Zach Lingle ’12 is currently a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill, majoring in chemistry with a minor in archeology. He spent most of the summer of 2014 far away from the Carolinas – at an archeological dig on the island of Crete with one of his professors and a group of about 75 students.

Zach and his classmates spent 8 weeks working on the Azoria Project, an excavation of an Early Iron Age and Archaic site (ca. 1200-500 B.C.) on Crete. The goals of the project are to document the form of an early Greek city, with a view to understanding the sociopolitical and economic structure, and processes of urbanization.

“I was on the trucks up to the site by 6:30 every morning and was done around 2:30,” said Zach. “Most of my time at the dig was spent with a pickaxe or sweeping the trench to make it look good for photos. After the dig and on the weekends I got to spend time at the beach, hiking, playing soccer with the workmen, or traveling around Crete. In my trench we found a couple almost complete Lekanis (ancient Greek pottery bowl), but the find of the season was a whole bronze dagger from one of the other trenches.”

One of the highlights of the trip was meeting up with his parents on Crete for his mom’s birthday! Zach was happy to stay at their hotel and have a hot shower. (The “dorm” where he was staying had only solar-powered hot water which ran out pretty fast.)

View the article in davidsonnews.net.

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