Friday, May 23, 2014
Some Evening Fun
Another short post. There is supposed to be a meteor shower here at 12, so we're all going to go up on the roof and watch the night sky. The rest of the team is arriving tomorrow, as well as a group from Utica University. We've been here for a week, and this feels like our home turf, so we'll see what happens. We saw the new American kids and they look more like students headed for spring break instead of the rat poop cleaning, crate lifting lifestyle that Butrint demands. I'll try to go in with an open mind and hope for the best. It'll be good to be with some other English speakers and see more students my age. It's also going to be weird seeing girls, as the girls in Albania are kept inside away from men. They go to school till 14-16, and then are kept inside until they're old women, so we've seen very few girls our age, and we work during the day with all men. It will definitely brings a different dynamic to the site. Here's hoping I can make friends with the new group...
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The site has quite an extensive history, but has only recently come to the attention of the modern world.
ReplyDeleteIt was originally a colony for the Greeks in the 4th century BCE, but was then conquered and rebuilt by the Romans under the orders of Julius Caesar. It held it's position as a colony in the Roman empire until the Romans fell, and then ownership changed hands until around 1700, when the site was abandoned.
The site was forgotten about until 1928, when Luigi Ugolini was sent to explore the region by Mussolini. Excavations were paused during the 2nd world war and weren't restarted until the 1970s. For the past 40 years excavations have continued and fantastic discoveries are made daily, leading us to believe we've only just begun figuring out the significance of Butrint.