Digging for the past in a Greek time capsule

Letter from Cyprus: We wake before the birds, snatch breakfast, and scramble into jeeps for the short ride to the port. Stationed at the bow of the fishing boat, Yiannis reaches out and pulls each of us on to the deck, where we deploy on canvas baskets filled with nets. Captain Andreas steers the boat into the open sea towards the sacred island, a great stone loaf lying off the Cypriot hamlet of Ayios Georgios.

We ride the swells to an anchored rowboat. Yiannis and Andreas help the first group board and, hauling on ropes fore and aft, begin the short journey to the shore as waves crash into the rocks at the island's base. Every landing and departure is perilous. Often too risky to attempt. We get ashore safely and scramble up the steep path to the summit, a platform covered in scrub and rubble, white gulls wheeling and keening overhead.

Joan Connelly, prime mover of New York University's Yeronisos excavation and team head, observes, "Yeronisos is a time capsule." Settled in the Chalcolithic, Hellenistic, and Byzantine periods, roughly 3800-3500 BC, 80-30 BC, and AD 500, it lay largely undisturbed for 2,000 years. Hellenistic artefacts found here date from the time when Rome's Julius Caesar romanced Egypt's Queen Cleopatra.

"Every discovery adds new information to the history of Cyprus because archaeology can fill in gaps where ancient written sources are silent," Joan adds.

Battered broad-brimmed hat set firmly on her head with an Indiana Jones tilt, Ohio Connelly points to the low wall along the cliff edge. "We made our own mortar of lime, sand and cement and mud plaster to stabilise the wall." The broken Hellenistic roof tiles lying helter-skelter in the trench on the right may have been stacked in a store room in 17 BC when an earthquake struck, destroying the building probably used as living quarters for youths visiting the shrine of Apollo located nearby.

Joan suggests I dig in the shallow left-hand trench and demonstrates how to use a pick and trowel, sweep earth into a pan with a small broom and dump it into a green plastic bucket. She plucks a tiny shell from the dust and puts it into a small plastic envelope for an EU study of snails. I turn to Sophie and Angel for advice on whether a find is a stone "masquerading as pottery" or genuine pottery. His bare torso burnt chocolate by the sun, Yiannis takes away our filled buckets and dumps their contents on his perfect pyramid of earth.

When digging ends, the trenches will be covered with protective material and a layer of earth.

I hand Joan's deputy, Jason, a chunk of pink pottery. "Chalcolithic, you're holding something 5,000 years old. Do you see how thick it is? Hellenistic pottery is thin." He pops it into the pottery bag. Every find is stored in bags with labels identifying where items appear. At a frisson of excitement in the other trench, we drop tools and rush to inspect a lump of lead encrusted with minerals. Archaeology is the science of extracting history from even the tiniest bits of the past.

Whenever sharp fragments of flint foreign to the island are found, we mark the spot with a trowel, measure the distance from the edges of the trench, and gauge the site with a tall three-legged instrument perched near the apothikis, two small wooden structures roofed with branches. At eleven we troop to the larger apothiki for a second breakfast of olive bread, cheese, eggs and watermelon. It is grand to stand, stretch and walk about after crouching in the trench. We smear on a second coat of sun block, fill our water bottles, and return to digging and scraping. We are trying to uncover the top of the wall that runs from one trench through the other and clear a slab of bedrock, called "Bob". Since materials were scarce on the island, builders saved time and labour by incorporating bedrock into walls.

Joan and Nancy set up a frame holding mesh at the foot of Yiannis's pyramid and sieve earth and debris that might yield finds. As two o'clock nears, Joan climbs a long ladder and photographs the tile trench. The team keeps a meticulous dig book, describing and plotting finds. We gather gear, store it in the smaller apothiki and descend to the shore where Andreas and Yiannis ferry us to the fishing boat for the journey to the shore.

After lunch at the hotel and a short rest, the team troops to the pink stone dig house beside the port to clean and sort finds. Once the sun sets perhaps someone will have the energy to play the silent piano standing with its back to the murmuring sea.