Sinope Day Trip

Walking in Sinope, note old man with insane tan carrying a sickle in the city centre..

As the extensive season closes, and the study season begins its time for another team member switch up. Besides the two directors I am the only team member who will be here for the entire season, which is a little bittersweet. It’s great to be included in the study season, as it is a great learning experience and opportunity to contribute what I know to the project, however, it means I must say goodbye to all my new friends, be jealous of their food related status’ when they go home, and be one of the final five members… which makes Cide very, very quiet. In celebration of the goodbyes and Lilith’s birthday we had a fancy cake with supper, a quick photoshoot, and then walked everyone to the bus station to wave goodbye. It is tradition here to throw water behind the person leaving to wish them a safe travel and to someday return. Amelia, one of the directors little girls LOVES this, and any time someone leaves she is the first to remind us to get water to splash on the bus!

After Sami, Fiona, Maarten, Rita and Gwen left there were just five left, myself, Lilith, Bleda, Claudia and Michele. We decided that we would take a day off to visit another survey project on the Black Sea in Sinop, about four hours away. It’s especially interesting to talk to archaeologists working in a similar region as you can compare landscapes and finds which gives you a bigger picture and puts your own work and finds into a broader context. For example, we have been puzzled by a few buff Hellenistic coarse wares with large black shiny inclusions. These inclusions (bits of stone) are unlike the usual grit, mica, quartz and grog that we see in our pottery. We noticed that they also had similar sherds and they were able to tell us that the pottery and the natural inclusions are abundant in the Sinope region. We know now that these sherds we find are likely imports from this region which means some form of trade route as well!

Sinope was a beautiful place, more touristy and Mediterranean feeling than Cide, but to be honest I like the quiet Cide atmosphere better as a project location. This survey rented out a house so they took turns cooking an cleaning, I like this idea as it means food that is cooked with care, not just lentils and rice every day. When we arrived we went for some lunch, myself and Michele were excited to see signs with Calimari (squid), and Midye Dolma (stuffed mussels), however the restaurant Bleda and Claudia settled on did not have either, so we had plain fish. The fish was great but I was dying to try the Midye which can only be found in this region! Next up we payed a quick visit to the Sinope museum to see some of the local finds. The museum was quite beautiful, albeit small. They had many recognizable amphorae, and also some amphorae holders which I found very interesting. They also had many beautifully painted small vessels (jugs an tear jars), which have given me some inspiration for when I get home and back to Devon House’s pottery studio! They also had a great selection of wood panneled frescos from Othodox churches, I love religious art and iconography so I was in my glory!

Fish restaraunt on the docks!

Our meeting with the archaeologists was wonderful, as I mentioned above we both learned a lot and it was great to see the finds of another project so similar to ours. They were extremely enthusiastic and generous and said they will pay us a visit in return to see our materials. I always find it interesting to see archaeologists interact with one another, so many strong opinions floating around in such a polite manner. They offered to set us up for dinner and find us a place to stay for the night (they were sleeping on the floor, which made the Yali seem like paradise), but with only a few days of work left we decided to turn back and go home. I unfortunately got quite sick on the way back; the past few weeks have not been playing well on my stomach. I’m blaming it on the insane amounts of starches and carbs!

Alrighty, that’s all for now folks… the next post or two will be about my three days in Istanbul for the Avkat Workshop and Byzantine Symposium! Then one final post about the wrap up of the project and then it’s on to the good stuff, VACATION time!

Aurora