Ankara Scribbler: archives (posts from September, October, and November, 2012)
(actually, no posts in September --on vacation).
11/04/2012
Road trip: Istanbul ... Getting there
A trip to Istanbul is An Event ... like, for an American, going to New York if you live in the sticks. I took my Byzantine Art and Archaeology students on a day-long walking tour of the city a few Saturdays ago, and even for me, after years and years, it was a great pleasure. But a trip to Istanbul is not easy. I left Friday morning on an Ulusoy bus, a “royal” (= top of the line), with three very plush seats across, one on the left of the aisle, two on the right. The floor was covered with “laminat,” a thin layer of plywood that imitates a traditional parquet floor. Laminat is now trendy at my university, replacing wall-to-wall carpet.
“You can clean it much more easily,” said Tuğba Hanım, our department secretary. “So much healthier.”
That may be, but still it feels cheap, fake, and uncomfortable.
Flagships of the Ulusoy bus company
Our royal Ulusoy cruised comfortably westward across the Anatolian plateau, eventually entering the nearly 4km long tunnel under the Bolu mountains – an engineering marvel of recent years that cuts an hour or two off the journey. After Düzce, at a much lower altitude, we stopped for lunch at an immense food court. Where to eat? The choices were many. I was attracted by the “Susurluk tost ve ayran evi” (“Susurluk toasted sandwich and ayran house” – ayran is a popular drink of diluted yogurt, slightly salty – especially tasty in warm weather). Susurluk is a town in northwest Turkey between Bursa and Balıkesir which I had never heard of until 1996 when a notorious car crash took place there. Travelling together in the car were: a Parliamentarian, a senior police officer from Istanbul, a right-wing gang leader and contract killer, and his girl friend, a former beauty queen. The member of Parliament survived; the others died. Hollywood could not have dreamed it up better. The implications for Turkish politics of such people travelling together were vastly troubling and have still not been fully elucidated.
Just west of İzmit: a nightmare. Bridge repair work. All traffic from Asia heading for a city of 12 million people was funneled into a single 3-lane highway. For two hours we crept along at a snail’s pace, my plans for late afternoon museum visits down the drain. I inspected adjacent trucks, truck drivers, and cargoes – including several loads of cows, or young castrated bulls, all the same size, en route to meet their Maker. City dwellers like myself rarely encounter living specimens of the meat we eat. It’s unsettling when we do. For a while, at least, vegetarianism looks appealing.
Destination: Istanbul
At the end of the journey, before arriving at a European-side drop-off center in a valley inland from Kasımpaşa, we passed a “Kurban satış ve kesim yeri,” a large area set aside for the ritual sacrifice of sheep and other animals during Kurban Bayramı, the Feast of the Sacrifice, a major Muslim holiday that came this year in late October. The holiday celebrates Abraham’s faithfulness to God even to the point of sacrificing his son, Ishmael (not Isaac, in contrast with the Biblical tradition). As in the Bible, God substitutes a ram for the boy; Abraham had passed the test.
When I lived in downtown Ankara in the 1970s, it was common to see here and there a sacrificed sheep strung up in the front yard of an apartment building, with the doorman (kapıcı) and friends skinning and butchering the animal. Today, in the big cities, the ritual slaughter and its aftermath have been restricted to designated areas, for sanitary reasons and, certainly, to protect the sensitivities of the urban public.
Istanbul pastime
At the Ulusoy drop-off point I transferred to a minibus and soon, after a short ride through Kasımpaşa, the modest neighborhood where Prime Minister Erdoğan grew up, we climbed the hill to our destination, Taksim Square. As much as I love Istanbul, Taksim Square, crossed daily by thousands of people, has always been, ever since I first saw it in 1974, an ugly place, an astonishing failure of urban architectural planning and visual imagination. At one end, though, begins Istiklal Avenue, in late Ottoman times `La Grande Rue de Pera`, still one of the iconic streets of Istanbul, a supremely animated, lively, dynamic, pulsating pedestrians-only promenade (apart from a single old fashioned tramway car) with its incomparable tacky-grand mix of fin-de-siecle classicizing architecture, cafeterias with ready to eat Turkish food, imposing 19th c. embassy buildings now serving as consulates for the Dutch, Russians, French, and Swedes, clothing shops for youth (lots of blue jeans), bookstores (Turkish and English), art galleries, blaring music, the grandiose Ottoman portal of the prestigious Galatasary Lisesi (high school), pastry shops, snack bars, a Starbucks, two Roman Catholic churches, and one mosque. One inch of Istiklal has more excitement than most of Ankara. When the evening weather is nice, the strollers are wall to wall. I arrived at 6 pm, but there were already many people out and about. I pulled out the handle of my rolling suitcase and off I went into the crowd.
