Last day

Friday 16.9.2016

Today was my last day diving at Mazotos, at least for now. So, this is the last blog entry. Tomorrow is for R&R in Larnaca, High View Gardens and Mazotos Village. On Sunday I fly home.

Happy Teemu after last Mazotos dive turned out so good.

The day started differently. In the middle of Stella's morning brief at M/S Queen Zenobia she received a birthday cake, and we all sang Happy Birthday to Stella. The surprise was not complete, as she has had her birthdays on the field many times before. She was even prepared with a small bottle of champagne in her pocket. We were just about to dive, and so no champagne for us, or for Stella. She poured it all to the sea! But there was champagne on her birthday.

Stella chats with Christos after giving all her birthday champagne to Mazotos wreck.

Most of the dives today were documentation of the wreck before the excavation wraps up this weekend. My dive was again excellent, as I was just shadowing Andreas (Kr) on his photography session. At the same time I was getting a very good long last look at our achievements in preceding four weeks. What a way to finish my 21 dives at Mazotos!

Teemu and Stella

The high point today was when one of the anchor stock lead weights was lifted. It was carefully raised into a plastic box re-enforced with metal, which was brought to surface with a lift bag, and finally lifted to M/S Queen Zenobia with a pulley. They have in earlier excavations lifted both anchor stock weights for two other anchors, but this was the first one for us.

Anchor stock weight being lifted onto M/S Queen Zenobia

This has been such a wonderful four weeks that I can hardly believe it myself yet. I have met a huge number of nice people, who have all been very committed to make both the fieldschool and the excavation successful. There have been minor setbacks due weather and mechanical failures, but their effect has been minuscule due to strong teamwork and willpower to complete the excavation.

This whole setup with the fieldschool and excavation together has at least in my perspective been a big success. I wish something like this could be done also in Finland, but I doubt it. This project has had The Honor Frost Foundation to fund most of the expenses, and so far there is no such foundation in sight in Finland to chip in. Of course, none of this would not have happened without joint work of The Nautical Archaeology Society and University of Cyprus.

I am happy that I stayed on at Mazotos as a volunteer diver after the fieldschool ended. In these last two weeks I have seen how we amateur archaeologists with technical diving skills can contribute to the success of a large excavation, and how important our part is in it. It is truly important to train new volunteers with technical diving skills and the know-how on nautical archaeological fieldwork. It has been great to have the opportunity to give back right after receiving the training.

I want to give special thanks to Mark and Stella for organizing the fieldschool and the excavation at Mazotos. Also, it would not have happened without the effort of numerous people in many different fields volunteering their time and other resources. It it just amazing how many people are involved. Of course, for many the real work of conserving the finds and to processing the excavation data is just now beginning. It will take years.

I again thank Sheri from Dive-In Larnaca for posting that newspaper article in Facebook. I would not have been here without that! It is amazing, how small things can lead to big things!

Mazotos Fieldschool 2016

Finally, I like to thank the other 11 fieldschool students. It has been such a pleasure to know you all, and hopefully we will dive together again.

Teemu Kerola

Starting to close down the excavation

Thursday 15.9.2016

Today we started to slowly close down. We complete the tasks that are underway, and do not start any new ones. We lost two days of diving due to boat trouble, but those things happen. We could have easily lost them and much more due to weather in these four weeks. Today's weather forecast had again strong winds for the afternoon, and so we started early.

Our own RIB has still problems. We are fortunate to have a small RIB from Cyprus Civil Defense forces helping us now for a few days. With that RIB, and with Spyros and his boat (also a RIB), we just manage.

The Civil Defense RIB with two crew members are big help for us.

Today I had a real fun dive. I was diving last with Dimitrios, when he took photogrammetry photos. The visibility was good, with some current towards east. You could clearly see the slightly "cloudy" areas on the west side of the wreck, whereas the east side was very clear. My job was to "watch his back", and not to be on the way. It was great to spend the whole dive just to look at the wreck in its current status without any specific other tasks. It was especially rewarding the see all the work that we have done in the bow and B trenches. At the end we recovered the safety tank from the bottom of the ascent line.

