My MANTO experience
Written by Ryan Merlino
Being given the opportunity to partake in the unique project that is MANTO has been an invaluable experience for both myself and my fellow Macquarie University students undertaking our internships. Initially looking to undertake a fieldwork internship, I did not spend a lot of time looking into the projects such as the MANTO project, however a professor I have taken classes with knew that I have an interest in the Minoans and the Mycenaean Greeks, and I was placed into the MANTO project. Despite originally not being overly interested in the project, I was quickly pulled in by the goals of the MANTO project and the chance to expand my knowledge of Greek mythology as well as the chance to further my understanding of how peoples in antiquity viewed and rationalised the world around them.
The first few meetings I attended focused on the introduction of the aims and outcomes of the project, as well as how the collection and input of data into the Nodegoat system worked. We were taught using the Chorographia, a text created by the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela around 43 A.D. Initially I found the system a little bit confusing especially the use of the Nodegoat program in which the information is stored and processed once collected. Having worked through Pomponius Mela’s Chorographia as a group, we moved on to more individually focused work.
We spent the majority of our time working with the writings of the Greek geographer Strabo. Strabo’s books presented us with a multitude of issues in the recording of the mythological content, with the primary issues being Strabo’s tangents and ambiguous language thus the major issue with recording from the works of Strabo is that I inevitably ended up re-reading each paragraph about 3 or 4 times before I was able to start identifying and recording the information. Despite often having some issues in the interpretation of Strabo’s books I found them nonetheless interesting and often entertaining with Strabo’s allocation of mythological and historical events, artefacts and figures. Over the course of the semester, I found a new appreciation for ancient texts, for the information that they can give us and the ways in which they challenge us and our understanding of the world.
Overall the project was a very interesting experience that provided me with an amazing insight into the nature of working within an academic group project as well as the development of my digital skills, and my confidence in relation to reading ancient texts. I really enjoyed getting to know the other PACE students I was working with over the course of the semester, learning new things and gaining new perspectives on the texts and their content.
This is the fifth in a series of blog posts from students at Macquarie University who answered the call for PACE interns this semester