If I were asked about my time in Turkey during a job interview, I think that there are a few main points that I would try to get across about my time here. I would respond with excitement about the opportunity to expand upon the bullet points on paper, but I don’t think I would talk about the archeology aspect of this trip at all. For my aspirational career in international politics, I would want to emphasize the international enrichment and education that I received from getting to live in another country and study their culture alongside actual citizens of the country. I would also want to emphasize that I learned how to be an archaeologist within the span of 4 weeks, which really plays into the highly desired skill of quickly picking up new skills & information. I would say something similar to the following:
“It was sort of a bucket list trip that actually gave me a lot of skills that I wasn’t anticipating. Invited by my professor to join his research team, I spent a month excavating in an ancient city that sort of fell under the influence of both Roman and Greek empires, working with a small unit of fellow students from St. Olaf specifically to uncover a large house that overlooked the rest of the city. Within the one month, I quickly picked up almost all of the basic skills required to do archaeology, which I had absolutely zero experience with beforehand–I attribute that to both my amazing supervisors and my ability to learn new skills with ease. Our dig team overall was comprised of mainly Turkish students and St. Olaf Students, although there were also volunteers who studied at a bunch of universities around the world that joined us (like from oxford, drexel, montreal, and a few others). We ate all our meals together and I got to know a lot of the Turkish students and their culture in a way that would’ve been impossible if I had just visited as a tourist. As their coworker, I was able to enmesh myself in Turkey in a really unique way–they taught me Turkish, brought me to local markets and interpreted for me, even invited me to a wedding, and I truly became friends with them. It was a trip that really boosted my confidence in my ability not only to survive, but actually thrive working in foreign countries where I don’t know the language or anything about the culture.”
Depending on the job I was interviewing for, I would probably throw a joke or two in there about how if they need elevations taken or pottery analyzed, I can help out–but overall I am going to emphasize the independent and quick learning of new skills, and my ability to operate independently in countries or cultures that I do not have a lot of familiarity with.