Olympics Construction Projects Push Athens Archaeologists to

By Rebecca Ward 1
 
Bringing Athens' transportation up to speed ahead of the summer games proved more difficult than what most modern cities usually endure, as massive construction projects turned into excavation 2 sites. The city's archaeologists came up with a compromise keeping the very, very old along with the new.

For many Olympic visitors in the city of Athens, the metro 3 is not just a way of getting somewhere, it's the destination.

Here in the Syntagma station in downtown Athens, Greek Archaeologist Olga Zachariadou stands amid glass display cases of clay pottery 4, caskets and a two-meter-long segment of an ancient water pipeline 5. She says construction at this metro stop and other recent projects in the city have unearthed 6 a number of significant artifacts that date back to the 4th century B.C. to the 7th Century A.D.

"In this station, we had the largest excavation and we found many things as a riverbed, a very long part of this aqueduct, a very large graveyard 7 of about 300 graves, a very extensive bath complex of the Roman period and some bronze foundries, also," says Ms. Zachariadou.

Pointing to a display of painted clay vessels 8, Ms. Zachariadou says many of the items found during excavation of the site were well preserved because they were offerings placed inside burial graves.

"You see little perfume bottles, small plates," she notes. "In other cases you can see other things also, marble vases, oil lamps, weight [for] looms 9, and some memorials with the names of the dead people. Sometimes we have also children, then the offerings are small."

Ms. Zachariadou says any time construction plans are laid out in specific districts of Athens, an archaeologist must be consulted and special care must be taken to preserve any artifacts found at the site. While this is a normal building procedure in Athens, Ms. Zachariadou says the time constraints 10 of the Olympics made the job a little harder.

Zachariadou: At the same time, we had more means. I mean we had more money, more personnel to do our work and that was good. Of course, the pressure of the time was very laborious 11 for us.

Ward: So, the government gave you more money than they normally do?

Zachariadou: Yes, that is true, but I don't know after the Olympics what they will do.

Just one stop away in either direction are two other metro stations with exhibits of antiquities 12. Nearby, at the Monastiraki stop is a Roman bathhouse, which Ms. Zachariadou says was discovered during construction of a ventilation shaft 13.

"We had there a very well preserved bathhouse complex of the Roman period, the 3rd-4th Century A.D. and because of that we decided 14 to preserve these baths in their position and the ventilation shaft removed," she adds.

Although the excavation work delayed some metro projects by as much as two years, Ms. Zachariadou says Greeks are very proud of their heritage and happy to see such artifacts displayed at the sites where they were found.

Rebecca Ward, VOA News now, in Athens.
注释：
excavation 挖掘
archaeologist 考古学家
metro 地铁
amid 在……中
pottery 陶器
casket 棺材
segment 部分，片段
pipeline 管道
unearth（从地下）掘出
artifacts 史前古器物
excavation 出土文物
riverbed 河床
aqueduct 沟渠, 导水管
graveyard 墓地
clay 粘土
vessel 容器
perfume 香水
marble 大理石
oil lamp 油灯
loom 织布机
offering 祭品
laborious 辛苦的
antiquity 古代的遗物
ventilation shaft 通风塔