After my first week at Antiochia, I have learned a lot about the ancient city, archaeological methodology, and Turkish culture. Most significantly, though, I\u2019ve learned a lot about bridging the gap between ancient and modern. Our first few hours in Gazipasa exposed me to the modern: the people, the weather, the plants, the stores, and restaurants. The next day, as we toured the ancient city of Selinus, I made a connection that seems obvious in hindsight. The people archaeologists are studying lived in the same conditions\u2013the same hot weather and sharp plants\u2013that modern Turkish people live in today. The agricultural techniques used in the ancient Mediterranean, described by Lin Foxhall in \u201cHuman Ecology and the Classical Landscape,\u201d are not very different from the agricultural techniques still used in Turkey today. On the bus ride to the field site, I can see terraced farms and empty plots of land lying fallow.<\/p>\n
An important part about understanding and interpreting ruins that we\u2019re excavating is to put ourselves in the shoes of who we’re researching. Field work necessitates this; you live and work in the climate that you’re studying. There’s a huge gap between the ancient and the modern, and many unknowns; every day I leave the dig site with more questions than answers. An important part of filling that gap is careful observation and imagination. Living in Gazipasa for a week has helped me to imagine ancient life and draw better conclusions about dig site finds. If I know, for instance, that Turkey has a dry season, then I can better understand why the center of Antiochia Ad Cragum\u2019s courtyard had a fountain and a pool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After my first week at Antiochia, I have learned a lot about the ancient city, archaeological methodology, and Turkish culture. Most significantly, though, I\u2019ve learned a lot about bridging the gap between ancient and modern. Our first few hours in Gazipasa exposed me to the modern: the people, the weather, the plants, the stores, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5437,"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-3441","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-Tv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441","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\/5437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3441"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3453,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3441\/revisions\/3453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}