Читать книгу Looking for Aphrodite - David Price Williams - Страница 35

chain of command so I really didn’t know very much. As a result I tended to stick with the British contingent who without doubt rather pompously felt that they were there to give archaeological respectability to the whole affair.

The actual digging at Knidos, such as it was, was conducted by a varying number of between seventy and one hundred local men from the nearby villages on the Peninsula who, of course, lacked even the simplest understanding of what they were supposed to be doing. It was the site supervisors who kept the men in order and the assistant director who oversaw the site supervisors in what I suppose might better be classed with one or two exceptions as controlled clearance rather than forensic excavation. But labour relations were always a bit strained between the workers and the Management, not helped by the Management’s apparent lack of empathy with what might be considered to be uncouth Turkish villagers, and the fact that they were overseen by a rather effete Turk, and man called Ümit. He tended to behave rather imperiously towards the diggers, hiring and firing them at will. Ümit notwithstanding, the villagers for their part, ignoring the hardships involved, saw the expedition more as a means of gaining a little cash during the slack summer months, when from the fields the wheat crop had already been harvested and in the orchards the olive crop was yet to be gathered. It was also perceived by them to be something of a lark and from my own observation they all played around relentlessly much of the time and on the whole thoroughly enjoyed themselves.

I personally had very little to do with the High Command. Being one of the two surveyors, I didn’t have to report the discoveries in any trench and I didn’t have to get on with any of the other eccentrics on the excavation. But it did mean that I got to know all the trenches being excavated throughout the site. It was Mark, the Assistant Director, to whom I reported and otherwise I could watch the whole social jamboree taking place without getting involved in any intricate personal politics and its proponents and opponents. In this regard I counted myself very fortunate!

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