In addition to learning some Turkish phrases prior to departing, I wish that I had brought an English to Turkish dictionary just to look through occasionally. I would also suggest just spending time outside prior to departing. Gazipaşa has a very similar humidity to where I live in Indiana and I wish that I had spent more time getting used to the heat before arriving in Gazipaşa.
While in Gazipaşa, I would suggest visiting places once, so that you can explore as many places as possible. I really enjoyed Monkey Pizza Burger and Class Tantuni. I would suggest not eating only cheese for breakfast for the first few weeks. It was good, but I’m not used to cheese using milk other than cow’s milk, so I reached a point where I was a little tired of the taste of cheese. I really enjoyed checking out the Night Market near one of the beaches in Gazipaşa and would definitely recommend visiting it. I also enjoyed checking out the clothing market on Mondays. The Turkish pants that I bought while in Gazipaşa are very comfortable and it’s very refreshing after working in dig clothes for multiple hours.
I would definitely participate in another archeological excavation. I really enjoyed working on the site and learning about the people who used to live in the site through things such as pottery and a dress pin. Repetition can easily become boring, but I always felt engaged as I dug up soil and then checked it for pieces of pottery, bones, or glass before taking it to the wheelbarrow. Working on the official notebook was another part of the process that I liked as I put into words the work that had been done that day so that other people could see what we had done. Our Monday discussions really added to my understanding of the environment that we were working in. I love history and having this new appreciation and understanding of people of the past matters a lot to me. The work was hard, but very rewarding in every aspect.
I’ve learned about the process of flotation and that I really enjoy the work it requires. We ended up bagging some soil from an intact pot in our unit, and I wonder what Jessie might find in it. I am beginning to wonder if the room we were excavating might have a link to the dining room, so it would be interesting to know if that pot held any seeds or something similar. Flotation can go both fast and slow. The floating part itself doesn’t take very long. The larger items are then dried and it is very slow-going to search through it for more seed remnants. I really enjoyed both parts of the process.
I think my most memorable experience while working on the site would be finding the first floor tile. Abbey had experience with floor and roof tiles, but it was the first time that the rest of us in the unit had found something of that size. It was also one of the first times that we found something that could be clearly identified. We found many handles and toes throughout our time, but you can’t necessarily determine what the whole pot looked like from sherds alone. I also remember when we found a pyla and pretended to cover it up and hide it as Asude came over to the site for a visit. Gabe said that the bucket covering the pyla definitely wasn’t hiding textiles which led her to remove the tools and bucket on top of the pyla. We had covered the pyla with a light layer of soil, so she simply found soil when the bucket was removed. We did end up showing her the pyla, but I remember the little trick that we played on Asude.
Our project has made me more confused than I thought it would. I can genuinely see myself working in archeology which has thrown me off a little bit since I was convinced I would go into and have studied for a career in theater. I really enjoyed being a “first witness” to the historical material that we found and have felt really honored by the faith placed in me to tell the story of the people who lived and worked when our site was in use.