{"id":4014,"date":"2026-08-16T13:51:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T18:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/?p=4014"},"modified":"2026-08-16T13:51:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T18:51:16","slug":"musings-from-his-eminence-the-carrier-of-buckets-and-the-slayer-of-wheelbarrows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/2026\/08\/16\/musings-from-his-eminence-the-carrier-of-buckets-and-the-slayer-of-wheelbarrows\/","title":{"rendered":"Musings from His Eminence, the Carrier of Buckets, and the Slayer of Wheelbarrows"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I am now an experienced archeologist (citation needed), I have some ignorable recommendations for future participants of this program and some personal reflections on the experience as a whole. First of all for some practical advice: avoid the milkshakes at Atom Master at your own peril (the smoothies are okay), explore different restaurants when you have a free meal, and bring plenty of snacks to the dig site. The heat combined with the humidity is exceptionally hard to get used to if you live in a drier place and sometimes the easiest way to acclimate is to spend some time outside in shaded areas. While staying in your air conditioned room can be nice for a bit, it helps to make trips out into the sun and exploring what snacks the surprisingly large amount of grocery stores nearby have is a good excuse to get out and about. Getting into a routine as quickly as you can is vital to properly enjoy the experience. The first couple days can be very rough and you may question how the rest of the month will go but as you get into a schedule you will wonder where the time went. I personally found getting downstairs and outside early enough to enjoy a canned coffee on the steps helped motivate me to get out of bed early. As for packing, lightweight clothes that dry quickly are great for the heat though almost everything you bring will be caked in a layer of dust and dirt by the end of the trip.\u00a0 Be sure not to make the same mistake as I did and bring waterproof boots because they do not dry well. For food, be adventurous and try a bit of everything even if you think you won\u2019t like it as exploring is part of the fun. Secondly, some more abstract advice: try to say \u201cyes\u201d to as many outings as possible, even if you are tired or having a bad day as you never know what you will find. Try to find people to talk to while you are working as it makes the day far more enjoyable and the hard parts go by a lot faster. I honestly already miss talking to people all day, as in my unbiased opinion our group was very fun.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I learned a lot in my time in T\u00fcrkiye, both about myself and about archaeology itself. I found that I could do a lot more in a day and work a lot harder than I had previously thought. I also felt like I also learned a lot about the basics of archaeology in practice which have sparked my interest further. Finally, I discovered that being chased with a dust pan is quite terrifying. My most memorable experience on site was definitely finding things for the first time, the first sherd of pottery, the first bone, the first bit of schist shaped as a coin, the first shard of glass, or the first special find.\u00a0<\/span>I originally came on this trip to T\u00fcrkiye as a test to see if archaeology is really something I would want to pursue further and I think that I have come to the conclusion that it might very well be. Of course this opens up far more problems related to masters programs and jobs in the future as I enter my senior year of college at St. Olaf but I really enjoyed the hands-on process of being outside and interacting with the past while working physically. The concept of thinking about what your area could have been while you\u2019re toiling away in the dirt and finding real objects from far over a thousand years ago was incredibly exciting. Experiencing this with other St. Olaf students who were all incredibly friendly and fun to work with helped ease me into the processes of archaeology in a fun and engaging way.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I am now an experienced archeologist (citation needed), I have some ignorable recommendations for future participants of this program and some personal reflections on the experience as a whole. First of all for some practical advice: avoid the milkshakes at Atom Master at your own peril (the smoothies are okay), explore different restaurants when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5730,"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_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Iz8A-12K","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4014","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\/5730"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4014"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4019,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4014\/revisions\/4019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/antiochia2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}