Americans in the agora

Hanging over a chair a few feet away from me as I write is my flat-mate's T-shirt, commemorating 80 years of American excavations in the agora. On the back is the first sentence in the now extensive series of excavation notebooks, begun in 1931: 'After proper ceremony of sprinkling of holy water by priest of neighboring church, Agora Excavations began about 7:30 a.m.' Our supervisors still record all our finds in the same type of notebook (as well as on an iPad), and our workdays are still measured out by the bells of the same church.

One question I am sometimes asked by people outside of the field is, why are there Americans in the agora? There is a short answer and a long answer. Let's deal with the long answer first.

The long answer is that at some point in the 19th century, elite Europeans decided that their culture originated in classical Greece. Since being in touch with your Greek roots was a way of demonstrating that you were European, the great powers started founding study centers in Athens, which could act as bases for excavations elsewhere in Greece. The German Archaeological Institute was founded in 1874; the American School opened its doors in 1881; and the British established their centre in 1886. (Canadians had to wait till 1976 for their own modest institute.)

In the first half of the 20th century, there was a scramble for what promised to become the most significant archaeological sites in Greece. The Brits were first to Knossos; the French set up camp in Delphi and Delos. In Athens itself, the Germans scrutinized the ancient cemetery and potters' quarter, the Kerameikos, and the Americans got down to work in the area they suspected lay over the classical agora. (There is a Canadian dig at Mytilene).

Americans run the excavations in the agora, in other words, because they are part of a long tradition of European cultures looking for themselves in Greece. That's the long answer. The short answer is: money. The Americans, as usual, seem to have more of it than everybody else. In the early days, John D. Rockefeller paid the workers and the archaeologists; nowadays the excavations are supported by the family of David Packard, who sold computers, through the Packard Humanities Institute.

Though American money is largely what has ensured that there are Americans in the agora year after year, the agora itself is very definitely part of Greece. Everything we dig up is legally the property of the Greek state (and ultimately the Greek people). There are of course a great number of Greek archaeologists, but there is a lot of digging to do, digging is expensive, and Greece doesn't have enough money to dig all its sites itself (especially nowadays). So allowing the foreign schools to excavate makes sense for both sides.

One thing that may make less sense to some is that we student volunteers actually get paid a small amount each week to sweep dust away from ancient stones. Most excavations don't pay their student diggers, since there is an army of aspiring archaeologists out there every year who want the experience and are willing to it for free. Sometimes students will even pay money to work on an excavation, especially when the dig has a training focus.

But you won't be surprised to hear that paying diggers makes a lot of sense to me. First, it prevents archaeology becoming yet another of those professions (like journalism) in which the only people that can get a job are those who are wealthy enough to be able to do unpaid internships. And second, well, I've just been digging through dirt in the Greek sun for seven hours. And as my flat-mate said to me on day two, 'Can you imagine how crazy you'd have to be to be working this hard without getting paid?'