City Shock: Cide to Beyoglu Istanbul

Istanbul or New York? Walking down Istiklal Cadessi

I’ve been in Cide just over a month now, it’s so strange to think about. The last few days have been quite lonely as many of my fellow students have left for their respective homelands, and the work at Cide has been quite stressful for me as there is so much Byzantine material from the projects last three years for me to record and study. It’s an overwhelming task, and one which I am probably not overly qualified for. However, I can’t think of a better experience for my career should I follow with Byzantine archaeology in the future. That being said I really needed a break, despite the fact that my official vacation begins in just eight more days. Luckily I had plans to attend an archaeological workshop and seminar in Istanbul at the Research Centre for Anatolian Civilizations which lies in the heart of Istanbul’s trendy city area of Beyoglu. This was just the break I needed, and to rejuvenate my interest in my work at Cide.

After saying goodbye to the few left at the Cide Project, I went to the Metro Turizm bus station in Cide to catch my night bus into Istanbul. The bus left around 8:30pm, and after one bus transfer I arrived in Taksim Square, Istanbul around 8am the next morning. Now whenever I travel it’s just about law that something has to go immediately wrong just to get my blood pumping… I handed my Taxi the address to the Aga Hammam Hostel where I would be staying, not knowing it was less than a ten minute walk from Taksim Square, he however took me on a nice long and pricey taxi ride, and when we got to the hostel it seemed entirely vacant. Doors were locked, lights were off. I tried calling the hostel and there was no answer, and so the taxi cab so kindly waited while we figured out what to do (of course this 2Lira ride ending up costing me 20Lira total). Eventually after talking to some locals we realised the place doesn’t open until 10am. Luckily the owner heard us outside and let me in around 9:00. The owner seemed a little out of it, but quickly led me around the still dark hostel. The lower level is a Hammam, which is a Turkish bath house that offers traditional baths and various spa treatments! It was completely dark and looked pretty sketchy at the time. He led me to my room which is a four bed female dorm, I have two French roommates who were fast asleep, but seemed really nice when I met them later in the day. There’s a terrace deck with chairs and tables, a lounge and a communal kitchen, overall the hostel is bare minimal but for such a great location, it’s well worth the whole 14USD a night ;) My initial impressions have worn off, and I must say it looks much nicer in the day light, and everyone seems quite friendly. My friend from the Cide project, Lilith will be joining me later tonight which should be fun!

Looking down at the Hamam entrance from my hostel

Despite not sleeping overly well on the bus (crying baby behind me AND a puking neighbour, my favourite!) I couldn’t sleep once arriving, so I showered and headed out by 9am to explore the trendy part of Istanbul! I’ve been quite sick the past few days, all carb diet is catching up on me, and the bus didn’t help so as I walked THE street of Istanbul (the shopping and café and all things fancy street), Istiklal Caddesi, I was basically overwhelmed with joy to see sights such as Pizza Hut, Burger King, and MacDonalds. Now, those who know me well know I almost never eat at fast food places, and I am certainly not the kind who does so on vacations when I could be eating local cuisine, but after a month of Turkish food and with an already upset stomach, something familiar was all I wanted. MacDonald’s breakfast never tasted so good! After my breakfast I settled on my plan for the day, my conference starts tomorrow so this is my only full free day in Beyoglu, Istanbul. I decided to keep all of the Old City attractions for my last few days in Istanbul, and stayed in the “new” city. The first plan of action was to find the research institute that my conference tomorrow would be at, this way I will know where I am going and can sleep in a bit! This actually took a better part of the day, as the street it is on is the busiest and largest street in the area, but I made it into an adventure, stopping to shop and buy sweets along the way. Everywhere I went shop owners had questions for me about my work and travels, one brought me tea and sat with me in his ceramic shop for forty minutes asking about archaeology and the books he had read about it, he also told me my travel plans needed excitement and told me where to go to meet nice boys on the Mediterranean for “the special fun”… as if cave churches and calcium travertine’s aren’t wild enough, jeez! I wandered into a famous side street filled entirely with used vintage instruments, and streets filled with florists and bakeries. I particularly liked this street, as after all the fresh Cide air I am finding it hard to adjust to the smells of such a large city… not pleasant!

Eventually I had made it from one end of Istiklal Caddesi to the other, all the way back to Taksim Square and still no sign of the RCAC. Tourist bureaus had no idea what it was, locals had no idea what it was (although I got asked out on a date by a really old guy in the process who showed me where his office building was)… so I resorted to “ask all white guys wearing an abundance of khaki holding unnatural amounts of camera equipment” … because certainly they must know something about the location of archaeological institutes. It worked. First guy I saw carrying a tripod, Tilly hat, and head to toe khaki said “funny you should ask me that” and gave me directions directly to it. Archaeologist’s wardrobes are so predictable!

