Although the excavation works at Olbia are done for the year, this is not the end of our activity at the site. As part of the project, Dr. Szymon Lenarczyk went to Olbia on a two-week surveying mission. The team headed by him is to prepare orthophotographic documentation, first of all of the immediate surroundings of the ‘Polish’ trench at Olbia (the so-called Roman citadel), and later on the rest of the polis.
The documentation made with the help of a drone and an electronic total station will then be developed in Warsaw during the second phase of the endeavour. The final result should be a detailed map of Olbia (together with a 3D model). Consequently, it will be possible to implement the task planned for subsequent years: integrating on said map the results of all prior excavation works conducted in the polis. To this end, we are also going to visit the archives of institutions that conducted excavations at Olbia in the course of over 100 years. Thanks to the often unpublished materials obtained there, the authors of the project hope to develop a compendium of information on the results of previous excavation works. By marking all of them on the map, owing to the synergy effect, we may arrive at a more thorough interpretation of research conducted in the ‘Polish’ trench, but also at a reinterpretation of earlier research. This could eventually lead to creating a precise plan that would encompass the entire polis and take into account the dynamics of its changing borders over time.
The participants of this part of the project are Dr. Alfred Twardecki (NMW, Poland), Prof. Alla Buyskikh (IA NASU, Ukraine) and Dr. Szymon Lenarczyk (Poland).
Alfred Twardecki