On the way back David, Rupert and me were asked to sit in the back of Spyros' boat, and we were given one amphora to take care of. The weather was not good for amphora transport, the waves were maybe 1m tall, but we really needed that amphora brought to High View Gardens today. Every now and then the boat reached a wave crest, and the amphora started to "fly". I needed to lift it up slightly, that it would not bump too hard onto my lap.

Rupert, Teemu and David in babycare duty

I was taking care of vertical suspension. Rupert was in control of forward speed changes due to boat hitting a wave every now and then. David for ready for anything. I had no purchase to do anything in forward direction. At half way Spyros gave his own life jacket for extra suspension. We were drenched from the waves, and my eyes were hurting from drying salt. I could not wipe them, because both hands were needed to hold the "baby". The amphora was swaddled in wet fabric and wet bubble wrap, and so I was pretty wet from the start. After some 30 minutes of wave riding we finally reached Alaminos, with the baby intact.

Archaeologists in Pafos

Wednesday 14.9.2016

Our boat troubles continued, and we had another day off from diving. Rupert, Hana, Andrzej and me took advantage of this and made a day trip with Rupert's car to archaeological sites in Pafos. It was a great trip. I must be an archaeologist now, because I was allowed free to two museums in one day. It probably did not have anything to with Professor Rupert leading the pack...

We first stopped at beach where Aphrodite may have come to the beach in Pafos. On that beach is The rock of the Greek. It refers to mythology, where The Greek saved Pafos by throwing this rock on the enemy. That Greek was a strong one! The same rock is also called Aphrodite's Rock. It is handy to combine legends.

Aphrodite's Rock

Lovers seemed to believe that this place had romantic powers and have made lots of stone hearts all around the beach. They still keep making new ones.

Couple making a heart in Aphrodite's Beach

After taking a stroll at the beach, we moved on and went to the Sanctuary of Aphrodite, where the cult of Aphrodite was born and where the Aphrodite's temple was. It was not so romantic as it first sounds. All maidens had to go there and prostitute themselves to visitors from abroad. Only once they had found their 1st customer, were they allowed to leave and marry. Not so big love story.

This stone was the symbol of Aphrodite in the sanctuary. Maybe there is some hidden female form in it, but I could not find it.

The houses in the area still had many mosaic floor remaining, though many of them are now protected with fabric and sand. This mosaic of Leda and the swan is from the Roman period, maybe 200-300 AD. This is a copy - the original is in museum in Nikosia.

Leda and the swan

Rupert was great guide. He seemed to know all the sites, and had lots of stories to tell of them. And you got the feeling, that there were many stories left untold.

Rupert and Hana in Pafos

We continued our trip to Pafos, which has a huge archaeological site. It has many ongoing archaeological digs going on, which the visitors can observe in addition to the actual ruins. More ruins are excavated continuously. It was nice to notice photogrammetry control points in many of the excavations. One month ago I would not have seen them at all, or at least known what they were.

Archaeological field work in Pafos seems easy as compared to our Mazotos site. One person can excavate all day, and not only 20 minutes. On the other hand, I do not know if my back would last all day excavation like that! Maybe 20 minutes is enough...

The Pafos site had structures spanning for centuries. At one time the walls were also reinforced against trebuchet attacks. The outer stones in the wall might break, but the smaller rocks inside the wall would absorb the impact, and keep at least some of the wall still operational.

Trebuchet-resistant wall structure

The area is so large, that you easily get a feeling that you are walking in a city. There are temples, houses, and fortifications of different centuries all mixed up. Some material from earlier sites have been used to build some more recent structures.

Rupert, Teemu and Hana in Pafos

After touring Pafos under Rupert's guidance for an hour, we met with Agata, who works as an archaeologist here. Agata had spent one weekend already at the Mazotos site, and she probably will come this weekend again. How else would an archaeologist spend her free weekends?

Agata, Rupert, and Hana (and Andrzej far away) look at 7m deep well newly excavated by Agata. She also found stamped amphorae, glass containers, and gold in the same area. In another well she found human remains. 

