EVOKE Begins at Vythoulas: Setting Out the First Trenches

The EVOKE project is about to begin its first excavation season at Vythoulas, Kythera. On Monday 22 June, the team will open the first trenches of our archaeological investigation into one of the island’s most significant cultural landscapes. Before the first trowel touches the soil, however, the work has already begun.

On Saturday 20 June, members of the team visited the site to mark out the excavation trenches, and to begin cleaning the areas where we will be working this season. These initial activities are always important. They transform plans, maps, survey data, and research questions into something real and tangible on the ground. The trenches that had existed until now as coordinates and drawings were finally set out in the landscape itself, giving shape to the first phase of excavation.

Of course, field archaeology rarely begins without a reminder that every project is also an adventure. On the way to the site, the team had a flat tyre — an unexpected but fitting introduction to the realities of archaeological fieldwork. Excavation is never only about discoveries. It is also about logistics, improvisation, teamwork, patience, and the ability to adapt when things do not go exactly according to plan. In many ways, this small incident captured the spirit of the coming season: a team ready to meet challenges together and keep moving forward.

Vythoulas is a landscape of exceptional importance for Kythera. The ravines and valleys around the site are connected with water, clay, cultivation, movement, and settlement across long periods of the island’s history. EVOKE aims to investigate how people lived, worked, farmed, moved through, and understood this landscape over time. The project is especially interested in the relationship between past communities and their environment: how they managed water, used local resources, shaped the land, and responded to changing social and ecological conditions.

On Sunday 21 June, the student team arrived on Kythera. For many of them, this is their first experience of archaeological fieldwork on the island; for others, it represents the beginning of a new chapter in their training and research. Our shared meal on Sunday evening marks the first formal gathering of the team before excavation begins the following morning. Around that dinner table, the project becomes more than a research design: it evolves into a community of students, researchers, collaborators, and local supporters working together.

The start of an excavation always carries a particular energy. There is anticipation, uncertainty, excitement, and responsibility. We know the questions we are asking of Vythoulas, but we do not yet know what the ground will respond with. That is the promise of archaeology: the careful opening of the past, layer by layer, through patient and collective work.

As EVOKE begins,we look forward to sharing the progress of the excavation, the daily life of the team, and the stories that emerge from this remarkable Kytherian landscape. You can also follow our work this season via Facebook’s Dioramas Project and Instagram’s @dioramas_project