Topos/Chora Revisited III

One of the most striking things to me about this space was the ancient debris littering the surface.  It would likely be surprising for North Americans, let alone Iowan's like myself, to find a single piece of an ancient amphora handle in their field. So the sheer volume of pottery shards scattered over the surface was astounding to me.  On one of my first trips out to site, my head still floating somewhere over the Atlantic, I sat down in the heat of the afternoon and just began to collect the pieces within an arms reach of where I sat and photographed them.  I did this several times finding both fine and coarse ware that had worked itself up to the surface from time, erosion and with the farmers help.  I surprised by the density objects on the surface, their diversity, and the very fact that I could pick up these ancient pieces of pottery.  

The image above is one of two composites like this that were a part of the show. My hope with these images was to record my first engagements with the ubiquitous debris at this site in a non-scientific or archaeological sense. Instead to suggest the wonder in a Iowa farmers son at the geographic and temporal distance between the hands that made these objects and my own now holding them.