“It says on your resume that you worked on an archaeological excavation in Türkiye. What did you do?”
Well I worked on this site called Antiochia Ad Cragum, located outside of Gazipasa, Türkiye. On site I worked on a few different projects, particular spots that were experiencing very different kinds of excavation. The main area I worked on was the north slope of the acropolis in a residential area. Of the three areas I worked on, ANS 9 featured the most standard archaeological methods. After clearing overburden, we performed methodical and meticulous ten centimeter passes with our trowels, combing the dirt for pottery sherds, glass, animal bones, and the occasional coin. This area required intensive care and attention to detail to find objects of archaeological significance and to notice the soil changes that would indicate a new locus to investigate.
The second area I worked on was the Great Bath, in particular the Caldarium or hot room. Due to a significant cut to our time available to excavate this area, this excavation would be characterized as rescue archaeology like the kind seen in Cultural Resource Management (CRM). Because of our shortened timeframe, our methodology shifted from a more meticulous approach to a more aggressive one, trying to excavate as much as we could within our last month in the Great Bath. Trowels were replaced with pickaxes and shovels, removing six inches to a foot of soil instead of ten centimeters across far larger rooms than ANS 9. Dozens of wheelbarrows were filled a day. This work was grueling, a hard balance between precision and efficiency.
In the necropolis, I faced a different kind of problem from the rescue archaeology of the Great Bath. The fine layers of context that characterize the Acropolis or Great Bath had been completely destroyed by a past team of “archaeologists.” The human remains stored in the tombs of this area had been dumped into large, jumbled piles. Now I joined a small team working to piece together what limited information we could gather from these piles of remains and return them to their rest. This Salvage archaeology was quite different from the rescue archaeology in the Great Bath. Since all the remains and few surviving grave goods had been removed from their original contexts already, there was no risk of mixing contexts or digging too deep. Our primary goal was to collect as much surviving remains and evidence as possible within the physical limits of our small team working in a remote cliff far from the main site. This was by far the most emotionally challenging task I worked on, sifting through human remains, wanting to keep as much of what was left of these people together as possible, while knowing we only had the resources to work with the largest pieces.
“What sort of skills did you gain from this work?”
Resilience. A lot of resilience. Physical resilience came from working under the hot Mediterranean Sun, lifting rocks, pushing wheelbarrows, squatting and standing for hours. Emotional resilience to work through boredom, exhaustion, horror and disgust, feelings brought on from hard work and from the weight of the history of this site. I learned how to better work with a team, how to communicate both verbally and nonverbally. I started to get eyes for where I would be most useful to help, most productive with my skills and limitations. I learned how to find common ground with people from vastly different backgrounds from me, whether they came from the States or Türkiye. I learned how to work with my hands, to pay attention to small details I would have missed before. I learned how to listen to other people’s stories and apply them to the work I was doing. I learned how to find the traces of humanity left in rock and soil and how to listen to the stories they can tell us. I learned to quickly adapt to changes in food, routine, sleep, physical activity, weather, and social life. I learned how to better understand my limits, when to push through them and when to take a step back. I learned that I am much more resilient than I thought and much braver than I knew.