When Harvard comes to Kythera

by Natasha C.

“What are you gonna do this summer?” is the question that I constantly ask myself each spring semester. Thankfully, it hasn’t been a difficult one to answer at Harvard. A quick skim through my emails got me excited about the student internship opportunities offered by Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies. In early February, Evan Katsarelis and Daphne Martin hosted an information session on the third floor of Boylston Hall, our beloved Classics department. I perked up when Daphne mentioned digging as part of a new project on the island of Kythera organized by the University of Sydney, which the Center is collaborating with.

Natasha hard at work during Vythoulas excavations

It wasn’t long before I decided that I wanted to spend my Junior summer as part of the EVOKE team. I knew that as an intern on Kythera, I would learn all about archaeological fieldwork in Greece through first-hand experience. Along with other students from Harvard and the University of Sydney, we would develop skills for single-context excavation, processing and cataloguing finds, publication-oriented notetaking and recording, and even consolidating and presenting findings to the local Kytherian community.

I submitted my application, eventually received Evan’s anxiously-anticipated acceptance email, and booked my flight for Greece. Now, two weeks into the project, I must say that my

expectations have been exceeded.

Our days are jam-packed with digging, washing pottery, and learning from lectures given by the many experts on the project.

Each day starts bright and early at 6:10am, when the twenty-five of us pile into cars and begin our trip to the hill of Vythoulas.

Exploring Kythera while making friends from Harvard and beyond.

A flock of wild goats likes to meet us as we haul boxes, leaf blowers, digging tools, and other

equipment up the dirt path to site. We spend the next seven hours hard at work in all three

trenches. Daphne, who supervises my trench, does a great job of teaching us how to recognize developing emerging stratigraphy and navigate complicated archaeologycontexts.

By the time that we leave the site at 1:30pm, dirt has been moved, features have been carefully articulated, and finds have been sortedorganized into labelled containers for post-excavation processing. A cooling North wind and 180-degree view of the Kytherian coast make trench-work feel like a breeze.

Back in Potamos, afternoons are spent washing pottery shards while learning how to distinguish between Neolithic, Bronze Age, Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, Medieval, and Modern pieces as we carefully organize our morning finds. Following our evening lecture, the last thing on our daily schedule is dinner together near in the plateia of Potamos.

It’s common knowledge that there’s no shortage of fun on archaeological projects, and EVOKE has been no exception. As a team, we’ve made trips to some of the many important cultural heritage sites on the island, including the beautiful landscape of Paliochora. Kythera is also lined with stunning beaches, like Lagada, where we had a particularly wonderful

afternoon together.

There hasn’t been a single dull moment at Kythera: I’m constantly discovering new things,

learning valuable skills for a future in archaeology, or laughing with my new friends. I’m beyond thankful to the Center for Hellenic Studies for making this wonderful project accessible to us Harvard students.