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FEATURE ON SITE IN LITHUANIA: Richard Freund (forefront) works with an international team to locate a Holocaust escape tunnel in the Ponar forest. Photo courtesy of Richard Freund. well-known Spanish archaeologists and historians, who worked with a team from North America that included geoscientists, marine archaeologists, a cartographer, and experts from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The crew of a specially designed research ship, operators of a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV), and experts in archaeology and history in Crete, Malta, Sardinia, and the Azores were also critical to the endeavor. Freund’s efforts are based on stories passed down through oral storytelling tradition. Plato’s texts about Atlantis were based on stories from well before his time. The site the team is focused on is located by the Pillars of Hercules, or, in modern parlance, the Strait of Gibraltar’s entry. “This is not just mentioned in one tiny reference but two different dialogues by Plato,” Freund says. “Plato said it was destroyed by subsidence or earthquake and is impassable today,” he explains. Freund’s most recent research seeks to align clues from Greek classical literature—which most people read metaphorically—with real-world evidence. To back up his claims, he relies on modern science including a unique methodology at the University of Hartford. “This is subsurface mapping, using radio waves, which most people think only goes down about 15 feet,” he says. “With electrical resistivity tomography—like MRI for the ground—you can see much more.” It’s very expensive, cutting-edge technology that most universities, including the University of Hartford, could never afford to own. The university’s research program has the equipment on loan thanks to a collaboration with the gas and oil industry and other universities, museums, and independent research facilities. The evidence that supports Freund’s Atlantis theory includes a color-coded readout of what lies beneath the dirt up to 150 feet deep. “We can’t excavate through the mud, but a mixture of materials is down there and goes back 6,000 28 Seasons of West Hartford • SPRING 2017
FEATURE years,” Freund says, adding: “Carbon 14 dating was done on multiple organic samples that showed definitively that the materials were from 6,000 years ago.” What did this ancient city look like? “We’re seeing the unique architecture of Atlantis on a big sand bar,” Freund says. “Subsurface mapping has revealed there are hundreds of columns off the coast of Spain in the middle of the Atlantic. They didn’t get there by accident,” he insists. Vintage Vessels Martha Risser, associate professor at Trinity College, combines her passion for the classical world with new scientific techniques. Since 2010, she and her students have worked on a dig in Israel dubbed the Akko Archaeology, Heritage, and History Project. Caesarea Maritima, a Roman- through Crusader-era city in Israel, is among other sites she’s explored. She’s currently finishing a book that she’s sending to the printers this spring. Modern-day wine drinkers will be interested in the pieces of pottery she studies in Greece. No longer content with merely piecing back together the broken remnants of old vessels, archaeologists can now extract tiny amounts of grape DNA stuck within them. With the help of laboratory tests, they can figure out if an ancient Hellenic culture had a penchant for pinot grigio or a taste for cabernet sauvignon. “You used to need a giant clean lab for work that is now done in the field,” she says. “We’re finding kraters [vessels], which were used for mixing wine and water at dinner parties. [The Greeks] were importing a lot of wine. As it is today, it may have been seen as a status symbol. We see a lot of evidence of alcohol consumption,” Risser adds lightheartedly. Wine vessels are especially important because the pottery was often stamped with the season the grapes were harvested, the year, and the name of the reigning political official at the time. “How was this pottery deposited? How were people living?” asks Risser, who travels to Isthmia, Greece, for answers. She says studying pottery sherds [the more accurate term for what many call “shards”] in ancient cultures is akin to analyzing garbage to assess modern culture. “We study what’s left behind and learn from people’s refuse,” she says. Whether chasing the legend of the lost city of Atlantis or mapping historic stone walls right here in Connecticut, archeologists have never been more equipped to make discoveries. Her work may at first seem like traditional rooting around in dusty remains, but Risser’s approach is extremely contemporary. “Archaeology has changed as a discipline,” she says. Global Information Systems (GIS) and Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) are her everyday tools of the trade. While digging in an area that was once a blacksmith shop, Risser’s team taps other technologies to determine what kinds of metals were used; this adds to knowledge of ancient trade routes. “We’re finding materials in the soil, collecting slag, sifting the soil, and passing magnets over it so the iron fragments pop up,” she says. Chemical testing allows for detailed data from the iron fragments, which was not possible before. “Now we can get all the different byproducts of metal working, seeing where their ore was coming from. Five years ago, we couldn’t do that,” she explains. Scientific CSI You might call taphonomy a “cousin” of archaeology: It’s the study of how living things decompose after death, becoming part of the fossil record archaeologists might unearth. For forensic taphonomist Christopher O’Brien of the University of New Haven, it’s all about modern, and sometimes urban, applications of new investigative methods. His findings are applicable in a surprising array of court cases. “A forensic archaeologist is a really narrow job description,” O’Brien says of this related field. “If we can’t take somebody to court, we don’t care. If you can’t apply [findings] directly, you’re not doing forensics,” he explains. Just as a forensic archaeologist might study bones to show whether or not indigenous people have ancestral claims to certain lands, a forensic taphonomist is interested in what lies hidden. “We’re using spatial mapping technology, which means you can scan, map, and [digitize]… everything from buried remains to surface scatter,” he says. “Of course, you can still use a string and tape measure if you choose, but total station (a modern surveying instrument) is now your point of reference. Spatial analysis was around 20 years ago, but now it’s highly automated,” he says. Another new advancement is called digital touch DNA. Seasons of West Hartford • SPRING 2017 29
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