Kylindra
Occasionally I realize that I often forget to post a blog about the Kylindra site itself. The site is a child's cemetery, consisting of newborn babies, each buried in their own pot. Presently over 3000 individuals have been excavated from this site, with dates from 750 BC to 100 AD.
As you can see from the first photo, the cemetery is located just below the road that rings the village (Chora) that sits atop the island. Kylindra is on a steep hillside between the Chora and the ocean. The soil is incredibly hard and rocky, and there are lots of mean thorny plants that attach themselves to your clothing.
The grid at the top of the page is the area currently under excavation by a team of Greek archaeologists. It is a small section of the site. All of the plastic tarps that you see are protecting pot burials that need excavation. The Greek team will excavate these burials from the ground, and the field school team led by Simon Hillson at UCL will do small scale excavation of the pots. The Greek team will also attempt to reconstruct broken pots. Pottery also helps to date the age of the site.
Photos are not permitted of our work in the lab, but a quick Google search of Astypalaia Field School will yield lots of images.
The field school has a couple of websites, including one on Facebook which has a video of a pelvis being excavated. If you want a more in depth look at what we do, check them out. I'll post them here.
Comments
Post a Comment