If a potential employer were to ask about my experiences in Türkiye, I would tell them that I’ve learned how to navigate archaeological fieldwork, collaborative research, and a foreign country. I would explain that my time was spent doing hands-on research, excavating a domestic site. Additionally, I learned how to clean, catalogue, and interpret findings. I would explain that I worked with my team to write the official notebooks and theorize about our findings. Many of these experiences culminate in marketable skills relevant to my interest in museum work, such as research, excavation, data collection, and artifact handling.
I’ve also acquired skills that would be relevant to almost any career. Working with others in the unit has taught me a lot about how to work collaboratively. The most important thing I’ve learned from this is the necessity of communication and idea sharing. Discussions both within the team and with other teams make forming theories about ACNS and our next steps in the excavation process much more nuanced. I have also learned how to work and communicate with people who don’t share a language with me. This has been a humbling, but eye-opening experience. Not knowing Turkish hasn’t stopped me from sharing tea and jokes with the locals here, and I’m so grateful for that!
Immersing myself in essentially two foreign cultures, one ancient and one modern, has helped me become more curious and open-minded to new ideas and perspectives. The learning curve was steep, but I feel much more confident making guesses about ancient Roman life and ordering ice cream in Turkish than I did three weeks ago. Plus, I’m an expert with a wheelbarrow now.