Taksim Square

Next up was museum and gallery time! Unfortunately the first place on my list was undergoing renovations so I was unable to see the Galata Mevlevihanesi, a whirling dervish hall (traditional Ottoman ceremonial dancers), however, the beautiful Orthodox church nearby made up for it! Absolutely stunning! From there I took the historic tram, a slow little red trolly that goes up the middle of busy metropolitan street, it seems so out of place… but it was a great little ride, and dropped me off right back at Taksim square. From here I took a taxi to the Pera Modern Art Museum which I really enjoyed, they also had a great section of ancient art, mostly ceramics and metal work as well as some funky modern art… the kind I really don’t understand at all, such as a floor of slinkies bouncing up and town on some sort of motar with lights. So deep? By this point I was exhausted and way overheated, so I headed back to the hostel for the evening, unfortunately abandoning my plans for seeing the Istanbul Modern Museum.

Tunel Tram

That’s all for now, next up will be conference accounts and the remainder of my Istanbul trip! Overall I am really enjoying Beyoglu, so alive and hectic! It’s bizzare to see so many huge stores and brand names like MAC and Guess and Prada all in Turkish, it’s such a unique culture clash. This area of Istanbul is very trendy and high fashion, as well as quite pricey! I love the artsy cafes, but I won’t miss getting jipped on Icecream though, 7Lira for a one scope cone? It’s only 1Lira back in Cide!

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

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

Afternoon Away In Gideros

So once upon a time, many moons ago, I had a day off. Yes, I know the point of a blog is to write your daily endeavours, and I’m two weeks behind… so what? But back to the story, on this day off, the final day off with the other students myself and Fiona decided that we wanted to go to Gideros, a small picturesque town outside of Cide, known for its fish restaurants, beach, and beauty. We couldn’t convince anyone besides Gwen to come with us, as some of the survey teams surveyed the Gideros caves and therefore had seen all there was to see.

Gideros, view of the beach from our restaurant!

One of the team directors, Claudia, was able to drop us off outside of a pansion and restaurant and we began our day of relaxation from there. The restaurant was right on the water with a roof of vines with ripe grapes you could pick off and eat. It overlooked a quiet bay with a few small rowboats out on the calm waters, on the other side of the bay was the beach where we would spend the remainder of the day. Myself and Fiona ordered the fish we had been craving for weeks now and is so famous in the Black Sea, Gwen ordered beef Kofte (meatballs grilled) as she is not a fan of fish. The fish was small mackerel lightly battered and fried, absolute perfection on a plate! It reminded me of all the mackerel I would catch and eat as a kid in Nova Scotia. I would just die for some smoked mackerel right now! After our delicious supper and a quick photoshoot of the scenery we began our walk to the beach… but not before I stopped to change into my bathing suit in the pansion’s bathroom. Now by this point I am very used to peeing in a whole on the ground, so that is not what was so blogworthy about this bathroom visit. However, I did have a guest with me in the toilet, a very tiny and poisonous scorpion! Fiona who used the bathroom after me actually discovered it. I then had to go through my bag which had been sitting on the floor as I changed just to make sure none of his friends decided to come for a ride.

Fiona, me and fishies!

Vines!

As we begun to carry on our way I saw the ground beneath my feet move, inches from stepping on a long snake in sandals. Just our luck! The snakes in this area of Turkey, however, are not poisonous but our multi-legged friend was! The smaller the scorpion the more poisonous the sting!

Our bathroom companion

Although I have managed two weeks of intense hiking and mountain climbing through the Turkish heat, for some reason today the heat got to me and I felt like the road to the beach would never end. We walked the road overlooking the bay until we reached the other side, stopping to take the lovely photo you will see below!

The beach was not nearly as nice as Cide, but it was nice to expore and be somewhere new. Outside of the tourist area we felt a little out of place in our bikinis so we decided to further explore and find a more secluded spot to enjoy the sun and water. I think we drew even more attention to ourselves by scaling and climbing over the large rocks above the beach, we must have looked insane, but since this is what we do every day we work, it seemed quite natural. Eventually we found a nice spot with some large flat rocks to sit on. The water itself was perfect temperature, but visibility was poor and there were hundreds of jellyfish so I was the only one who made it into the waters, and I’ll admit my snorkelling endeavour was fairly short due to all the jellies. However it was just enough to refresh and all in all it was a lovely quiet day off! After our swim we headed home to finish our day with some Limmy’s Show, which has become the official show of the project. I suggest it to anyone who enjoys very random Scottish humour!

Swimming times in Gideros!

That’s all for no folks, next up the awaited post on Extensive survey highlights!

Aurora