Aphrodisias 1972: a memoir

Aphrodisias 1972: a memoir

Archaeologists rarely write about the conditions of field research. What were the living conditions like? The rooms, the beds, the bathrooms, the food? What was the work schedule? Was the atmosphere congenial? Did the participants get along with each other? What about the locals, who in the Near East so often are hired for the hard labor, on the one hand, and for running the excavation house, on the other? Were they treated with respect? Were they interested in the research?

Archaeologists conduct field work as part of their research projects. After data is collected, the results must be documented, analyzed, and published. This is the scientific aim of archaeology. Without publication, excavations are simply destruction. It goes without saying, therefore, that the attention and efforts of archaeologists are focused on fulfilling these scientific goals. The chronicling of how a project is organized to further these aims has, for the most part, never been considered an essential part of the published record.

            How do we archaeologists, not to mention the public at large, know about how field projects are organized? Personal experience is hugely important: by serving on the staff of an excavation. After that, word of mouth: what fellow students and colleagues tell you about their experiences at other projects. Beyond this network, though, it’s almost impossible to learn what it was like to work on a particular project. Notable exceptions have included Come, Tell Me How You Live, which Agatha Christie wrote about her experiences on excavations in Syria in the 1930s. But not every archaeologist has, like Max Mallowan, a spouse who is a famous, prolific writer. And Christie was not herself an archaeologist, although she certainly helped out during her husband’s excavations.

            I myself have taken part in 27 field seasons, mostly excavations, several study seasons, and one surface survey. There is much to remember; there would be much to record. One season that particularly sticks in my mind, perhaps because it took place at the beginning of my career, but certainly because of its strangeness, was a month spent at Aphrodisias in the summer of 1972.   

(Aphrodisias: Introduction. www.nyu.edu) 

            Aphrodisias, located 100 km inland from the Aegean coast in southwestern Asia Minor, today Turkey, was inhabited from prehistoric times, but achieved particular prominence during the Roman Empire, from the first century BC into the seventh century AD.  After random explorations in the earlier 20th century, excavations on a large scale began in 1961, under the direction of Kenan Erim, a professor of classical archaeology at New York University. 

The place is supremely beautiful.  In 1972, when I worked there, the ruins were a Romantic’s ideal: Roman architectural fragments scattered among trees and bushes, with mountains in the distance. 

(South Agora. The Friends of Aphrodisias Trust. www.aphrodisias.org.uk) 

The small village of Geyre still occupied a good portion of the ancient site. Little by little, the villagers were displaced to a new location off the ancient site; their houses were demolished, to allow excavation to proceed unhindered.

            In addition, the site was already known, even before 1961, as a prolific producer of high quality sculpture, profiting from nearby marble quarries. Nearly 60 years of excavations have confirmed the scientific promise of Aphrodisias: the architecture, the sculpture, the evidence for city development, the finds have all yielded a vivid picture of ancient life in this city.

            I happened to join the 1972 staff by accident.  Machteld Mellink, the distinguished specialist in Anatolian archaeology and professor at Bryn Mawr College, was interested in the prehistoric remains from Aphrodisias. They could potentially contribute much to our understanding of the Aegean region in the Bronze Age, in particular, then poorly known.  Prof. Mellink was keen that Marie-Henriette Carre, a former undergraduate student of hers and participant at her excavations at Karataş-Semayük, Elmalı, join the prehistoric team.  Marie-Henriette was a graduate student in Near Eastern archaeology at Yale. I was a graduate student in Classical Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and was taking a course with Prof. Mellink.  Moreover, Marie-Henriette and I were dating.  So we proposed that we both come to Aphrodisias for the summer excavation season. 

(Kenan Erim.  www.aphrodisias.com) 

            Kenan Erim, who lived in Princeton, came to Bryn Mawr for a meeting with the three of us.  He was very formal, strikingly so for someone who didn’t seem to be very old (in fact he was only 42), spoke with a British accent, and addressed his comments entirely to Prof. Mellink.  His speech struck us as a bit odd -- “My dear Machteld” was a favorite phrase, archaic and quaint to a young American ear – and he was eager to tell her of the injustices done to him.  Rivals, such as George Hanfmann, professor at Harvard and the director of excavations at Sardis (who had begun his project in 1958), had much more success in raising funds, even though Aphrodisias had yielded far more spectacular finds. 

            We left the meeting with conflicting thoughts.  Prof. Erim didn’t appeal as someone we were keen to work with. On the other hand, the site was enticing. Surely the personality of the director couldn’t spoil the experience, I thought. Marie-Henriette hesitated. I, who had as yet not worked at a big excavation project and who had never been to Turkey, was eager to say yes. The opportunity seemed too good to pass up.  And Prof. Mellink was in favor, too.  So we went ahead with our application and were accepted.

