ISAW PhD Candidate Allyson Blanck Reports on Her Experience as a 2024 AIA-NYS Archaeological Fieldwork Scholarship Recipient

The AIA-NYS Scholars Program/Archaeological Research Scholarship is currently in its 6th year and is open to undergraduate and first-year graduate students from New York Colleges and Universities.

ISAW student Allyson Blanck received the summer scholarship to excavate at the impressive site of the Agora in Athens. She shares below an exciting report on her fieldwork.

“As the 2024 recipient of the AIA NYS society, I participated in the excavations at the Athenian Agora for 8 weeks. This is my second year excavating at the Agora site, and my third year participating in research associated with the American School for Classical Studies in Athens. In the previous 2023 season, I joined the excavation as a volunteer and was invited back this year as an assistant supervisor. I have participated in several different excavations now, but I have not yet had an opportunity to participate in an excavation at a higher level before this season. I am very grateful for the encouragement of this grant particularly for supporting my interests in Greek archeology, as well as generally supporting my participation on an active excavation.

As an assistant supervisor, I was placed on a team with a head supervisor and participated in a variety of administrative and field tasks. Returning to the field can be an exciting moment, and the opportunity to return for a second year with increased responsibility as an openly disabled archeologist was one of the truly exciting aspects of this season for me. Getting experience at the same excavation over consecutive years offers an unparalleled view into the long-term life of an excavation. Understanding how the site is managed during the year and what preparations happen before volunteers arrive becomes clearer when you can witness the transformation of the site from one summer to the next.

One of my main goals was to gain more experience with the total station, a device which allows archeologists to track elevations of the areas we are working on and take spatial points of specific finds. By the end of the season, I was much more confident using a total station than I expected. It has generally been on the periphery of my experience, and I was glad to have the chance to work on topographical aspects of the fieldwork regularly. I was able to become well versed in how to set up and calibrate the station, as well as beginning to teach new volunteers about the basics of the stations such as how to find and shoot points, why we shoot a test point, and what each of the basics steps of calibration were accomplishing. A topographical survey is not generally a central tool for my research on ancient medicine, but I believe that having a strong practical knowledge base in operating a total station will only help me in future excavations, and I have begun to think more deeply about its applications for my own research questions. Similarly, having opportunities to see previously excavated objects in storage such as the “medicine pots” and feeding bottles from the site will only improve my dissertation work. Similarly, working around well-respected and knowledgeable specialists and supervisory staff was an endless source of new information and approaches.

Additionally, learning how to manage interpersonal interactions on-site was a new experience for me. Digging together for 8 weeks in close proximity is also a social commitment, and it was helpful to have opportunities to discuss how to approach different situations as well as seeing the different approaches to managing volunteers during the season was a valuable first-hand experience. Even within one singular site, each supervisor has their own approach and management style, and I believe this experience will allow me to begin developing my own approach to how I would like to manage trenches in the future.

I want to conclude by acknowledging that perhaps one of the greatest contributions this grant allowed me to embody is the changing perspectives of disabled students participating in archeology. Over the last 6 years, I have discovered how being a disabled person on an archeological site is often a unique experience and that many sites are completely new to the idea of disability as a normal part of the working archeological community. But, I am by no means unique, and many archeologists with physical, mental, and invisible disabilities have been working in the field long before I arrived. The field is a dynamic place and should be open to disabled scholars if they wish to pursue it. While working at the Agora, I often received looks of curiosity or questions when walking back and forth from the site to our storage and processing areas in the Stoa of Attalus due to my service dog, Bo. The Agora is an exceptionally well-known site, in part due to the famous Stoa of Attalus (originally built around 150 BC and restored by the ASCSA in the 1950s) and the Hephaisteion (one of the best-preserved temples of Greece) which are situated directly in the main cultural center of Athens. These places attracts countless tourists each summer, and are often buzzing with people during work hours. I believe that my presence at that site, in front of those tourists, allows me to participate in a larger progression of the field of archeology, a part of a catalyst for change of long-held beliefs about who is allowed to be an archeologist.”

Allyson calibrating the total station. Photograph by Luis Rodriguez-Perez.

Left: Allyson and Her Service dog Bo in the Hephaisteion. Right: Bo, the service dog, sitting next to an active excavation area.