As a Peer Educator, this week marks the beginning of my second “tour” at Antioch, and I was thrilled to find that is everything exactly as I remember it, and yet I have the chance to look at it with a new set of eyes.
The first week of excavation on any site (that I have ever worked on) is not what one might call a “party.” In addition to the awkward nuances that come with navigating your way through the group with whom you will be trapped for the next month, we must survive the Turkish sun, a new city, and a strange culture. And that goes without mentioning archaeology.
My trench and I are located atop the acropolis, where there is the highest concentration of Oles. Every day our army of sore-muscled students march up to the edge of a cliff so that we might fling 150 pound boulders, haul tons of SOIL (not dirt.), and whack our way though countless root systems. This is not easy work. And every day, we crawl back down from the acropolis to the lower area of the site so that we can continue our egregious march up to the depot where Aisha has somehow managed to prepare some of the most amazing food I have ever had in an old school house on a hot plate.
Week one is the hardship you have to endure in order to reach the mysteries that are always just one swing of the pick axe or scrape of the trowel away. You check every rock before it goes over the edge because you never know what is on the other side. You then throw them farther than the brush only off the south east edge so that you don’t make life harder for the later archaeologists who may want to excavate there.
The first week is not always fun. There is blood and more than a little sweat. You leave not knowing what part of you is tan, or sunburnt, or if you’re just covered in dirt (I’m always the latter…). But I have never been more proud to be a part of a group than I have been of this one. Together, we have begun to move a mountain and It will be so wonderful to see what we can find.
Don’t worry team, this is the end of clearing!
A TEAM OUT!