Digging In: CSULB students combine science and archeology to investigate ancient Greek lives
A day of “earning that real good exhaustion” at an archaeological site starts before dawn and is spent in a dusty trench digging up broken ceramics, ancient charcoal bits or soil samples bearing hidden additions to the human story.
“It’s just a really big test for a lot of people — myself included — to see if you’re cut out for it,” fourth-year anthropology student Sam Oliver said. “Being waist-deep in the dirt, in the heat, looking for pieces of pottery ... I found that I really love it, and I want to do it as much as possible.”
Oliver was one of five Cal State Long Beach students who traveled to Greece this summer for the interdisciplinary Lechaion Harbor Environmental Archaeology Program. A collaboration between the departments of Earth Science and Comparative World Literature and Classics, the work blends old- and new-school methods to learn how people lived around Lechaion, once a harbor serving ancient Corinth.
The project introduced students to traditional archaeological methods and how to exercise proper care when using hand tools to delve into a historically significant site. After returning to Southern California, students transition to a lab-focused approach, using technology to probe soil and other materials for otherwise invisible evidence of ancient lives.
“When we’re trying to really understand life back then, you have to go deeper than finding what’s obviously in the ground, the physical objects that are left behind,” said Oliver, who is considering a future in cultural resource management or museum curation.
A three-year National Science Foundation grant supports this program, which includes students from three additional California State University campuses. CSULB also contributes to the Lechaion Harbor and Settlement Land Project, a cooperative effort between the Corinthian Ephorate of Antiquities and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Its director is Georgios Spyropoulos, assistant ephor of the Corinthian Ephorate, and Paul Scotton, CSULB professor of classical archaeology and classics, serves as co-director.
Oliver participated in both endeavors. Beach students have gone to Lechaion since 2016 to support global scholars while developing skills and confidence.
“I find an awful lot of what we do is letting students know, ‘you can do this,’” Scotton said. “Yes, you can.”
From Lechaion to the lab
Ancient Corinth was a trading power rivaling Athens, Scotton said. Romans sacked the city in 146 BCE, then rebuilt it after roughly a century. Corinthians vacated their city about 500 CE and researchers want to know why. Discoveries, including unburied skeletal remains and a seemingly abandoned cache of coins, suggest catastrophe.
“They didn’t go back and look for them — they walked away, too,” Scotton said. “If they survived.”
The Environmental Archaeology Program lets students examine Lechaion’s overall timeline.
In Greece, they collected charcoal and soil with shovels and hand trowels, second-year earth systems student Aiyana Martel said. Samples may contain evidence of human, animal and plant life that can be cross-checked with records of battles, floods and earthquakes.
“We just want to see if population changes correlate with historic events,” Martel said.
Their lab work is high-tech: sterol and bile acid extraction for gas chromatography and mass spectrometry; inductively coupled mass spectrometry for heavy metal analysis; stable isotope mass spectrometry for paleoclimate reconstructions and AMS radiocarbon dating.
Undergraduates at other universities do not typically receive hands-on experience with these technologies and lab methods, said Lora Stevens, chair of the Earth Science Department.
“It’s a huge eye-opener in terms of the scope of science and what you can do at Long Beach,” she said. “This is unique to the CSU and what we can do with undergrads.”
The student’s journey
Modern science adds knowledge of the past. Fourth-year history student Daryll Acosta said the presence of lead or tin in soil can show where ancient people had smelting operations.
“It shows us a lot about the environmental remains, just how the environment is affected by small human impacts,” said Acosta, who is interested in teaching college. “You can’t have all that matters on paper.”
Students also visited Athens and historic sites including Delphi, Mycenae and the temple of Apollo near Lechaion.
Fourth-year classics studies student Yesenia Gonzalez took a Greek mythology course before going to Lechaion. She recently earned a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, supporting her progression toward doctoral study, ideally in art and archaeology.
Gonzalez made her second trip to Lechaion this summer for the Harbor and Settlement Land Project. Initially seeking to “scratch something off the bucket list,” she has since decided that taking a pickaxe in hand and unearthing brick and tile fragments is her calling.
“Nothing compares to being in the field,” she said. “Going back this summer really reinforced that this is what I want to do and how much I enjoyed it.”
