Experts dig up Athens history in preparation for ‘04 Games

ATHENS, Greece — A cloud of white dust drifts over Athens’ former international airport as a crew using heavy equipment builds facilities for this summer’s Olympic Games.

A few paces away, another team — with only brushes and garden tools — carefully digs into the past.

The 2004 Games have been a boon for archaeologists, bringing the biggest single antiquities treasure hunt in Athens and surrounding areas. Experts rushed in trying to beat the bulldozers at dozens of Olympic-related sites, from sports venues to highways.

The finds so far range from prehistoric settlements to 2,500-year-old cemeteries to ruins from the Roman period, when Emperor Theodosius abolished the Olympics in A.D. 394. Christianity had taken root, and he deemed the Games to be pagan.

“I don’t believe there was ever such a large-scale archaeological excavation in Athens,” said Dina Kaza, who heads the dig at the old seaside airport.

Extra archaeologists and specialized researchers have been hired so crews can work around the clock to keep pace with Olympic construction, which is now moving at a breakneck pace to compensate for years of delays. The Olympics begin Aug. 13.

Miss Kaza, who oversees excavations at five Olympic-related sites, says the finds so far have not been headline-making — like the back-to-back discoveries in 1997 of sites believed to be the school of Aristotle and an ancient cemetery mentioned as the burial place of the statesman Pericles.

But the quantity of finds adds important details and richness to the understanding of how Athens developed over the centuries.

“We never know what the ground is hiding from us,” Miss Kaza said.

One excavation — at the site of a new streetcar line storage shed — found 150 graves as old as the seventh century B.C.

Another archaeologist, Maria Platonos, uncovered a ceramic vessel depicting a victorious javelin thrower at a cemetery from the Classical period, 500-323 B.C., on a road to the Olympic Village north of central Athens. The athlete is being crowned with ribbons by two messengers from Nike, the goddess of victory in Greek mythology, said Miss Platonos, who heads excavations at the Olympic Village and two other Olympic sites.

She said the artifact, which has been dated to 470 B.C., was used at a victory ceremony and later was placed on the grave of the young man awarded the prize.

“Finding this in the area of the Olympic Village was truly something unexpected and very fortunate,” she said.

Some antiquities are too big to be moved.

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