Digs 2004

As the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens approach, people from Kalamazoo to Katmandu are refocusing on the ancient world as never before. Images of the Parthenon and Mycenaean masks appear in print ads, movies are set in ancient Rome and Jerusalem, and documentaries are full of aqueducts, pyramids and Persians. Antiquity is “in.” Our expanded Digs 2004 list offers you a first-hand view.

If your interest is the ancient Greek world, you might excavate the ruins of Athens’s fifth-century B.C. agora (central marketplace), survey a Mycenaean palace in Pylos on the Greek Peloponnesus, or uncover the ruins of a Hellenistic city in Italy. Or, if you prefer late antiquity, you might travel to the distant outposts of the Roman empire, excavating early Christian graves in Portugal, a sanctuary in France, an Iberian Roman forum, houses in Austria, or a Roman fort on the banks of the Danube.