This month in Turkey has ended too soon. So many questions still need contemplation and so many areas need excavation, but I’m hopeful that, in due time, the full extent of this excavation and its web of historical complexities will be fully understood by all who are here. For me, my time in Turkey has been, shall I say, the coolest thing I have ever done in my entire life. I find it hard to fully describe my feelings towards not only living in such a beautiful (and welcoming) country for a month, but also the work I have done in the past 19 work days. I am proud of what I have accomplished. And what I have accomplished is not at all what I thought I could accomplish. I could write a book about my cultural experiences in Turkey as a humble Missourian, but that would fit in among a slue of other books that I, personally, would never read, for this experience has grown, I feel, far beyond what the written word can describe in a blog post. However, I hope to come back to St Olaf and Fayette with not only a story, but also an understanding of what it means to be an archaeologist, and will hopefully inspire others to at least consider doing what I did; a job that, despite common perception, reaches far beyond the closest golden idol.
This little blog post should be entitled Finds, Faults, and Company, but I’ve already done a clever three-word title for a blog post, yet this title, I feel, pinpoints three major aspects of a typical college student’s experience (my experience) with true and pure archeological field work; work that has no room for slackers.
I like to think that hard work yields results, and when a beautiful (and datable) amphora handle emerges from the dusty ground, it really feels like the hard work was worth it. However, anybody can find pottery in a trench, all you have to do is go down, right? The skill comes in when one ‘goes down’ in a way that is neither destructive to the soil nor visually unappealing (level soil equals easy reference for the next 3 centimeter sweep). I would love to be able to say that all students here, who worked very hard all month, have uncovered a satisfactory amount of artifacts, but that is far from true. The state of the trenches before we entered were as diverse as our tastes in music, for each room had undergone various environmental and human related events that have changed the physical state of each room. Each room also served its own purpose in antiquity, thus the artifacts that were found, and are still being found, reflect the purpose of the room. The bountiful amounts of pottery in my trench help pinpoint the purpose of my room as a storage facility for religious amphorae where others have uncovered loom weights and glass which point towards industrial purposes for their rooms. Most rooms have, unfortunately, experienced massive wall fall and rubble deposits, so the workers’ ability to carefully excavate artifacts has been postponed by the need to shovel lots of contaminated topsoil. It’s not difficult to tell when someone is disheartened by the fact that someone else pulled up a beautiful inscription while they are still shoveling, but people shouldn’t be disheartened. For an archaeologist, it’s difficult to overlook the fact that hunting artifacts isn’t archaeology; the complex truths and the answers that lie before us can only be found through context; a context that takes form when artifacts from all corners of our site (and the ones beyond ours) are studied holistically in relation to the environment and local people. What does the glass found in Acropolis 2B have to do with the possible presence of a loom weight in Acropolis 5? What does the presence of an infant’s grave in trench 2A have to do with our current understanding that that room was once an early Christian church? What does it mean when two walls of differing composition come in contact at the bathhouse? What can that tell us about the dating and construction of the bathhouse, and how do the coins found in the bathhouse relate to the coins found at the temple? What can that tell us about the inhabitants’ public and private identity? These are questions (spurred by the number of nighttime group discussions) that we have continuously faced and will continue to face on our return trip to St Olaf. This is archaeology. The cool-looking coin or the cool-looking sculpture only answers part of the intriguing mystery. What about the coin holder or the sculptor? They were people too, so what did they think of that pretty coin or their sculpture? Why did they possess such a coin and create such a work of art? The experience of uncovering a glass handle has, for me, evolved from ‘oh sweet a handle!’ to ‘what the heck is this doing 25 centimeters under rock fall next to a creepy bird bone!’ Every time a question like this comes to mind, I feel that much prouder in my capability of looking past the shiny thing alone and seeing an array of theories and questions that correspond to the item’s placement in situ. My thirst for exploration is quenched by the fact that I could uncover, for the first time in 2000 years, fragments of a noteworthy past. I do admit that I prefer being on the inside of the display case at a museum rather than on the outside looking in.
Mistakes are commonplace when (surrounded by college students) you are in the field working with probably the most delicate and culturally respectable things one can touch, but as the common saying goes: ‘mistakes are learning experiences.’ Whether it is the accidental breaking of a worked piece of marble or, in my case, the throwing of a bag of pottery off the side of the cliff because I didn’t think we ‘kept’ pottery (because there is so fricken much in the dighouse), things can be learned. I am proud to say that that experience hasn’t happened since. What I have learned is that dainty and delicate work isn’t always the way to go when clearing a trench of packed soil. You need to be willing to be aggressive yet careful; a combination that, luckily, I have been able to master early in the season. One simply cannot clear a meter-deep trench in a month if you use a trowel like a kindergartener uses crayons. Most ‘mistakes’ (more like inefficient methods of excavating) happen when people are either oblivious to their surroundings or focus on speed rather than precision. These mistakes are brought to light by the TA’s (teaching assistants) who are in charge of each trench. These habits generally stop after a few shouts, but some people take longer than others to get the picture. College amiright? Nonetheless, we have all experienced faults ranging from destruction to injury, but that hasn’t stopped us from doing our jobs like professionals. As an archaeologist you have to look past the fear of screwing something up and focus on learning the technique (trowel rather than pick in soil that is rich in artifacts) and finding stuff in a confident, formulaic (non-destructive) way.
Archaeology is not a lone-wolf profession. Teamwork is crucial for not only completing physical tasks (like moving a massive lintel stone) but also mental tasks (such as finding the answer to the purpose of an objects placement in a trench). There is no ‘right’ answer in the field, only theory. For theory to become as close to truth as possible, all other theories and observations must be contemplated from different perspectives. Community isn’t only present within the trench, though. We have been entrusted to help uncover the story of the local Turks’ ancestors. Understanding Turkish culture involves looking to history; present public (and private) identity is greatly impacted by the identities of old; identities that we in Antiochia have been working to better understand this past month. Our relationship with the Turks have been everything but distant. I have had the opportunity to converse with extremely intelligent and bright students my age and older halfway across the world! We have played soccer, shared meals, taught each other’s language, cracked jokes, and bonded at community events. The circumcision festival in Guney was one of the major highlights of my cultural experience here in Turkey. We were invited as guests to attend this coming of age ceremony for one of the boys of the village of Guney (located just below our site of Antiochia). The boy, who just turned 8 years old, was clothed in a fancy white coat and held a shiny scepter the entire night. The festival consisted of a quick meal of delicious soup, bread, beans, and a crumbly dessert, and hours of Turkish style dancing. There were also individual donations to the boy (what seemed to be only monetary donations). I will gladly go into depth about this festival when I return home, but the significance of what I experienced came to me when we returned to the dighouse that night after I had time to reflect. History and tradition is not to be taken lightly despite its malleability with progressing society. Just because people are becoming ‘modernized’ (whatever that means) doesn’t necessarily mean that they will inevitably lose touch with tradition and respect for the past. History can be found anywhere in Turkey, you just have to look to the people and their homes rather than just in a museum. That’s what makes archaeology spectacular; you don’t just uncover cool things, you help a community of people better understand themselves and the people around them through hardwork and simple conversation. That’s why I want to come back; if the people here are willing to let me tell their story, I would love to return and help them accomplish this task. It has been a month of sweat, dust, heat, blood, scratches, and confusion, but there is no other way I would spend a summer. I knew a story needed to be told, and I wanted to be there when it was presented to the people who needed it most. As expected, it has yet to be fully told, so I guess I have to come back next season. Sorry Mom.