Fieldwork Report: Aidan Gregg

Posted on September 1, 2025 by Marta Ostovich

Learning to Lead in the Heart of Athens

Aidan Gregg, 2025 Katherine Barton Platt Fellowship Recipient

In the bustling center of metropolitan Athens, the sounds of city life blend with those of pickaxes striking the earth, brushes revealing beautiful artifacts, and—of course—ceaseless debate as to whether the soil is indeed greyish-brown or brownish-grey. For nearly 100 years, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens has helmed the excavations of the Athenian Agora. Each year, students and professionals from across the world flock to Athens to excavate one of the most important sites in the Greek world. This year, I had the opportunity to work at the Agora as an assistant supervisor and take an important step in my career as an archaeologist.

I excavated at the Agora for the first time as a volunteer in the summer of 2024, just before beginning the final year of my undergraduate education. While I had prior excavation experience, I could never imagine how impactful it would be on my development as an archaeologist. As a site that practices total collection of material—even plastic—I gained a breadth of archaeological experience. In addition to dry sieving all of the excavated material, we took samples for archaeobotanical flotation. We placed the soil we collected in a basin of water, so we can keep even the smallest seeds. The emphasis on professional skill development and intellectual growth at the Agora made me fall in love with the site, the project, and the people. But the most important lesson came this year, when I learned to be a leader.

When I was invited to return to the Athenian Agora as an assistant supervisor, I knew there was nothing I would rather do with my summer. As excited as I was, I was also quite nervous to enter a leadership position like this for the first time. I was younger and had less field experience than many of the volunteers. For the first few weeks, I maintained a perpetual state of anxiety about making a mistake or revealing to others that I was unsure of myself. In the field, we have to pay close attention to changes in the soil to determine whether the deposit we are excavating has changed. In the particular Ottoman context we were excavating, we battled these soil changes ferociously, having to remain eagle-eyed for even the slightest change in color or texture—not an easy task. For the first time, I found myself in a position where people around me asked what I thought was happening; often, I had no clue. As a born perfectionist and someone deeply invested in the work I do, this was frequently anxiety-inducing—as I’m sure anyone starting a new job has experienced. But, as is often the case, this discomfort provided an outlet for growth.

Perhaps the most important thing I learned was to be comfortable being wrong, not knowing the answers, and owning mistakes. In turn, letting go of the need to be right and the fear of making a mistake allowed others at every level of experience and every age the space to be wrong too; it allowed us all to be able to learn from each other. At the Agora, our field director, Dr. Debby Sneed, consistently emphasized to us that mistakes are an opportunity to grow, not a source of shame. This summer, learning to be wrong made me more confident in myself, more able to learn from others, and a better archaeologist altogether.

Anyone who has participated in archaeological fieldwork knows that it is an opportunity for personal discovery just as much as it is for professional growth. Over two short months, I grew like a wild herb nurtured by the Greek sun, soil, and incredible archaeologists around me. I am forever grateful for my time at the Athenian Agora, and look forward to what comes next.

Aidan Gregg is a first-year PhD student in Classical Archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a graduate of Butler University. He is interested in the archaeology of burial, gender, and archaeological theory in the Aegean Bronze Age. He has participated in excavations at Ancient Nemea and the Athenian Agora and worked on material from Petsas House at Mycenae, the Bronze Age cemetery at Aidonia, and the Northeastern cemetery of Thebes.

Agora Excavation Volunteer Program: https://ascsa.edu.gr/programs/summer-excavation-programs/agora-summer-volunteer-program

Want to help more students and early career archaeologists get into the field? Donate to the cause today by selecting “Fieldwork Scholarships” as your gift purpose!

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All That Remains at Çadır Höyük

Anjuli Latchmansingh, 2025 Strange-Midkiff Families Fieldwork Scholarship Recipient

Within the village of Peynir Yemez in Türkiye is an archaeological excavation site named Çadır Höyük – an artificial mound that boasts roughly 7,000 years of human history. Evidence of human occupation on the mound comes in many forms. From pottery sherds, burials, and stone walls to glass beads and lithics, this site was once full of human activity. Yet the mound was populated by more than just homo sapiens. Animals of a wide variety were present, and their bones help tell us the human story.

