Extensive Survey: Castles and Caves

The intensive campaign on the survey project lasted two weeks and involved heavy field walking, covering as much ground as possible using all of our bodies in three large teams in a randomized landscape selection, to get a generalized overview of the landscape and its archaeological contents. The extensive campaign occurred in the following two weeks and was a more focused and concentrated campaign. Not every team or person went out to the field each day, as now there was an abundance of processing finds, data basing and other riveting desk jobs to be done, unfortunately as the only Byzantinist on staff (team of pre-historians), I was stuck at home more often than not to begin drawing finds, research, creating a fabric collection (different types of clay materials used), and preliminary data basing for the specialists ceramic database. The extensive survey is also fundamentally different in the fact that the locations are not randomly chosen, and the goal is not to cover as much territory as possible, rather to explore specific cultural locations and sites in depth, typically: castles, caves, graves and churches. These are places where already KNOW there was past human occupation and an archaeological presence, so each of these sites come with their own individual questions which need to be answered. Since I was in the field for only a few days of this surveying campaign I will break it down into the categories mentioned above, and tell you a bit about each type of site and the ones which I visited.

CASTLES
Castle’s in Turkey are called Kale’s, and are not necessarily always castles in the western sense, but is a category of fortified buildings that generally date to Byzantium. The Kales we have seen are in various states of ruin, some just flat rubble mounds, others just fortification bases which give a general outline, others with complete or near complete towers and walls. One of my favourite Kale’s was surveyed with Bleda’s team, which comprised of myself, Gwen, Bus and Sercan, I was able to date the Kale to the middle byzantine based on a few diagnostic ceramic sherds (pieces of pottery with tell-tale signs of their age) which fits with the general landscape of fortresses and castles in the area. This particular fortification was on top of a cliff steeply overlooking a river, and with excellent views of the mountains and hillside across the river. When thinking about fortified buildings it is important to think about the location and its views, these buildings were meant to protect something and act as look out posts, there locations were specifically chosen and we want to further look into what this factors may be, and what purpose they had. Some Kale’s look inland, indicating perhaps foe from the countryside traveling by foot or horse, others face the ocean and have wide views of the sea from the coastal cliffs which indicate the need to spot shipping fleets, and that perhaps attacks from sailing vessels were occurring. One of the team members on the project has been creating GIS maps which calculate the location of each of the fortifications surveyed and their viewpoints. This is crucial to being able to understand what land was protected and what land was considered a ‘blind spot’ and also where and who from protection was most need. The Kale we surveyed this particular day was an especially good lookout post which had full view of the rolling hills across the river valley, you can easily imagine watching out from a tower at neighbouring peoples coming across the hills. The Kale lacked any significant standing structures and was reduced primarily to rubble and ruined masonry, besides the foundation of a small rectangular room, and a large fortification wall. We spent the afternoon exploring the neighbouring areas, drawing, photographing, and mapping the Kale and its surroundings.

Sitting and mapping on the castle walls

CAVES
Caves are perhaps my favourite type of archaeological site, as my field school experience in the Areni-1 Cave in Armenia last year won over my heart. I was extremely happy to hear that the Cide project was just as enthusiastic about caves as myself and so many have been visited throughout the duration of the project, and many more have been attempted. Finding caves are not the easiest thing, even when you can see them from the roadside, as when you walk through the thick forests and begin to climb it is easy to get disoriented and the closer to get to the rock the harder it is to locate the cave. Many times we stumbled through forest and bramble just to have to turn back and hour or two later. I have a special interest in early Christian activity in caves, such as early monastery structures, cave churches, and hermit caves. This area of Turkey is littered with Hermit Caves, but unfortunately none of the caves I visited had any diagnostic features of a hermit dwelling. In fact all of the caves I visited were, archaeologically speaking, rather sparse. Caves that other teams visited proved to be extremely exciting with lots of Byzantine and prehistoric ceramics. My personal favourites was the one that took our team about three different attempts and many hours off thorny bramble, cliffs, and forest to get though, it was a small cave with a rock shelter, based on the location and directionality it would have been perfect for a hermit cave dwelling, which often face the same direction as churches (east), however there was no further physical evidence. We ate our lunch at the rock shelter, made a quick map and headed home. One day during the extensive I surveyed with Claudia’s team, which was a lot of fun! We found two caves with the help of local guides. Both caves were incredibly impressive, one had an extreme drop off and we threw a rock down it to hear how far, and decided it would be too dangerous to investigate without ropes and hooks. The second was equally as impressive, but much shallower and safer, we explored the main room, and took turns squeezing through a narrow whole which lead to a large open room and another area you could slide down with huge puddles of water. Only hit my head a few times. There was nothing archaeologically spectacular, but spelunking has become a love of mine so I was still in my glory.

Cave explorations!

Stalagmite broken off!

GRAVES –
Graves are important for obvious reasons, often they are still easily visible, they can tell us about population and location of past civilizations. We visited a few gravesites during the extensive including a Ottoman and Hellenistic grave. Ottoman graves are especially beautiful, they have sword shaped headstones with beautiful Arabic engravings and design, and on the top are marble carvings of the hats. These hats symbolize the persons status within the community, so we can also learn about the presence of various societal figures and learn things about whether there were military stations and much more! The Hellenistic (early Greek) grave was also very interesting, the tombs were scattered over a large piece of land that is now entirely forested (and totally tic infested!). Many of the graves have been robbed, and only the stone slabs remain.

Examples of Ottoman headstones at the Amasara museum

CHURHES
As someone who studies early Christian archaeology, churches are very interesting to me. However, we did not survey any substantial church remains or ruins, although we did number many spots were the possible presence of a church could have been. This is done by observing the amount of spolia we find in a certain village, and by rumours which the villagers tell us about churches and Christians. Spolia are church column bases and carved stone architectural features which often find their way all over hells creation, primarily in the flower gardens of the local villagers. Who says buildings don’t move? We did find a wall of what was likely a Byzantine chapel by the sea, after scaling the cliffs and almost falling in the water a million times I am glad we found something that day!

So, that should give you an idea about what the field extensive survey is like! We pick most of our locations based on word from locals about interesting sites, no one knows the land better! Some sites are also discovered by past seasons surveys, where sites were found and were later decided to be worth a revisit. However this is only what half the team is doing at any given time, as now we have also begun the artefact processing and databasing, so many of my days have been indoors at the Yali drawing pottery sherds, and typing up descriptions, dating, and munsel charting it up! It’s not all bad though, goo tunes, good company, and tons of snacks go a long way… it also means I can sneak into town for some delicious lunches and baklava!

Alright, that’s all folks.. next up will be goodbyes and our Sinope day trip!

Aurora