After a tour Agata took us to her workshop, where (mostly?) students were sorting out zillions (boxes and boxes) of sherds, and doing impossible 3D-puzzles of putting together amphorae from a selected collection of similar thickness sherds, that may or may not belong to the same amphora. They use glue than can be dissolved with acetone when/if needed.  Agatha had many amphorae already partly assembled this way. She also showed us the almost 2000 years old glass finds they had found. Each one was packed well into its own plastic container. Metallic ones were in conservation elsewhere.

Our RIB is still not doing so well. But Spyros will come with his boat, and we have also another small RIB helping us. So, diving will continue tomorrow - unless the weather decides something else.

Trench B and two-toed amphora

Monday 12.9.2016

I dived with Ray this time. We had the first dive. On our way down we took an extra tank set to the bottom of the ascent line - just in case. We excavated trench B, loosened one amphora, and moved it and three others to the apotheke (Greek for storage area). At the end we took one nice looking amphora up from the apotheke. Or Ray took, while I was collecting the sherds into our bag and returning the airlift back to its place.

The amphora to be lifted up is placed in large sturdy net on the sea bed, the net is closed with smaller rope, and lifted up with a lift bag. You put just enough air in the lift bag, so that it barely starts to rise up. You have one hand all the time on the exhaust valve on top of the bag, so that you can let extra air out, when it expands while rising (5 liters at 40m becomes 25 liters on surface). If you would not do that, the expanding air would increase lift dramatically, and the whole system would "woosh" to surface. Not good. You do not want to let too much air out, because then the amphora would start sinking and you would be in real hurry to add more air into the lift bag from you regulator. And you are on top of the lift bag, and the opening is at the bottom some 1m lower. So, you need to be careful.

Once we were at the decompression trapeze, Ray gave the amphora a gentle push up, and it floated nicely to surface for the safety diver to take it to Queen Zenobia. It had only some 10m to go, and so the air in the lift bag only doubled in size. However, the distance was short and there was no time for big rush to surface.

Amphora parts are named after human parts: hands, shoulders, neck, body, lip, and toe. The hands are above the shoulders, the toe is right under the body, the lip is just on top of the neck and there is only one lip and toe. Except for this one amphora (lifted up many days ago) had two toes! However, the other one was inside the body - with lots of other amphora sherds.

Two toed amphora, one under the body on its proper place, and the other inside.

What happened? No one really knows, but one possible culprit could be a turtle. A big turtle was recently (year or two ago) noticed to be moving finds in the area, and maybe she decided to do also some home decorating? It does not seem feasible for all those sherds to just randomly fall into one amphora.

Our backup boat coming back to M/S Queen Zenobia.

The wind picked up, and we had some boat trouble getting back home. I hoped they would get it all sorted out tonight so that we could dive tomorrow. They did not. We all have an extra off-gas day tomorrow. Must figure out something to do...

Most people are now relaxing by the pool. Not swimming, but just chatting and listening Robert playing his flute. There no real hurry to go to bed early today! I can not follow all discussions because the locals are like Finns, and like to chat in their own language. And that is all Greek to me.

Off-gasing in Agia Napa

Sunday 11.9.2016

On my 3rd and last off-gas day I went to Agia Napa with Ray. We used public transportation, and it took a while. A local bus 407 took us to Larnaca, and it took almost an hour. We had a 90 minute layover in Larnaca, and we went for coffee. Then an Intercity bus took us to Agia Napa, and it took another hour. We got hungry and spotted a Hard Rock Cafe close to the bus station.

While eating our hamburgers we browsed the net, and found out that the Thalassa museum opens only at 15:00. Smart people would have checked that earlier, but what you play with cards you have. Another two hours to await. So we strolled down to the beach, had coffee in some nice beach cafe, and admired beachgoers in their normal habitat. That is a different species.

Kyrenia II is clearly the main attraction in Thalassa. It is experimental archaeology, because it is built with ancient methods and tools. How do they know about the ancient ship building tools and methods so much? I do not know, but maybe they did. Either way, it is interesting to us, because there is strong likelyhood that the original Kyrenia ship and our Mazotos ship would have had many things in common.

Kyrenia II

We saw the modern copy of Kyrenia II, the Kyrenia Liberty, in Limassol earlier, and I was pondering that how do the turn those steering oars. Well - it turned out that they were not steering oars, but rudders!

