Boxes, boxes, boxes.....

Boxes.  Boxes. Boxes. Boxes. Boxes. Boxes.   Big boxes, small boxes, middle sized boxes- cardboard boxes everywhere.  Stacked in tidy piles or leaning precariously against the Apollo hallway walls.  The hard evidence of wholesale commerce.   “7 Days Croissant”;”  “Supra Hairspray”;  “Benson and Hedges Gold”; ” Golden Virginia Handrolling Tobacco”;  “Ambrosia Olive Oil fully refined and deodorised”,  and scores of boxes reflecting perhaps, the copious quantities of alcohol consumed by visitors to the island –“ Larios Dry Gin” ; “ Three Barrels Rum”; “ Antica Sambuca”; “ Teachers Highland Cream”; Saint Panteleimon, Medium Sweet Table Wine”; Keo Wines and Spirits from the Island of Cyprus” .   And of course little delicate boxes from Zorbas.*

Boxes filled with evidence of years of excavation toil, carefully identified, sorted, categorised and inventoried and marked accordingly. Paphos Theatre 1999 Trench 1BB 465 471.  Paphos Theatre 1999  Trench 1X Surface clearance. Paphos Theatre 2002 Slag (the non-diagnostic variety).

Little would anyone know that archaeology as it is practiced could be so inextricably and intimately involved with the scrounging, collecting, opening, closing, taping and repetitive re- opening, re- closing and re-taping  of cardboard boxes.

- Geoff

*For the reader who may be unaware, Zorbas is a purveyor of comestibles, ranging from the everyday stomach liner to the downright frivolous, the latter to be consumed, as any refined person would know, behind closely shuttered windows or in the company of intimate friends.  

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