Working at Antiochia and Cragum has been such a wonderful experience for me. Just being with a group of hard working peers and forming connections with the Turkish students who are just as hard working, interested in learning about the site, and have other outside common interests, including soccer, has made working in Turkey for a whole month a lot more enriching. One of the most memorable incidents at the Acropolis (the highest peak into which we spent our entire month working) was when Rahmi, the cutest old Turkish man who allowed us meddlesome students to dine with him and his wife, also known as Aishya (our wonderful cook), came up one day to my groups trench and just started picking the soil like a machine. My team was so bewildered at his speed that it took us triple the amount of time to clean up his work. What I’ve enjoyed most was how much everyone, especially the Turks, were willing to pitch in and lend a helping hand when you never asked for it. They are very approachable and sincere.
As for the work I’ve engaged myself in this past month, I’ve never worked so hard in my life, and I felt as if I’ve accomplished something while doing this work. As a cross country runner at St. Olaf, I learn how to push myself through all the uncomfortable times of tight and crampy muscles. But in the end- there’s always something that comes out of your hard work. From a cross country standpoint, you achieve by becoming faster and reaching your personal best. At Antiochia, pushing through the miserable humid weather and the pasty feeling on your clothes when the dirt mixes with your sweat, is definitely worth all the cool things we’ve discovered on the Acropolis. It’s also been a real treat to put on an archeologist’s lens, looking at this place in a different perspective and learning proper methods when excavating. It’s a wonderful way to learn about the place in which you are working and the people who once originated there, such as how much they enjoy their baths and their need of recycling their building’s structure. For example, instead of tearing the church down to create more space, they just extended it by adding more to the outside and beyond the old church room. Also, where I was working, there are the bedrock floors in which the last people who originated there decided to bust the floor to make room for a specific reason, perhaps more storage. Even though we are only working on the Acropolis, we get to view all of the other uncovered structures at Antiochia, including the baths (where the Turks work) and the stadium where the whole dig team/ our peers have been working. Not only do us workers connect to one another in some way, but at the same time, these different structures we are all working at tell a story of a community that once lived there a long long time ago. I think this trip has taught me how to be a teammate, about joining in to achieve some sort of goal that’ll affect all of our perceptions of this environment. I can use my artwork to help reach across to people by giving them a visual of where I’m working and allowing them to gather their thoughts or ask questions about the place I drew. I NEED all of my peers to help me better understand what’s been in front of me all this month. I highly recommend this trip to anyone who feels they can bring to light an interesting perception of the mystery awaiting at the top of the hill at the Acropolis.
