The main advice that I would give to future students that will be excavating Antiochia ad Cragum would be to have fun and not stress about the trip. I tend to worry about things that I cannot control or expect to happen, which happened while I was preparing for this trip as well, but I was worried for no reason, as I really enjoyed my time here in Turkey. I was really unsure on what to pack for this trip, but I would recommend bringing more going out/day time clothes than you think you would need. I’m also a big fan of shorts (biker shorts, basketball shorts, athletic shorts, etc.) on the dig site, rather than dig pants. Bandanas are also a necessity that I did not expect to use as much as I did, so I would highly recommend future students to bring many of them.
I did not know what to expect at all when it came to a dig day. Everyone said that the first day (and week) would be absolutely horrible, and honestly they were right. It made me really nervous when everyone was telling me how horrible it was going to be, but you quickly learn what your body needs when it comes to taking breaks, drinking water, and how many snacks to eat at çay time. It was extremely difficult work and I’m glad it wasn’t downplayed regarding how difficult it would be, but it was also very manageable.
I don’t know if I would participate in another archaeological dig. One major reason for that, however, is that I do not want to have to fund myself doing another archaeological dig. If the opportunity was presented to me and fell into place, I probably would do another archaeological dig but I think I would probably take a bit of convincing. I really enjoyed the work here and I think the things that we have found are so interesting, but the physical labor exhausted me in a way I have never been exhausted before.
One thing I’ve learned from being here that I would be interested to explore a little more is the politics behind an archaeological dig. There has been talk this session about who will be allowed to come back next session and who that is up to. This would depend on who is in charge of Antiochia ad Cragum, as some people want to allow only graduate students to do archaeology here while others want to keep it the same was it is now with volunteers, Turkish students and volunteers, undergraduate students, and graduate students. Another really interesting and perhaps controversial topic is why archaeology takes place as all. We have learned that Antiochia ad Cragum is being excavated for the purpose of the site being turned into a tourist attraction. This has already begun, which is evident due to the amount of tourists that would walk by our site and watch us dig nearly every day. The politics behind turning the dig site into a tourist attraction is something we have discussed in our class discussions. Turkey, as a land, using something like an archaeological site to paint their history is them redefining what it means to be Turkish. It goes so much deeper than that, but overall it allows them to tell their own story.
My most memorable experience working on the dig site was Elsie finding a bunch of spiders while she was clearing rocks and dirt from one corner of our unit. Every couple minutes I would hear her yell “tarantula!.” However, she was not pronouncing it the correct way. Rather, she was pronouncing the word exactly how it is spelt. She would yell, “taran-tula!” Declan is the one to blame for her pronouncing it like this, as I found out that he started purposefully mispronouncing the word on a day that I was sick. I was not originally in Olive, Declan, and Elsie’s unit, though I was moved there a few days after we started work. I’m glad I was moved to their unit because we found many walls, a threshold, and benches built into the unit. Excavating together made us all a lot closer. I had no idea that archaeology could facilitate talking so much drama about our lives, but I’m glad it did. Every day was entertaining and we all got to know each other more and more.
This archaeological dig has changed my perspective on artifacts and museums. I had never thought about how something goes from being a part of history undiscovered to being in a museum. That sounds really dumb, but it had just never occurred to me that artifacts found in museums had to be found by some archeologist somewhere. That really put what we were doing into perspective for me, especially once we started finding interesting things such as dice, glass, coins, or nails. This experience has changed my perspective on many things, but I do not think I’ll ever be able to go to a museum ever again without thinking of how the things in there were found.