Kyrenia II main rudder. The rudder rotates in its place on the side of the ship. There is copper plating underneath to protect the railing. The other rudder is set clearly higher. water Maybe it is a back up, to be used in case the main rudder is damaged due to shallow water. 

The exhibit had also piles of amphora copies imitating how they may have looked on the wreckage site on the sea bed. The piles look amazingly realistic - it really looks like this at the Mazotos wreck site! Except that the amphorae in sea are not so clean at all.

Amphora copies at Kyrenia II exhibit.

Robert does not believe, that the Kyrenia II builders got the upper structures of the ship correct at all. They had made copies of all some 400 amphorae  found at the site, and then tried to load them all up in Kyrenia II. It did not go well - they did not fit at all. Maybe Robert is right, and the ship's hull should be much wider on top?

I was looking closely at the joints to the keel at the bow. Would Mazotos keel have similar joints?

Kyrenia II keel at bow.

But wait - there is more. The exhibit also had a smaller scale copy if the original Kyrenia wreck site (once all the amphorae and lots of the sediment were removed). It was build under a glass floor, and you could walk on it and admire it just like you would be diving there! Novel. I was too embarrassed to lie down on the floor to get better view...

Kyrenia wreck site model

I must admire those experimental archeologists who somehow deduced from this wreckage all details needed to build Kyrenia II. It would be very interesting to some day visit the Kyrenia Castle in Northern Cyprus and see the original Kyrenia there. It was painstakingly documented, one small part at a time, all pieces lifted up, conserved for years, and then finally rebuilt just the same as it originally was on the sea bed.

In the excavation the original Kyrenia wreck site was totally destroyed. Everything was raised. That is the dilemma in all excavations - is your work important enough to destroy the site today? Do you collect enough data while excavating the site?

Kyrenia wreck site model, detail. Would there be such side planking still remaining in the Mazotos site under all those hundreds of amphorae still remaining. We do not know.

The glass floor over the Kyrenia wreck site model is neat, but it was very difficult for my camera. It really did not like to focus through glass. And then sometimes it just did. Go figure...

Kytrenia wreck site model, detail. What is that round metal "pipe" on top of the keel in stern?

We took another Intercity bus from Agia Napa back to Larnaca, had a small break at the Meeting Place Cafe by the beach, and took a taxi home. No local buses on Sunday evenings. We must be getting better at negotiation, because now the taxi was only 20€, when just 2 days ago we paid 25€ for us and 30€ for the key to ride alone.

Larnaca

Saturday 10.9.2016

Yesterday Ray and I were in the first boat out from the excavation site, already at noon or so. We decided to use the opportunity and go to Larnaca for afternoon and evening, just for fun. Harold gave us a ride on his way home to Nicosia.

We got in Larnaca early enough to visit Dive-In Larnaca, and say "hi" to Sheri and Chris there. I also had a chance to purchase a new wrist dive slate and a few double-ender clips that we need all the time, and which have a tendency of getting lost...

We stopped at a Kybele's beach cafe, when Ray noticed that he still had the room key in his pocket. He should have left it in the High View Gardens' office so that the other two divers could get in once they get back from the excavation site. They would not be happy campers if they could not get into their room all evening. We pondered the situation for a while, and Ray ended up sending the key back to Mazotos in a taxi. A significant problem was solved with just 30€. Who says that money can not buy you happiness?

Ray wanted to know all details of the taxi - just in case.

After furiously scurrying, we found someone to be there in the office to receive the key, probably about the same time as the the taxi arrived. Either way, it was a relief to get a confirmation that the key was where it should have been in the first place.

We strolled pass the small Medieval Castle to the main beach, had some ice cream there, and visited the Church of St. Lazarus. We covered out bare legs with purple wrap-around skirt, out of respect for the place. There were some people inside with short, but not us!

This is the place where the biblical Lazarus was eventually buried, once he died as the Bishop of Kition (present day Larnaca) after been revived from the death earlier by Jesus. Close to the main altar is a small coffin, where some of Lazarus' bones are on display surrounded with silver framing. The rest were taken to Constantinople by byzantine Emperor Leo VI in 898, looted by crusaders in early 1300's, brought to Marseille, and then lost. Emperor Leo VI had this current big church build over the original tomb as a compensation of him taking the relics.

