Maya Klapper: Knossos Legacy Archaeological Project

Thanks to the Newcomb Tulane Grant, I had a wonderful summer assisting my professor with archaeological fieldwork in Greece. This incredible learning opportunity afforded me the opportunity to assist on Professor Emilia Oddo’s research of Bronze Age Minoan pottery at the site of Knossos.  

The Knossos Legacy Archaeological Sustainability Project aims to reconstruct the activities that took place in the ancient palace of Knossos to assess the function of different buildings on site. Assisting Professor Oddo, I served a crucial role on the team. My main job was to develop a database system of cataloguing information about the pottery we found. Using spreadsheets, I developed a color-coded catalog of the information categorized by year, function of object, and totals of each type of object. Next, I created column graphs of each type of object to visually analyze the information and determine how much of each category of pottery we found. This allowed the team to determine what type of pottery dominated each area of Knossos, thus providing analysis as to what the site was used for during different historical periods.  

This opportunity was especially interesting because it allowed me to connect my knowledge from Professor Oddo’s class in Greek Art and Archaeology, to the work I was participating in at Knossos. Another aspect that I worked on at Knossos was transcribing the journal of Mackenzie, an archaeologist that excavated Knossos in the early 1900’s. It was an amazing experience to work on transcribing the actual fieldwork journal of an archaeologist I remember reading about in my textbook and have a hands-on opportunity to continue his work. As part of this assignment, I created a google drive database of all of the transcribed journal entries and organized them by year and which area of Knossos was mentioned. This will enable Professor Oddo and other researchers to be able to quickly access information pertaining to areas of the site.  

Lastly, I developed a template for the different database spreadsheets and guide to how they are organized and can be duplicated and added to. This will allow future students and researchers to be able to continue the database quickly and efficiently, without having to convert files or organize information. Overall, this was a surreal experience that I am honored to have participated in. Thank you so much to the Newcomb Grant Committee for granting me this life changing opportunity.