The day the excavation tent collapsed on a 3,000 year old floor tile

I was volunteering on a dig outside of Corinth last summer, helping with the grid mapping. We had this huge canopy set up over a section that had just been uncovered, looked like a mosaic floor piece. Morning was fine, hot and still. Then around 2pm a gust of wind came off the hills and took the whole frame down. Bent poles, ripped canvas, and one of the steel foot plates landed right on the exposed tile. Whole team just froze. The lead archaeologist, she walked over, looked at the dent and the broken corner, and said 'well, that's a new layer of history.' She was joking but also not. We spent the next 6 hours documenting the damage and rigging up a tarp with ropes and bricks. Ended up losing a full day of digging because we had to re-level the section. We did find a small clay pot fragment under the tile while we were cleaning up, so kind of a win? But I still cringe thinking about that impact. Has anyone else had a weather disaster mess up a site worse than any pickaxe could?

0 comments

0 Comments

No comments yet

Be the first to share your thoughts on this discussion.