OPP II (Other People’s Projects)

As I’m getting older, I find it easier to make time to help out colleagues and friends on their projects. In some ways, my press, my recent field work priorities, editing NDQ, and my sometimes halting effort to do service in my discipline and my institution represents my efforts to give a bit more back to the various institutions that nurtured my development and growth as a scholar. In some ways, this reflects the collaborative and broadly convivial spirit of archaeology in general. It turns out that my field both has and is a good teacher and time spent on Other People’s Projects is a great way to continue professional development and give back.

This summer, I decided to stick around for the first week of the Pyla-Koutopetria Archaeological Project Version 3.0. This version is officially directed by Tom Landvatter (Reed College) and Brandon Olson (Metro State University – Denver) with an assist from his colleague Justin Stevens. Unfortunately, Brandon was delayed arriving in Cyprus and I was on the island, so I offered to step in as a poor substitute for Prof. Olson. 

The bad news is that this meant that I had to get up at 5 am this morning to help on the first day of the project. To make matters worse, I woke up at 3:30 am because I was terrified that I might oversleep (like I did on the first day of WARP). I did not oversleep and managed to get students to the field on time and without incident.

The good news is that I’ve had the chance to watch and even participate in someone else’s project and learn from how they’re taking some of what we did with PKAP V1 (the survey) and PKAP V2 (the excavations) and develop it in new and interesting ways. From really well articulated anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies to new technologies (like EMLID GPS), new work flows, and new personnel. I’ve also had a chance to see different teaching and mentoring styles with students and different project management styles with staff.

There’s nothing that I’ve encountered the last few days that specifically sticks out as something that I must immediately add to my tool kit as a Mediterranean archaeologist, but I like to think that the opportunity to see (and maybe contribute in some small way) to how other people’s projects work is good for my understanding of archaeology.