Where people lived throughout history has always been something that, until the beginning of Spring semester, was something that I always thought was static throughout history. You got a house, and people live in it, and that was the end of it, or so I thought. While this conception was already challenged by the ancient warfare class I took with Prof. Howe, I still had a very modern concept of how I perceived areas where people live affected them. I mean, sure you’d get some local pride or whatever, but in the end most people would respect, begrudingly or not, a widespread authority like a state. This was how I viewed the ancient world as well, though that overarching authority would instead’ve been a local feudal lord or some other institution depending on the time period. Instead, what I’ve read suggests that all these ‘empires’ were more closely related to a loose collection of local interests than anything centralized. I’m most interested in exactly how this local identity affected the way people lived, and I think that’s part of the reason why I chose this program, because somewhere deep down, though I may not have known it at the time, I was simply curious to how these people lived. I’m also rather interested in how a place that was considered a ‘Polis’ was different from other cities in antiquity, as the distinction between what was considered a polis and a barbarian settlement seemed rather arbitrary. Actually hammering out a specific definition of what a Polis is and how the label affected people would be something I’d love to explore, provided I get the chance.
As for the actual archeological work on site, and perhaps the very ideal about Archeology, I would say that my feelings on the matter are a lot more cynical after reading about its ethics. The book presented Archeology as a mere service industry, a mere cog in the global market rather than a science driven by the love of discovery. Its made me feel more like a marketing associate for the Turkish government instead of the original ideal I had, which was a much more idealistic view of uncovering what we can for the common heritage of man. The core ideal I got out of it was this; national heritages are now just corporations for the most part, corporations that compete for customers like any other ‘normal’ company, and Archeology is the equivalent of the marketing/RnD department for them. That’s not to say that tourism is bad, far from it actually, it serves as a very important supplemental income for many communities, but it’s also resulted in these historical remains and monuments becoming products to be peddled, for example the UNESCO heritage site it mentioned sounds like corporate interests bidding for grants. There isn’t one much could do about it, but I’d rather that it could be primarily done out of love of the game & knowledge rather than something done to increase tourist revenues. Despite all of that though, I think I’m mostly fine with it, though I am also rather curious about the audience we’re digging for as Gazipasa seems to mostly have tourists come from eastern Europe or from other parts of Turkey instead of from other ‘western’ countries. Since any good product is usually adjusted to be more attractive to its target audience, I’m somewhat curious as to how the Ministry will present our findings to try and attract tourists from these regions.