10/07/2012
Farewell to a dig house
On Saturday, August 18, Marie-Henriette and I left the Kinet Höyük excavation house for the last time. Irene was with us as was Momtaz, our Persian cat, and we left later than usual, at 11 am instead of 10 am, but the routine was otherwise as it always has been, year after year. The car was loaded, Marie-Henriette confirmed final arrangements with Mustafa Kaya, our site guard, and we said `Good-bye` to him, to his daughter, Halime, our housekeeper, her husband, Çetin, and their daughters. And, to ensure a safe trip, they threw water at the car as we drove out, a Turkish custom enthusiastically embraced by team members, foreign as well as Turkish, right from the start of the project many years ago.
Mustafa Kaya and Marie-Henriette Gates
Marie-Henriette had long before decided that this would be our last season. The time had come to stop the data collection from fieldwork and proceed to the publication of comprehensive, detailed analyses of the results. Without such reports, which disseminate the findings to the scientific world, any archaeological excavation is only destruction: a site would be better untouched. Nine volumes are planned, recording the results concerning different periods, different types of artifacts, and a variety of research themes, written by the two of us and several collaborators. This will take years of quiet, plodding, individual work – quite different from the daily excitement of excavation, with new discoveries shared by many: workmen, students, professors, and random visitors. All too many projects never complete this process. Time and funding are hard to come by when the work is out of the limelight. Arranging for publication will bring its own challenges. Nonetheless, despite these difficulties, we must forge ahead with this second and final stage of the project.
Yağmur labels crates
The last week at the dig house, I was working calmly on my own projects when suddenly, somehow, the atmosphere shifted into high gear and I found myself preparing the inventory of objects that would be sent to the regional museum in Antakya. Before she left at the beginning of the week, Christine had prepared a list of Early Bronze Age objects, the period she is supervising, but the names of the objects needed to be translated into Turkish. While I was doing that, Abby and Marie-Henriette started in on Middle and Late Bronze Age and Medieval items. Then Abby left and Marie-Henriette was called away by other demands. I enlisted Raphael and together we spent the next few days finishing the list, including Iron Age and Hellenistic objects. Raphael went down the shelves, pulling out each object, calling out what it was, its registration number, its find spot, its period (date), and its measurements, while I, perched on a stool, typed this information onto an Excel chart, transforming item name and period of manufacture into Turkish.
We archaeologists have a curious knowledge of Turkish. Certain words that we know never crop up in an Elementary Turkish course. "Ağırşak," for example, which means "spindle whorl" – not that many English speakers would know what a spindle whorl is (= a small pierced disk used in traditional hand spinning of yarn – a regular find in ancient sites).
Fran and Asa sort "bulk metal" (= iron and bronze fragments)
The storeroom was hot and humid, even with electric fans energetically whirring away, and we dripped sweat. Every now and then we would have a beverage break: water (regular or mineral), Gatorade (generously supplied by Abby), or Lipton ‘Ice Tea`. But we finished. Over 500 objects were eventually inventoried, packed into crates, and delivered to the Antakya Museum.
Loading the truck
Some people have asked me if I will miss my summer months at the excavation house. Not really. My days in the excavation trench ended in 2007; since then, I’ve worked at the house on various projects, Kinet-related and other. I won’t miss the humid heat or the group living. And I know the project hasn’t ended, for I have still the obligation to write up the stratigraphy and architectural remains from the entire first millennium BC: the Iron Age and Persian and Hellenistic periods. I’ll be in touch with fellow collaborators and we’ll surely see each other from time to time. I will miss, though, people from the region of Kinet whom I may rarely see again, if at all. Mustafa and his family and Ahmet Bey the cafeteria manager especially, but also Gökhan at the Yakamoz restaurant; the owner of the grocery across the old highway; and people in Dörtyol: the staff of the Soylu Market, the attendants at the Akkoyunlu gas station, Tekin the barber and his colleague who speaks incredibly fast, Kemal İncesu at his stationery shop, and Mehmet, his sons, and colleagues at the hamam.
The last night, we were only six: Fran, Rado, Ali Bey, Irene, Marie-Henriette, and me. Crates of notebooks, drawings, and other items had been loaded on a truck destined for Bilkent. Irene had finished her photographs; Fran Cole, the conservator, had disposed of chemicals in the approved way; and Rado had packed up animal bones for further study. The workrooms were bare. Marie-Henriette’s office, for 15 years chock full, had been emptied; even the metal shelving was disassembled and removed. We ordered pide (a pizza-like dish) for dinner from the nearby Akdeniz restaurant. Did we make a toast? There was still some beer, wine, and rakı, so we must have, but to tell you the truth I can’t remember.
