Fall of a wall

Today I walked down to the dig with another little box of tzadziki, which did not explode in my new bag. I went down as usual to the trench I'd been assigned to for my first two-week rotation, next to the railway line, but on the same side of the modern road as most of the excavated Agora. For the past week or so we have been clearing a particular area of plants and garbage and other fill, so that we could begin digging in earnest around the level excavators reached last time they dug in that area, in the 1970s. We were expected to be able to make actual digging 'passes' (going over a certain space of ground with our tools) today, but alas, our hopes were dashed.

The whole of Greece is divided into various archaeological 'ephorates' who grant (or, sometimes) refuse permits and supervise whatever archaeological excavations foreign institutions are doing. Today an official came round when we were about to start digging and insisted that we should pull down most of a wall we had left standing, in case it fell onto us as we were working. We could hardly be annoyed, since the official clearly had our best interests at heart, but it was slightly dismaying to see the Greek workmen topple an entire modern wall onto our carefully swept area! Of course this meant that we had to spend another day clearing modern dirt off the surface before we could start digging. In a trench across the road they pulled out an entire coarse-ware amphora from the fifth century BC.