Some of Lazarus' remains in the Church of St. Lazarus in Larnaca. These were found in 1972 in a marble sarcophagus under the altar. Too late for Emperor Leo VI to complain that he did not get all that he paid for.

We wanted to eat something different than the local home cooking style Cypriot meals that we have been eating 3 weeks at Pambos' tavern.  We ended up having big steaks at the Panos Steak House right on the main beach.

Afterwards we strolled (again) the beach boulevard for more ice cream, and visited the main Pier, where many Zenobia dive and tourist boats reside. This Pier is about the only place in Larnaca that Zenobia ("One of the best wrecks to dive in the world") is in any way visible. We concluded the visit in Art Cafe for dessert, and took a taxi to home. It turned out that a taxi for two to Mazotos is cheaper than a taxi for a key to Mazotos... Maybe people can haggle about the price better than a key?

Today we each did again our usual excavation at the site. It is getting more interesting now that we are excavating new layers that have not be seen before. However, we have only a little more than a week to go with this excavation, and there must be some days used at the end just to close down the excavation, collect and take apart the airlifts, and put some 60 cm layer of protecting sand on top of areas with wooden or metallic finds.

Tomorrow will be my off-gas day. I will go with Ray to Agia Napa to see Kyrenia II, the "original" copy of the Kyrenia ship. Well - at least the bottom planks may be just like in the original ship, and attached to the keel and to each other the same way as originally. Only the bottom of the original Kyrenia survived and was recovered. However, Kyrenia II was built in 1985 with tools and methods used in the antiques, whereas the Kyrenia Liberty we saw in Limassol was built in 2004 with modern tools and methods. The original Kyrenia ship is on display in the city of Kyrenia in Northern Cyprus, and is out of reach for us in this trip. So, a very good replica will do.

Photogrammetry, orthophotos, and 3D-models

Thursday 8.9.2016

Christos (I.) and I tagged new amphorae that have become visible once the amphora layer above has been removed. I took GoPro video for documentation purposes. In the afternoon I went through that video and picked up documentation photos for each amphora that we tagged.

This photogrammetry stuff is neat. We collect finds (amphorae etc.) continuously from the trench, and the landscape changes quite fast. To keep track of all of this lots of photos are taken, and processed with photogrammetry software. We can get almost real time orthophotos, which are kind of stitched-together large photographs covering the whole site. We also get 3d-models that visualize current state of the site very well. You can rotate and zoom in the model, and look at current state of the site from different angles and distances. The images are not exact, because we do not have supercomputers or days to spend on computing. But they are handy.

Photomosaic of the Mazotos wreck as it once was. The image is distorted, because the control points were not set. The bow curves to the right in the image, but not in the actual wreck site. Once control points are set, the same photographs can be used to create a more realistic orthophoto of the site. The site does not look like this anymore, because of the excavations done there after this photo was made. 
(https://www.ucy.ac.cy/marelab/documents/Publications_/Demesticha_2010.pdf)

It is just amazing how useful this stuff is as compared to hand-made drawings of the past. All this of course requires that we have people with proper equipment to take those zillions of photographs and people who can process them into useful product in just a few hours. And then that product is used to plan for tomorrow's dives and at the end of the day get a new set of photographs. Teamwork at its best.

The photogrammetry software keeps track of all currently visible amphorae locations in 3D, and that data can then be used to create a 3D-model of the whole site. That is virtual reality at its best. You can "see" something that was newer really visible. Some of the amphorae are not visible yet, because they are under other amphorae or buried under the sea bed. Some of the amphorae are not in the wreck any more, because they have been removed, maybe years ago. But this model can bring them all back at the same time in the same 3D-model. However, the model can not be complete, unless all amphorae have been located and photographed.

If this interests you more, you can check scientific articles on the topic. For example, this article. Both Dimitrios Skarlatos and Stella Demesticha are present at this excavation.

The new stuff is presented to all us at the outside auditorium set in front of the office. We even have the cafeteria chairs arranged there so that it looks like a (very small) small movie theater. It is novel to have briefings like this.