I have learned a great deal about myself in these past 8 days both on a physical and intellectual level. Physically I think that this past week of excavation has given me a great deal of confidence in my physical ability. As someone who does not do a lot of sports, and has mostly indoor, leisurely interests, working in the field has increased my ability to feel capable doing physical work and to adapt to physical challenges. However, I will admit to finding limits upon my ability to adapt across the board. For example, I have found the new normal of cleanliness far lower than what I am comfortable with. I had thought that my experience working for a summer camp would help, and while it did, being able to go home and take a real shower and clean up properly made far more of a difference than what I would have initially believed. Intellectually, I feel that I have readily adapted to the challenges offered by the site regarding constructing a narrative. What is interesting is how different the knowledge production working on a site is from writing a paper or producing knowledge in an academic context. To elaborate, one of the requirements involved in writing a halfway decent paper is sifting through the huge amounts of information available in order to express a coherent narrative. In a archaeological site, while there is technically a large amount of information, so much of it, such as soil chemicals or dating the rocks aren’t applicable to the area of study that the opposite process takes place. You spend most of your time looking for facts in order to build up a theory. This process has given me a lot of practice in utilizing inductive reasoning to understand our site.
In an almost parallel movement, I believe that I have been able to work deductively from the historical, cultural and geographic information that we have been learning about Antiochia. While the fusion of deduction and induction characterize the construction of knowledge in all fields, in actively working to produce this knowledge I have gained a far more firsthand appreciation for the parallel processes and the demarcation between them. I am not as used to working inductively so this experience has allowed me to greatly improve these skills. Through this I believe that I can appreciate the city of Antiochia from both the generalized aspects, as well as from the specific articulations of humanity that these ancient people represent. Finally, I have gained a great deal of self knowledge in regards to understanding my own hierarchy of needs. There is nothing like tight schedules, international travel and daily physical labor to reduce your own life to the bare psychological essentials. Figuring out the importance of the parallel values of sleep as well as needing to keep busy laid bare a balancing act that I did not know that I was participating in.