I’ve Hit Rock Bottom.

Literally. Which isn’t a bad thing, actually. Bedrock and I have become very good friends. For you non-geologists out there, bedrock is the lowest level of rock you can hit. Bedrock is the El Dorado of trench excavation. When you find it, you know that...

It’s Soil, Not Dirt

It’s true, even though I was skeptical when they first told us it would soon happen: I can now tell the differences between soils. In fact, I’ve started noticing just how much I’ve picked up so far and learned. It makes sense that after a couple weeks of staring at...

Antiochia Near the Crag: Blog Entry One

Let’s talk about Antiochia Ad Cragum It’s a pointy, craggy, stabby, dusty, hot, humid, dry, wondrous city waiting to be explored. Due to its situation of being in Turkey, it was wholly ignored during the waves of Ancient Greek excavations carried out by the grand...

Just Keep Digging….

Week two has seen some interesting developments. The North East Temple trenches have seen some interesting turns. The northern trench has now been divided into 5 different locus, or areas of study that are determined by changes in location, soil composition, and...

Mapping Efforts at Antiochia ad Cragum

In addition to quite a few eager Oles figuring out the mysteries of the Acropolis and the Imperial Temple at Antiochia ad Cragum this year, courtesy of  the Environmental Studies Department, St Olaf is also contributing a pair of Trimble GeoXH mapping-grade GPS...

Rock Bottom

Thus ends the first full week of work here at Antiochia ad Cragum. One of the most interesting things I have noticed about the actual digging process is that you never know with 100% certainty what is beneath 1 meter of soil or 1 cm or even a light cover of dust. In...

Turkey Week One

This is my first time leaving the country and it was quite the experience waiting in a Turkish airport for hours. Once we got to Gazipasa it was around midnight and we had a quick turnaround for the 5am start the next day. We get fed breakfast at the school house and...

Turkey Week Two

Now that we have gotten the majority of the rocks thrown off the cliff we got separated into groups and started on our individual trenches. I am in Lizzy’s trench and we are working on leveling the ground and lowering it at about 10cm at time until we get...

AaC Staff: Ask Us Anything

Sort of like the Reddit AMAs, if you’ve been reading the blog, you might have some questions.  Unfortunately, commenting using pages.stolaf.edu is limited to St Olaf students, faculty, and staff– which won’t necessarily include the family and friends...

Week Two

Last week I worked on a variety of things at the site. I started off the week helping everyone finish clearing out the acropolis so that we could finally open our trenches. After more rock and brush clearing, we were finally able to measure and mark out our trenches...