The next morning, Rado and Ali Bey left for the bus station and the long ride to Ankara. Fran had ordered a small truck to take some furniture to her house in Antakya, a file cabinet, a table, some beds, and the collection of English-language paperbacks, and soon she was off. And then it was our turn.
Mustafa asleep in the courtyard of the excavation house
As Mustafa said, long ago, when one student left at the end of a summer season: “Hayal oldu” -- “It has become a dream.”Eylül 2012
Mustafa Kaya and Marie-Henriette Gates
Marie-Henriette had long before decided that this would be our last season. The time had come to stop the data collection from fieldwork and proceed to the publication of comprehensive, detailed analyses of the results. Without such reports, which disseminate the findings to the scientific world, any archaeological excavation is only destruction: a site would be better untouched. Nine volumes are planned, recording the results concerning different periods, different types of artifacts, and a variety of research themes, written by the two of us and several collaborators. This will take years of quiet, plodding, individual work – quite different from the daily excitement of excavation, with new discoveries shared by many: workmen, students, professors, and random visitors. All too many projects never complete this process. Time and funding are hard to come by when the work is out of the limelight. Arranging for publication will bring its own challenges. Nonetheless, despite these difficulties, we must forge ahead with this second and final stage of the project.
Yağmur labels crates
The last week at the dig house, I was working calmly on my own projects when suddenly, somehow, the atmosphere shifted into high gear and I found myself preparing the inventory of objects that would be sent to the regional museum in Antakya. Before she left at the beginning of the week, Christine had prepared a list of Early Bronze Age objects, the period she is supervising, but the names of the objects needed to be translated into Turkish. While I was doing that, Abby and Marie-Henriette started in on Middle and Late Bronze Age and Medieval items. Then Abby left and Marie-Henriette was called away by other demands. I enlisted Raphael and together we spent the next few days finishing the list, including Iron Age and Hellenistic objects. Raphael went down the shelves, pulling out each object, calling out what it was, its registration number, its find spot, its period (date), and its measurements, while I, perched on a stool, typed this information onto an Excel chart, transforming item name and period of manufacture into Turkish.
We archaeologists have a curious knowledge of Turkish. Certain words that we know never crop up in an Elementary Turkish course. "Ağırşak," for example, which means "spindle whorl" – not that many English speakers would know what a spindle whorl is (= a small pierced disk used in traditional hand spinning of yarn – a regular find in ancient sites).
Fran and Asa sort "bulk metal" (= iron and bronze fragments)
The storeroom was hot and humid, even with electric fans energetically whirring away, and we dripped sweat. Every now and then we would have a beverage break: water (regular or mineral), Gatorade (generously supplied by Abby), or Lipton ‘Ice Tea`. But we finished. Over 500 objects were eventually inventoried, packed into crates, and delivered to the Antakya Museum.
Loading the truck
Some people have asked me if I will miss my summer months at the excavation house. Not really. My days in the excavation trench ended in 2007; since then, I’ve worked at the house on various projects, Kinet-related and other. I won’t miss the humid heat or the group living. And I know the project hasn’t ended, for I have still the obligation to write up the stratigraphy and architectural remains from the entire first millennium BC: the Iron Age and Persian and Hellenistic periods. I’ll be in touch with fellow collaborators and we’ll surely see each other from time to time. I will miss, though, people from the region of Kinet whom I may rarely see again, if at all. Mustafa and his family and Ahmet Bey the cafeteria manager especially, but also Gökhan at the Yakamoz restaurant; the owner of the grocery across the old highway; and people in Dörtyol: the staff of the Soylu Market, the attendants at the Akkoyunlu gas station, Tekin the barber and his colleague who speaks incredibly fast, Kemal İncesu at his stationery shop, and Mehmet, his sons, and colleagues at the hamam.
The last night, we were only six: Fran, Rado, Ali Bey, Irene, Marie-Henriette, and me. Crates of notebooks, drawings, and other items had been loaded on a truck destined for Bilkent. Irene had finished her photographs; Fran Cole, the conservator, had disposed of chemicals in the approved way; and Rado had packed up animal bones for further study. The workrooms were bare. Marie-Henriette’s office, for 15 years chock full, had been emptied; even the metal shelving was disassembled and removed. We ordered pide (a pizza-like dish) for dinner from the nearby Akdeniz restaurant. Did we make a toast? There was still some beer, wine, and rakı, so we must have, but to tell you the truth I can’t remember.
The next morning, Rado and Ali Bey left for the bus station and the long ride to Ankara. Fran had ordered a small truck to take some furniture to her house in Antakya, a file cabinet, a table, some beds, and the collection of English-language paperbacks, and soon she was off. And then it was our turn.
Mustafa asleep in the courtyard of the excavation house
As Mustafa said, long ago, when one student left at the end of a summer season: “Hayal oldu” -- “It has become a dream.”Eylül 2012
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