Materiality: clay, stone and deep time in the potters' village of Margarites

A week after the first lab closes, a new group of artists and researchers arrives in Crete for the second EASE Artist Venturing Lab. Its theme is Materiality: clay, stone, sediment and thread, and the knowledge held in things made and found across thousands of years. 

Like the first lab, this one begins within a monitored cave, with a different focus. The science team returns to take samples, scan the cave with lidar and update its 3D model, so the group sees first hand how rock, dripping water and laser light are turned into measurements and digital forms. Outside the cave, the first assemblage mapping session asks what material evidence can tell us, and how.

Margarites has been a pottery village for generations. Here the lab spends the day in a working studio with a potter who fires wood kilns using methods traceable to the Bronze Age, and who works with archaeologists on reconstructing Minoan pottery, from honey-storage jars to playful trick vessels. With their hands in clay, the group compares making with finding: what it means to bring an ancient technique back to life, and what clay holds. The evening continues the conversation about Minoan pottery science and working alongside archaeologists.

The lab travels south to Phaistos and Gortyn, the sites the first lab visited for their water history, now seen through a different lens. The focus here is on objects: what Minoan material culture reveals about trade across the Mediterranean, and how ruins themselves become material evidence.

Ancient Eleftherna and its museum hold finds spanning some 2,700 years, many of them carried along Mediterranean trade routes. A few kilometres away, the Margarites domed tomb, built around 1350 BC, shows Minoan stone burial architecture up close. A sprint workshop then connects objects, trade and burial across deep time.

The final assemblage mapping draws the week's materials into one picture, followed by time for individual creative responses before the lab closes.

Follow the lab here and on Instagram as it unfolds.