Writing this final blog post feels surreal, as if I was just writing my first one yesterday. I have so much advice that I would give to people coming on this trip in the future, but here are the biggest things. First, I would advise them to take breaks and take care of their bodies–we only got a month here, and burning out your body too quickly could lose you one or two of the 20 days we had on site and that’s already 10% of the trip gone because of your pride. If you wake up one morning and you just know that you’re gonna feel terrible all day and might even need to be driven home at some point, JUST STAY HOME! Take the day to rest, there is no shame in caring for your body (and Tim will thank you for not making him drive 40 minutes there and back). Second, I would tell them to try and strike a healthy balance between rest and enjoying the incredible things Gazipasa has to offer. It can be very tempting to come back from a day of work and just sit in your room all day, or to come back and try to go to the beach and go shopping, but you need to really assess which choice will be best for you in the moment. In terms of recommending where to go I really really enjoyed the atmosphere of the restaurant near Gazipasa beach called Karacaagaclik Restaurant–and for vegetarians it has some good options. Make sure to know the VERY basics of Turkish (hello, thank you, and water have been the most helpful vocab for me to know). The excursions are 100% worth it, so make sure to go–also make sure to stop by Konrad’s at least once even if you don’t drink, he’s such a fantastic character to meet and he’ll get you non-alcoholic options. Follow the packing list, but bring more shorts than pants–you’ll only really wear pants the first 2 or 3 days, and the rest of the time you’ll be very thankful the less clothing you’re wearing cause it gets HOT.
I don’t think I would do another archaeological dig, but this was not really surprising. Coming on this trip was never about figuring out whether archaeology is my next step in life–in fact, it was before my already planned next steps of employment and graduate school. If I was handed another opportunity to do this on a silver platter and it would fit in easily with my career at the time, I would definitely go and do archaeology again–but it’s unlikely that an opportunity like this will land in my lap again in my life, and I don’t love it enough to alter my current five-year plan.
I have learned so so much that it is difficult for me to decide just one thing as “what I learned”. Besides the obvious archaeological skills I learned, I think that I learned a lot about myself and my limitations, both physical and mental. Physically, I grew so much muscle and learned that I am able to withstand a lot more manual labor than I ever expected. Mentally, I learned that I become really protective over people I grow to care about, even in short times. When other members of the trip were being rude and condescending to St. Olaf students, specifically the younger students, it lit a fire inside me and I was absolutely livid at them, ready to fight anyone who confronted one of us again. The responsibility I felt for those who were younger than me was really surprising for me, as I am rarely upset personally by things like that.
I also learned that there is such thing as clean dirt and dirty dirt. Apparently I often had dirty dirt. And had to make it clean and even. Like Tim’s head.
My most memorable experience by far was going for night swims at Gazipasa beach and looking up at the stars, laughing with the new friends I made, and just realizing that I was experiencing life on the other side of the globe. This trip has really shifted my perspective on history and archaeology, and on the ways that we speak about the past. Having looked at artifacts for this past month, it is painfully clear that these were just ordinary objects that were part of everyday life, so common that people didn’t think about losing them (like coins lost in foundation trenches) or breaking them because there was so much to go around. In my interview for this trip, I said that one of the reasons I wanted to come to Turkey was to understand the daily life of the people who lived in this city, and I think that I have really succeeded in that goal. Every piece of pottery I pulled, I thought about how I was the first human to touch this in minimum 500 years, if not a thousand–and yet I could still see the marks of the fingers used to pull the pots and shape the handles. We hear so often about kings and emperors and the people whose names were written down for generations to come, but we never hear the stories of those who have been lost to time, who lived in places like Antiochia ad Cragum. Their stories are the ones I am becoming more and more interested in after this trip, and I feel eternally grateful to Tim for inviting me along on this adventure to learn more about the daily lives of people just like me from a millennium ago.