            We arrived at the site in June, 1972, a week before the excavations were to begin. On the way, while waiting in the old İzmir bus station for the bus to Aphrodisias, we decided to get married. So we arrived in a state of great joy. Kenan Erim was already there and we fitted into his routine. At dinner, he sat at the head of a long table in a semi-outdoor dining area, roofed, the sides protected against insects with netting. We sat next to him, and we spoke French together. Marie-Henriette had been raised speaking French, thanks to her father, a professor of French, and her French mother, also a professor of French. My French, learned in school, was passable. As for Prof. Erim, he had grown up in Geneva, where his father worked for the League of Nations. After World War II, when his father was appointed to the United Nations, he attended New York University; he obtained his PhD at Princeton. He had never lived in Turkey, in fact, at least not for extended periods of time. As a result, he felt alienated from Turkey, at least from the Republic.  Indeed, he could trace his ancestry back through the Ottoman Empire to Byzantine times.  I am not Turkish, he would say; I am Ottoman. My Turkish was non-existent at the time, so I couldn’t judge, or even think to ask, to what degree his Turkish was tinged with pre-Republican (pre-language reform) vocabulary and grammar. But with his British accent, he hadn’t integrated into American society either, despite having lived there for many years. Yet he felt that as a Turk he was looked down upon in America. He didn’t really belong in one place or another, and this was clearly a source of discomfort.

            The excavation house was located inside a walled compound. An attractive, traditional two-storied village house was the main residence. A staircase led up to an open veranda on the upper floor. Prof. Erim had his room to one side. I was housed in one of the rooms at the rear, as were the other single men and older women. Marie-Henriette, and all unmarried younger women, were given rooms in a separate building behind. This annex was locked at night: hanky-panky was to be prevented at all costs.

Cocktails were served on the veranda at 7:00 pm. Prof. Erim had a record player. He would play records at cocktail hour, and sometimes after dinner. He was very fond of certain music, which would correspond, we would learn, to his moods. Italian movie soundtracks from the 1950s were favorites (as a graduate student at Princeton, he had taken part in the department’s excavations at Morgantina, on Sicily): comfort music, indicators of a good mood. We also heard Zarah Leander, a Swedish singer with a deep voice much loved by Germans in the Nazi period. Dinner was served at 8:00 pm, which is late for an archaeological excavation at which work typically begins early in the morning. The food was very good. But dinner would be served tepid, never hot, for the cooks had prepared everything much earlier. One outstanding dessert was a mountain of meringues with chocolate sauce, “the king of Sweden’s favorite dessert,” we were told.  It was spectacular, it was extravagant . . .  among ourselves we staff members called it “the giant pimple.” 

The site was yielding great amounts of high quality Roman sculpture, which would be kept in the compound. Newly found sculptures – stone heads of Romans – would be placed on the dining table in front of Prof. Erim, for his contemplation. They were his trusted friends. 

(Photo, dated 1971, found on Instagram: #kenanerim) 

            In the week that followed our arrival, the rest of the staff members trickled in. Lütfi Bey was the government representative. A young man, speaking no English or French, and with the innate respect for authority that characterizes Turkish society, he duly deferred to Prof. Erim. Most staff members were graduate students in archaeology in American universities, like us: John Pollini and his wife, Phyllis; Phil Stanley; Ron Marchese; Barbara Burrell; Barbara Bohen; Mark Lesky; Patty Gerstenblith. Several would go on to distinguished careers. A few specialists arrived, too: Barbara Kadish; Karen Flinn; Fred Lauritsen (a classical numismatist). Some were newcomers, others had worked at Aphrodisias in previous summers. All took places at the dining table next to us and on down the table. But no one presumed to sit next to Prof. Erim, apart from Lütfi Bey. We, as newcomers, wondered whether or not the seating arrangements were pre-assigned. We continued to sit next to him, and to speak French – both facts which, we would later learn, caused suspicion among certain American staff members. Were we collaborators, telling tales on the others? Such divisions were encouraged. Prof. Erim would tell us, in French, his negative opinions about the table manners of others: “So-and-so is eating olives with his fingers!” We went along, not protesting such remarks, and diligently ate our olives with our forks, our peaches with knife and fork (my Californian habit was to hold a peach in my hand and eat it unpeeled), doing our best to conform to his standards of etiquette.

            After a week the excavations got under way. The work schedule was a traditional one: 7:00 am – 12:00 pm; a lengthy break for lunch and a siesta; then back in the field from 3:00-6:00 pm, six days each week. The first morning opened with a traditional animal sacrifice for good luck, with a stew cooked and served to all the workmen. To fend off criticism of maintaining such a custom, Prof. Erim indicated he wasn’t in favor, but for the workmen it was essential.

