A Little Fun Under the Hot, Turkish Sun

Hello Friends!

Your VP here - writing you for the first time! For those of you who may not know me, my name is Elif. I'm a senior at DePaul studying anthropology with a focus in archaeology. Therefore, this first post will be a tale of my adventures abroad last summer in the romantic world of archaeological excavations.

A little background knowledge will be helpful for this. I chose a field school in Turkey for a few key reasons. First off, I am a first generation Turk - both of my parents were born in Turkey, whereas I was born here in the states. I speak fluent Turkish so any language barriers that accompany foreign travels was not a concern, although language barriers are also fun. The site I visited is Antiochia ad Cragum, which is Latin for Little Antioch on the Rocks (glad to see those two years of Latin I took are benefitting me). It is located along the southern coastline and on a good day, we could see as far across the sea as Cyprus. I was a little spoiled in that my best friend, and roommate, Kelly McHugh (a member of DCC) went with me. Finally, I was already planning to go to Turkey over the summer, as I often do, to visit family and attend my cousin's wedding.

Here is a map to give you an idea of where the site is located.

For those of you who are interesting in attending a field school and might want to frolic in the dirt, I found my field school amongst many others at the Archaeological Institute of America's field school search engine. It's a wonderful tool and you can search according to country or your desired era. Here is the link for the Archaeological Fieldwork Opportunities Bulletin.

The main reason why I chose this particular field school is because the site dates to the Roman Imperial/Early Byzantine era. There were numerous attraction points going off of that. The site boasts the largest Roman mosaic in Turkey, wonderful inscriptions, a fully excavated temple, a bathhouse, city gates, and so much more it would make your head spin. After spending some time there, the participants and I all came to realize how rich the surrounding area is. We were located along the slopes of the Taurus mountain range and each visible mountaintop had some wonderful archaeological treasure waiting to be excavated.

We were quite spoiled in that we were staying in a sports center used by the local soccer team that is vacant during the summers. We had rooms with about 4 individuals each and an air conditioning unit in each room - you have no idea how lucky we were to have such a valuable commodity. The team consisted of American students and Turkish students from Atatürk University. Interesting fact, in order for a foreign team to engage in archaeological work in Turkey, there must be a Turkish team present. The hosting American institution is the University of Nebraska-Lincoln under the direction of Dr. Michael Hoff.

So now to get to the fun stuff. First off, the site was awesome and the people on the project were amazing. It was well worth getting up at 5 am every weekday. Mind you, that is saying something for me because I am not a morning person - James, our main blogger, can attest to that. We would get up at 5 am, sleepily board the bus at 5:30 am, get on site by 6 am, eat breakfast as a group, then get working around 6:30-6:45 am.

Breakfast time - bring on the bread and jam.

So on a regular day, you start off by taking your levels. We were in a 4x4 m unit on top of the mound that was thought to be the site of a temple.

My lovely trench partner, Monica, taking levels.

Then you dig with your trowels and picks, fill up buckets of dirt, transfer the buckets into a wheelbarrow, wheel the dirt over to the dirt mound, climb the slope of doom, then dump it and repeat.

Meltem, my other trench partner, pointing out our friend on top of the pile of dirt.

Dig, dig, dig. In 5 cm layers. Which, I might add, is very hard to do when your trench is featureless so you are literally just digging 4x4 m slices of dirt that is only 5 cm in depth. After about 3 levels of this, Monica, Meltem and I were getting very discouraged because we had nothing.

Begin to lose all hope.

Then... something amazing happened. Let me preface this part of the story with an important mini story. We had been on site each day for just over 2 weeks and nowhere in between 7 am and 1 pm (lunch time) did I ever need to use the bathroom. I was, indeed, drinking water, and lots of it. But when temperatures are lingering above 100 degrees on any given day, you tend to sweat it all out. On the one day that I decided to trek back up to the dig house from the excavation area to use the bathroom, Monica finds this:

A mosaic floor!

We struck proverbial gold! Our flat, featureless trench that caused us nothing but shame and misery yielded an amazing discovery that just about made me pee my pants from excitement. When I was nonchalantly walking back to the trench after using the bathroom that morning, not knowing what Monica had stumbled upon, I found a group gathered around my trench. "Huh, that's odd... what's going on?" I thought. Then Monica, being the lovely, delicate lady that she is yells at me "ELIF, get your ass over here!" I ran so fast I nearly tripped over a root.

Brushing off the mosaic. The colors are awash in brown due to centuries under the dirt.

From there on out, I never wanted to leave our trench. Not for lunch even at the end of the work day. That mosaic became the reason I woke up every morning with a smile on my face for, most likely, the first and last extent of time in my life. After uncovering about half of our mosaic, the trench adjacent to us uncovered the other half. In the second session, after I had left the site, the surrounding border was opened up and excavated as well for the mosaic stretched beyond our two trenches. The walls of the temple foundation had also been uncovered and we had a pretty good idea of the dimensions that we were working with all in all. After the mosaic was uncovered, conservation work began immediately to resuscitate the tesserae back to life and preserve its state. We had to be very careful not to knock out any more pieces than were already dislodged. The damage that we saw on the mosaic was most likely due to time but also could be the work of radical Christians, according to Dr. Hoff.

Conservation work is very meticulous and requires a careful hand.

The directing archaeologists were estimating our mosaic to date to the late 2nd - early 3rd centuries. More research needs to be done and more artifacts need to be found in order to solidify the numbers. Dr. Hoff also mentioned the need for more research to be done on how mosaic floors relate to temple architecture for this is not a common phenomena. I am currently working on a research project that is based off of this site and the work I did there. The mosaic that we found is the second mosaic on site. The first mosaic was found outside the bathhouse and that is the one that I referred to as the largest Roman mosaic in Turkey.

This is only half of the bathhouse mosaic.

Another important find from this past summer's season is the life-size head of the goddess Aphrodite - the first example of a monumental statue at this site.

Aphrodite: "Hey, girl, hey!"

However, I am very impartial to my mosaic and I think it's the most wonderful piece of ancient history at Antiochia ad Cragum. Here are some pictures to steer you towards agreeing with me on this.

Conservation work.

In all its glory - the temple floor mosaic.

The single most beautiful photograph displaying the gorgeous colors and the intricate detail along the border.

All I can really say to sum up this experience is that it was life altering, monumental, amazing, and it will forever be seared in my brain as the most exciting thing I have done thus far. I would need to spend another 20 paragraphs to cover the amazing people that I met on site and how I made such wonderful, life-long friendships while I was in Turkey. However, this post is not the place because I have said so much already. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions or comments on archaeological fieldwork, this site, or anything related: elifsenturk@yahoo.com.

To finish, I will leave you with a collection of photographs from the field school that I think are worth a glance. At the very end is a YouTube video from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln that showcases this past season and the uncovering of our mosaic. Thanks for taking the time to read folks. I hope I have stirred an excitement in your hearts and that you will consider participating in an archaeological excavation someday!

Break time is nap time.

Afternoon swim in a beautiful cove along the Mediterranean? Yes please.

Most important thing to do - celebrate your discovery!

YouTube Video: UNL archaeological team unearths giant Roman mosaic in southern Turkey