Students & Volunteers
Specially trained local technicians do the actual digging, while students gain experience as area supervisors, keeping a written account according to a system described in our manual. Each student is fully responsible for his/her area. After a break from excavation in the field, every afternoon is spent sorting and reading pottery with the Director, at which time the material culture from one’s area is described and dated, weighed and counted. Saturdays are devoted to the cataloguing of worthy objects and describing small finds, again from one’s own area, in the Museum with the Assistant Director. At the end of the season each excavator must write a report that pulls together the history and significance of his or her area.
The Corinth training program is unique in that it gives each participant an opportunity to complete the whole sequence of work for his/her area, beginning with the field excavation, then processing the material recovered from those excavations, and finally putting the whole together in a report detailing the historical sequence that will remain as part of the city’s historical record. At all stages the excavation staff closely monitors this work. The program exposes students to a variety of archaeological field methods including the open-area, single context system favored in northeast Europe, the assemblage of Harris Matrices using software developed by Proleg, surveying methods and the use of a total station, architectural recording and graphic representation, and pottery quantification and seriation. It also introduces students to the ways in which history can be reconstructed and presented from raw archaeological data. The latest information technology is employed, including an integrated database to cover all aspects of work from the excavation to museum. Furthermore, the sessions in the Museum are intended to instruct students in how to look at ancient objects and how to write systematic descriptions, a technique that can be applied usefully to nearly any discipline. Because of Corinth’s long history, extending as it does from 6000-7000 B.C. to today, and because of the extensive study collection maintained by the excavation and available to the students, the possibility of exposure to a wide variety of periods and artifacts is great.
Excavation at Corinth is comfortable—double rooms, catered meals and laundry service—but no picnic. Excavation takes place from 7 am-2 pm (Monday-Friday) with pottery analysis from 4 pm-6 pm; sometimes extending into the evening. Saturday is devoted to the entry of records. Both Regular and Associate School members are eligible but in case of heavy demand preference will be given to Regular members. Spouses are very welcome but they will be put to work.
Note to non-ASCSA Applicants:
In some years, spaces reserved for ASCSA members may remain vacant. Interested graduate students are asked to send a CV (two-page maximum) to the Director of the excavations by October 31 of any year. Please enclose a short cover letter requesting consideration for the excavation the following spring.