            Marie-Henriette and I were assigned to trenches on the slopes of the Acropolis mound. This artificial hill, made up of the remnants of prehistoric settlements, was cut away on one side in the first century BC for the installation of a theater, which had been excavated in the 1960s. 

(Air view of central Aphrodisias. Roman theater partially in view, lower right.  Our trenches were just to the left, behind the theater seating, lower center).

(Photo: Aphrodisias Excavations: Aphrodisias.classics.ox.ac.uk)

The aim of our explorations was to find evidence for pre-Roman Aphrodisias. Jacques Bordaz, a professor at Columbia, had initiated the research into prehistoric Aphrodisias, at the site and in the vicinity. In 1967, exploration of these early settlements was assigned to Barbara Kadish, a 50-ish New Yorker married to an artist, Reuben Kadish. Barbara was a warm, friendly person, fully committed to this research. The prehistoric (pre-Roman) investigations consisted of these trenches on the Acropolis hill, but also work at an outlying site, called Pekmez, where she worked with Karen Flinn. She spent little time with us, and Prof. Erim himself never came by to comment on our excavation techniques or our finds (his interests were strictly Roman). We worked together with Ron Marchese and Patty Gerstenblith, graduate students in archaeology at NYU and Harvard. A small group of workmen were assigned to us; they did the manual labor, with picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows. 

Bronze Age team, Aphrodisias 1972

Standing, left to right: Karen Flinn, Barbara Kadish, three workmen, Mark Lesky, workman, Charles Gates, workman, Marie-Henriette Carre, Ron Marchese, workman.  Seated/crouching, left to right: Patty Gerstenblith, six workmen 

I remember being left to my own devices. Although I dutifully followed the instructions given to me, because I had had very little experience in field archaeology, I really didn’t know what I was doing: how to make decisions about how to organize the digging, what to look for, and how to record our activities. I kept a notebook, but I have not seen it since, so I have no idea if my records made sense. But my time at Aphrodisias turned out to be so short, only two weeks in the trenches before the storm broke, I shouldn’t be too hard on myself.  Had I stayed the entire summer, no doubt a method would have been established and I would have felt positive about what I had learned. 

            The storm broke after our third week, after two weeks of excavating. On Saturday, the weekly day off, students and senior staff members were expected to leave the dig house and go on an edifying excursion. On this particular Saturday, a bus was arranged to take us to visit Miletus and Didyma, major Greco-Roman sites on the Aegean coast. But it was the day off, and we wanted some respite from archaeology, too. We stopped for a few hours in Kuşadası, the main coastal resort town in the area, to do some shopping and just walk around. 

            When we returned to Aphrodisias, the bus driver reported the change in plan. Prof. Erim was furious. At dinner he exploded. We weren’t serious! How dare we not spend all our time in the educational activity that had been planned? Barbara Kadish responded in kind. It was our day off; why couldn’t we decide how to spend it? The two were shouting at each other. Barbara was at least ten years older than Prof. Erim, and her arguments made sense.  Why should he control us as if we were schoolchildren? Finally Prof. Erim said to Barbara, “Get out!” 

She said, “Do you mean for good, Kenan?” 

“Just go to your room,” he said, waving her off.

The rest of us were stunned.  But what could we say? The next days were tense. Prof. Erim was clearly mortified because he had lost control of himself in public. He had lost face, and Barbara Kadish was responsible. Peace was not made, though. Prof. Erim said nothing to defuse the dispute. Barbara refused to appear at meals with him; she had food brought to her room. Moreover, she had a heart condition which meant a weekly check at a clinic in Nazilli, the nearest town. That week, the ride to Nazilli was cancelled. 

Prof. Erim decided that the Bronze Age team, Barbara and her team members, were troublemakers.  We had to go.  Our work would stop; he would close down our trenches. The people affected included Marie-Henriette and me, Karen, and Patty.  Ron, one of our team, could stay, though. NYU was counting this summer season as a course for Prof. Erim. Ron was registered for the course; Prof. Erim could not afford to let this student go.

Prof. Erim never told us directly of his plan. He disliked confronting people with bad news. He either exploded, as he had at that Saturday dinner, or he related to others with formal politeness. He told the foremen on the site that after a certain day, workmen would no longer report for work in our Acropolis trenches. 

We couldn’t leave right away, because our passports were being processed for residence permits.  The atmosphere during that week of waiting for the passports was very strange, almost surreal.  If Patty Gerstenblith dared to speak to Prof. Erim, he would give her the back of his hand, he declared. Fellow graduate students, even those working in the Roman period who were not being thrown out, began to have strange dreams. In one such dream, a stone head, on the dining table, began to mock Prof. Erim. He took a hammer and smashed it, but the fragments danced in the air and continued to laugh at him.

