds, shells and bones will have decomposed quickly. This also proves to make carbon dating difficult, so instead a system known as Optical Stimulating Luminascence will be used. Utilizing the half-life of solar radiation instead of C-14, it will be used on strata that has not been exposed to sunlight since the time the artefacts were current. The cores will be kept from sunlight until they are tested.

The first artefact trenches have already been dug, and a grid of 1m squares divides the 25m square site. My role, as newest member, is to dig in what we all fondly refer to as the "Never Ending Pit of Despair." The Pit is the second test trench dug as is used for mapping the depths of the different strata -- soil layers. We have found all the ones we expected, and are now simply trying to get to bedrock as soon as possible.

The site isn't glorious -- a cleared hillside sandblasted by the wind -- but that isn't what matters, Dr. Strasser said. On the ride down he shrugged, "It's not an art walk. They're crappy stone tools, but it doesn't matter -- they're the right type."