Mentally preparing myself for new experiences is not one of my strong suits– even if I have been planning something for months and months, I can’t accept that it will be my reality until it’s right in my face. This is exactly what happened when getting ready for Turkey. Even while riding the bus to the dig site on the first day, I had to keep reminding myself that this was actually happening.<\/p>\n
But then, of course, the dream of Antiochia ad Cragum became a somewhat harsh reality. There was nothing ethereal about tossing dirt (or rather, soil) off the side of a mountain, or getting lacerated by roots more stubbornly set in the soil than any rock, or sweating through a dig shirt in a matter of minutes. Even the most magical moments of my experience so far– like swimming in a cove with water so clear I could see a hundred feet below or walking back from a relaxing day at the beach– were accompanied by wheezing my way up a cliff or witnessing a guy maybe losing a finger in a motorcycle crash.<\/p>\n
Still, I’d rather have this be a reality than a dream. Dreams are fun and all, but in the end they’re immaterial and easily forgotten. But this experience comes with permanent souvenirs– not scratches or sunburns or bug bites that will heal eventually, or fleeting memories in my fallible mind, but scraps of an entire civilization– remnants of walls and pottery, of people’s lives and livelihoods. I’m so glad I get to be a part of it all– the good, the bad, and the ugly of archaeology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mentally preparing myself for new experiences is not one of my strong suits– even if I have been planning something for months and months, I can’t accept that it will be my reality until it’s right in my face. This is exactly what happened when getting ready for Turkey. Even while riding the bus to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Iz8A-j8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1200,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions\/1200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}