This has been a long time coming, but here I am with yet another mashup blog post! As I write this, the intensive part of our survey campaign has been completed, and the extensive survey work is well underway, but first let me catch you all up from where my last post left off.
After completing our survey work in the nearby village, we left for Senpazar, which was in the next province over, yet still under an hour drive away. The first day we were able to sleep an extra hour, having breakfast at 7:30, what a treat! This was because before taking to the field the project directors had to go speak to local officials, and perform various other formalities which include lots of hand shaking and cups of tea, just to let everyone know we were there, what we were doing, and why. During this time the other students and myself decided to wander into the town centre and have some tea at a local shop. This is when everything got a little bizarre. We were summoned to a table where a middle age man sat and he ordered us all tea, this is a very common gesture in Turkey, and through Selim, who is bilingual, he began to ask us questions: where are we from? How do we like Turkey? Just the usual tourist questions. The his questions became increasingly more detailed and he got out a notepad, taking each of our names, where we were born, and where we studied. He commented on the prestige of each of my colleagues’ universities, and when he came to Memorial University of Newfoundland he said “what’s this? This sounds like a hospital”. The whole scenerio seemed slightly fishy to me, and next thing I knew we were being taken across town to a small “Museum” of sorts. The man was very proud of this local museum which included a tredging sled (whose flakes seem to be the only lithics we ever find in the field) and some creepy white mannequins dressed up in the Cide yellow printed fabric, and some other various nic-nacks with little historical purpose. After this visit we were led to another building, which turned out to be the local government office. This is when things got very weird…
Mud on our boots, grass stains on our cargos, we were led into this fancy office with leather chairs and a board table, as well as an impressive desk well decorated with official photographs. This was when we found out the man we had been drinking tea with was actually a regional politician. At first we thought this was quite cool, he continued asking us questions and was very kind, offering us sweets, tea and coffee and showing us youtube videos of local traditional dancers. But after an hour we were feeling restless and wondering where the directors were. Not speaking any Turkish we were all a little confused, and began wondering when we could leave. In total we spent about three hours stuck in this office, finally the directors showed up, and after they also had tea, they collected up our residency booklets to show some officials and we were able to finally leave for the field. The sequence of events still does not entirely make sense to me.
In other news, the rest of the intensive survey has been excellent, it’s just amazing to wake up every morning at the crack of dawn, when the air is cool and crisp and set out on a new adventure, surveying the beach, modern and ancient cemeteries, coastal mountains, farmers’ fields, caves, forests, valleys and so much more. Our finds have been slightly frustrating, as the archaeological interest of the project is the areas prehistory, yet all we are finding are an abundance of Roman and Early Byzantine cooking vessels, amphorae fragments and roof tiles. This is equally frustrating for me, as I am the only one on the project dealing with the material from this time period, leaving me pretty overwhelmed. We meet a lot of interesting locals, many who bring us snacks and tell us stories, or offer to guide us to local caves and castles. I am continually impressed by the elderly in rural Turkey, and it makes me feel like old people in the Western world are just pathetically lazy. Such as the 70 men crossing fast current rivers to lead us to caves, 80 year old women appearing out of the bramble, cutting it with a sickle, and climbing over fences with wicker baskets of corn on their back, happy as can be and getting a huge chuckle out of us all stumbling through the field. Despite all the rain, we have had some beautiful days of surveying, and have seen some beautiful sites, highlights for me hiking under a beautiful waterfall, making some lovely animal friends including, cows, sheep, huge tortoises, baby turtles, huge snails, beautiful beetles, donkeys, horses, birds, and frogs! One of the last days of the intensive campaign we found some lithic, primarily flint bi-flakes, and other worked flint fragments. We set up a formal grid to survey the field, one of the few of the project, which mostly consists of basic field walking, in hopes of finding more and getting a better idea of its presence.
The end of intensive Survey has been bittersweet, as I really enjoyed pushing myself, and hiking every day, however I am looking forward to some of the sites that are to come, and also to have some rest and be able to work from the base on my database and ceramic drawing a few days a week. The extensive part of the project will be made up of specific site visits, such as caves and kales (Castles), and not everyone will be in the field each day as office work and research is piling up, and needs to be completed before the final leg, the study season, begins.
Beach/Graveyard Survey
Graveyard eroding away into the beach, yay human remains!
Beautiful view! I love my work!
That’s all for now folks, I apologise for the jumpy post, I promised my next one will be more focused… next up will be the first of our goodbyes, the arrival of new archaeologists, our day off in Cide and the fabulous celebration BBQ and Cide festival! So much excitement!
Aurora
hey roar! what an amazing time you're having! I love that little turtle, how beautiful! great blog, i look forward to reading what you're up to and living vicariously through you.
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