2024: A new region

By Milena Blokzijl, 2024.

As the end of summer comes around, we’ve moved into our third field season of the HMC project.

The past two years we’ve been working in the Messapion plain, focussing on the hilltop sites. This year, we’ve moved further south into the Lelantine plain, where we are studying the tower sites in the region. The region is again studied through a combination of excavation, intensive survey and extensive survey. Through this, we aim to expand our understanding of the way the regions were interconnected and functioned throughout the Early Byzantine up to the Ottoman period. We will use the results from the past seasons and the re-analysis of past finds by experts from around Europe, as well as new data to gain a clearer view of the region’s history. This year’s field season will again include trial trenches at one site, as well as intensive surveys at a few other sites that were scouted in previous years.

The project will also again include students from Leiden University, who join as interns to gain fieldwork experience in the field of Medieval Greek archaeology. They will rotate between all fieldwork teams to gain experience in every aspect of an archaeological project. The project is supported by student-staff members with experience in the HMC-project. Both students and staff are excited for the new season to kick off soon.