Dust, Layers, and Divine Timing
This week, I began working with the Akrotiri Aetokremnos assemblage, a legacy collection that’s been housed at the Episkopi Museum for decades. A ‘legacy collection’ refers to archaeological material that was excavated in the past, and has been stored in museums or store rooms ever since. These collections were usually processed under older recording standards, and sometimes include limited documentation due to the difference (or lack of) technology at the time.
The Akrotiri assemblage was excavated by Dr. Alan Simmons from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. I’ll do a more in-depth post soon on the site’s story. The artifacts though are now old, coated in a layer of dust, and stored in wooden drawers like a library of stone. It’s quiet work- unglamourous, repetitive, delicate… But there is something sacred about it. Legacy collections are often overlooked in the rush towards new excavations and fresh discoveries. But these pieces long cataloged and boxed still hold stories. Sometimes, they just need the right moment. New questions. New hands.
And sometimes, I think they need divine timing.
Most mornings began the same way: I wake up and make coffee in my Stanley french press (a comforting little ritual that my friend Kristen and I started last summer), scroll through the news because the world on this side of the map is feeling especially heavy right now, and then get ready for the day.
On Monday, I had the opportunity to go through the assemblage with Dr. Alan Simmons, who just happened to be visiting the museum for a day while I was there. We stood together looking over his ‘hippo friends,’ as he calls them, lifting the trays and reviewing the tools and bone fragments. Getting to examine the materials alongside the person who brought them into the light in the first place felt more than coincidence. It felt orchestrated.
My work didn’t begin until Wednesday. That morning, I said hello to the amazing people who work at the museum- we have been able to get to know each other a bit, and they are always buzzing with energy and laughter. They scrambled to find me a spot to sit and landed me at an old table tucked right into the middle of the museum’s daily hustle and bustle. The entire place is in a state of transformation as they’ve been prepping artifacts for the new archaeological museum in Nicosia, which means the store rooms are full of motion, sorting, packing, rushing, and beautiful artifacts roaming around.
By 8am, I’m usually in the store room, carefully pulling out boxes and trays, lifting materials that haven’t been touched in a while. On Wednesday and Thursday, I spent most of my time just cataloging what is there, cross-referencing with original records and flagging artifacts that have been pulled for display elsewhere.
There is a kind of rhythm to it: open, assess, record, move on. But also: pause, wonder, scribble a note. Every tray feels like a chapter with missing pages, but it’s patient work.
I usually wrap up by 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and most days I head down to the beach afterward, letting the sun and salt water soften the mental dust. I read, take more notes, review what I saw, and prep for the next day. It’s a slow cycle, but I’m learning that this kind of pace holds wisdom. The quiet hours after the work are when I notice connections really form.
I’m only a few days into this work, and it is already reshaping me in pace and patience. I came here expecting to study one things and now I am following a thread that may lead somewhere completely different. But maybe that is the beauty of both archaeology and faith: we don’t always know what we’re looking for until we find it.
These quiet hours at the museum, the cataloging, the dust, the half-missing labels, the borrowed table, are teaching me to pay attention. Not just to what’s in the trays, but to the timing of things. To the way stories surface when they’re ready. To the way even a delayed flight or a dusty drawer can become holy ground.
So here’s to the layers we dig through- in research, in life, in ourselves.
To the dust we brush away.
And to the wonder that sometimes waits underneath.
Thank you for being here and walking through the layers with me. More field notes soon.
With wonder,
Savanna
I leave you with this Field Note Prompt:
Think about a moment in your week that didn’t go to plan… What might it be revealing beneath the surface?
Seeing the same person 3 days in a row at 3 different events. Made a new friend. Divine timing.