During the summer of 2025, I had the privilege of working at Çadır Höyük with Dr. Sharon R. Steadman (my professor, advisor, and the Project Director of Çadır Höyük) and a wonderful team of specialists, professors, researchers, students, and Turks for about six weeks. We worked six days a week and had Thursdays off – although many of us still found ourselves seated at our lab stations attempting to make the most of our fleeting time there. The days were long and hot. I spent my mornings in the field excavating and my afternoons in the lab analyzing faunal remains. For the season, I would be working by myself with faunal remains. I had spent the beginning of the year teaching myself about animal anatomy and specifically researching the species of animals that have been previously recorded at the site in preparation for this project.

Excavating at Çadır Höyük was a unique experience. I was there with three other students from SUNY Cortland, and we were some of the first people to arrive. We opened many of the trenches for the season and I learned a great many skills and techniques. For instance, we took elevations from the trenches using an auto level on a tripod with a level rod and we learned to avoid bug bites by tucking our pants into our socks. Sometimes, it was the not-so-technical training that would prove most useful. There were, in fact, a lot of large bugs and spiders.

Not long after arriving at the site, a database and its recording protocol was sent to me created by Dr. Benjamin Arbuckle who published several works regarding faunal analyses at Çadır Höyük. Dr. Arbuckle has been an integral part of the project as the Assistant Director since 2009. His publications and the recording sheets he sent were extremely helpfulbecause I did not even know where to start or what to look for in terms of documenting. My education has been solely focused on human bones – identifying, classifying, measuring, determining pathology and trauma, and so forth. This summer, I excavated and evaluated hundreds of bones, but the vast majority of them were from animals. The exciting thing about animal bones is that not only are they all so incredibly different from kingdoms down to specific species, but even within species so much variation still exists. I honestly do not know how zooarchaeologists are able to store all thatinformation in their heads. It is quite impressive! Taking on Dr. Arbuckle’s database was challenging, important work for which I have great respect.

Animal bones differ from human bones in many ways. To give you an idea, animals tend to have many of the same bones that humans have but the shapes of those bones vary. This is in part because some become fused together, like a radius and ulna. Also, some animal bones are more curved or twisted because their muscles attach differently. Bird bones are mostly hollow, making them light enough to take flight. There are caudal vertebrae which make up animal tails, phalanges of hoofed animals, tusks, and a wide array of tooth types. Then there are horns or antlers or carapaces and plastrons to consider – because when you study the nonliving EVERY remnant is an important clue. All these unique traits are actually little hints that zooarchaeologists find and put together to create a complete picture of the animals that were present.

Identifying the animal is only the first step. From this information, we can find MNI, NISP, look for age, sex, signs of trauma, and pathology. Then we can infer much more, such as butchering methods, husbandry, and timelines of domestication and agriculture. All of this informs archaeologists of the people of the past. Much of my time in the lab was spent interpreting the remains and recording the data. Despite my best efforts, there are still a lot of bones to be identified and recorded. So, next summer, the work will continue.

From beginning to end, I had the opportunity to work with a wide range of people from all over the world, each driven bydifferent motivations. All had gravitated to this same small spot on our planet to come together for a season in a small village in central Türkiye to dig. And though I hope to meet and network with many of these professionals in the future, the Turkish people hold a special place in my heart. My time in Peynir Yemez was certainly a unique experience and I will cherish the friends and memories I have made. I will take with me the lessons I learned both in the field and the lab and use them in my next excavation experience. Understanding animal remains and being able to identify them will prove useful in my future endeavors by allowing me to understand relationships between persons and pets and sacrifices. It is my hope that the work I completed at the site proves useful in the future. I am grateful to have played a part in the research at ÇadırHöyük in the summer of 2025.

Want to help more students and early career archaeologists get into the field? Donate to the cause today by selecting “Fieldwork Scholarships” as your gift purpose!