Summer in the Balkans?

Weeell, yesterday I received an email from the anthro student society about some summer opportunities in archaeology that looked so cool, I thought I'd share them. Not entirely sure if I'll be able to do this in my undergrad (but rest assured, I will be doing it at some point). The archaeological projects that are open to student participation are in Bulgaria and Macedonia and there's a few really neat ones. There's 12, but here's the one's I think are most interesting:

Fresco Hunting

Searching in abandoned chapels in Western Bulgaria to document medieval frescoes.

Excavating early Neolithic settlements: remains of dwellings with under-floor drainage systems, kitchen spaces with ovens and grain storage, and artifacts such as pottery sherds, clay figurines and jewels, all from the first half of the 6th millenium BC.

Excavation of Heraclea, an ancient city in North-Western Macedonia, named after Hercules. This excavation focuses on the residential area in front of the already uncovered theatre. Basically a lot of pretty cool Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Antique stuff, as well as some real lab and archaeological processual training.

Apollonia Pontica Excavation: Ancient Greek colony in Bulgaria. Many of the artifacts originally found at this site are now in the Louvre. Since the first excavation, a pre-Christian temple has been unearthed, presumably dedicated to Apollo as well as a later Byzantine basilica.

*All pictures are from the website of the Balkan Heritage Field School: http://www.bhfieldschool.org/bh2007.html
So anyway, those are my favourites, the last town looks especially beautiful. These are also awesome opportunities for training in dealing with artifacts as well as creating all the documentation and mapping that goes along with an archaeological excavation. Needless to say I would looove to do something like this. Being a student there are so many opportunities to get involved in excavations, and the experience, I think, is a huge asset. That's why I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that I might be able to go in the summer. :)

Amazing Art by Olga and Andrej Dugin

So, when I was younger I was given a storybook full of children's stories by my aunt, and there was one tale in particular that stuck in my mind. I found it somewhat captivating because of its incredible illustration. The story, called "Dragon Feathers", follows the quest of a carpenter's son who is out to win the hand of a rich innkeeper's daughter. Her father says he will not agree to their marriage unless the boy manages to bring him three golden feathers from the tail of a dragon who rules over their land, and who has a reputation for being cruel--aka he eats people. Nice future in-law.

Anyway, the illustrations really are something special. They're the kind of pictures you can look at for hours, because they are full of symbolism and strange and unexplained details. There are a number of truly odd creatures that I  found so intriguing--were they dangerous? What the heck was that thing doing there? What does it have to do with the story? In a way, the illustrations are more of a story than the text.

Some of the things to look for in the pictures below: The Dragon's Wife (how does that relationship work? Is she human?), the odd architecture, (in the tree scene) the strange hooded figure sitting off to the side and the random letters in the tree, the ground and carved into the wooden gate in the house scene, the super-weird flying knight thing in the pink robe, and the walking bagpipe in the other house scene. These are only a few of the incredibly interesting details that can be found if you take a good look at the pictures.