Looking out across the Mediterranean Sea from atop the Acropolis at Antioch, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the picturesque scene surrounding me. I’m in no way surprised that the ancient peoples living here chose this as the location for what would become one of the more prominent ancient cities in the region, not only because of its strategic location economically and militarily, but also because of its beauty. Although I had been shown pictures of the site and Gazipasa before coming here, they gave me only a limited impression of what Turkey and this experience would be like. For example, pictures cannot prepare you for the physical aspects of archaeology. Let me put it bluntly; archaeology is hard work. Much of our time is spent with shovels, pick axes, pails of dirt, and heavy stones. We are dirty, we are soaked with sweat, and we are sore. Archaeology is not for the lazy or the faint of heart. All of that being said, this has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, even in just the first few days. The physical labor is not only hard, it’s satisfying. We can look at what we’ve done at the end of the day and see how far we’ve come since that morning. I’m always excited when I’m on site, because we never know what we’re going to find, and every time I look up from what I’m doing and glance around me, I’m hit with the realization that I’m standing in and rediscovering a ruin that is over a thousand years old. It is one thing to go see an ancient ruin, but it is another to be among those who brought it back to life.

So how have we been bringing the Acropolis back to life? Slowly and steadily. We have the area divided into trenches, with a few students working in each trench. Gradually we dig each trench deeper, trying to keep the area we are working in level so that we can spot any interesting patterns in the trench as a whole. We also try to keep our eyes open for any bits of pottery or other ancient artifacts so that we can sort them, catalog them, and then analyze them to better understand how the space we are working in was used by the people who inhabited it. We also want to preserve as much of the site intact as possible. Next week we will be having one of the Turkish students, Müge, come up to do some preservation work on a wall that is in danger of collapsing. As far as things we have found thus far, they have mostly consisted of pottery, loom weights, and one Stele, but who knows what we’ll find in the coming weeks.