During that week, two boys, the sons of a US consular official in Istanbul, were visiting. The younger boy noted that Prof. Erim went to a particular shower, at the end of the bank of showers we all used.  “Does Professor Erim have his own shower?” he asked.  Yes, he was told, with a hot water heater.  The rest of us had sun-heated water.  “That man is a snob,” the boy said. We smiled.

I can’t remember clearly how I spent that last week. We were no longer sitting next to Prof. Erim at the dining table. We never exchanged harsh words – but we probably did not speak much at all with him. 

Eventually our passports came.  It was time for us to leave.  We walked out the gate.  From the second floor veranda, gripping the rail like a captain on his sinking ship, Prof. Erim shouted at Marie-Henriette, in French, “At least you could have had the courtesy to say good-by, Miss Carre!”

It’s true ... but why should she have? Why had not he, the project director, made an effort to discuss, even defuse, the tense situation he had created?  The director sets the tone on an excavation, not a 22-year-old student.

Marie-Henriette managed to say, “Thank you for everything!” and off we went. This was the last time we ever spoke with him. He would die in Ankara in November, 1990, in the residence of the British ambassador and his wife, only a few months after we had taken up teaching positions at Bilkent University.

That December, a delegation from New York University came to Ankara to ensure that the government permit for the Aphrodisias project would stay with NYU. James McCredie, the director of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, presented, at a cocktail to which we were invited, the heir apparent, the “veliaht” (crown prince) as the Turkish newspapers labeled him: Bert Smith, a young specialist in Roman sculpture who had been working at Aphrodisias, looking nervous as we all eyed him with great curiosity. He would indeed become the new director of the Aphrodisias excavations, and has continued as such, with great success, to the present day.

Fortunately, most field seasons are not as difficult as our month at Aphrodisias. The following summer we would have a completely opposite experience at Godin Tepe, in western Iran, a Bronze and Iron Age site investigated by T. Cuyler Young, Jr. (University of Toronto).  For three months we excavated in Bronze Age levels. Prof. Young was outgoing, at ease with himself and others, and a superb teacher of field methods. At Godin Tepe I learned how to dig – strategy, execution of a plan, managing the workmen, and recording intentions, processes, and results in my field notebook – the basis for my future field work in Turkey, at Gritille and especially at Kinet Höyük. I enjoyed every moment.  

Archaeology in Turkey: The American Contribution (Part 2)

·        Illustrations are taken from the internet, unless otherwise noted.

·        For an earlier publication on this subject, see:  Charles Gates, "American Archaeologists in Turkey: Intellectual and Social Dimensions," Journal of the American Studies Association of Turkey 4 (1996):  47-68.

Since World War II 

When archaeological activity resumed after the hiatus of the war years, we see that the traditional kind of project continued: large-scale excavations with a focus on the Greeks and the Romans.  A new interest, however, arose in the Anatolian Iron Age peoples contemporary with early Greeks, notably the Phrygians and the Lydians.  The University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania began excavations in 1950 at Gordion, under the direction of Rodney Young.  A search for the Phrygian levels was a major aim. 

In 1958, George Hanfmann (of Harvard) and Henry Detweiler (of Cornell) resumed American work at Sardis.  Here, the Lydians were targeted. 

Kenan Erim, a professor at New York University, began full-scale excavations at Aphrodisias in 1961.  In contrast to Young and Hanfmann, his interests were purely Classical, focused on the great monuments of art and architecture, aims of the sort that Clarke, Bacon, and Butler would have appreciated.  Although the site would also yield prehistoric remains, its reputation is due in particular to the spectacular and abundant finds of Roman sculpture.

All three men (Young, Hanfmann, and Erim) were trained in the Classics, in philology first of all, in Classical art and archaeology secondarily.  Young and Erim, at least, were conservative in their aims.  They featured a historical-descriptive approach, and in the field used large crews to clear whatever individual architectural monuments might fortuitously emerge into view.  Such procedures typified the discipline of Classical Archaeology as practiced in the Mediterranean region until recently.  All three projects – Gordion, Sardis, and Aphrodisias – are still active today, even if the aims and methods of research have evolved under new generations of directors. 

Traditional approaches were applied in prehistoric archaeology, too.  Machteld Mellink, a Dutch scholar trained in the Classics, joined Hetty Goldman’s post-World War II team at Gözlu Kule, Tarsus, as in fact did George Hanfmann.  Immediately fascinated by Anatolian prehistory, Mellink went on to become a leading expert in this field.  A professor at Bryn Mawr, her influence among archaeologists working in Turkey, both Turkish and foreign, cannot be overestimated.  From 1955 to 1993, her annual newsletter, “Archaeology in Asia Minor” (later “Archaeology in Anatolia”) published in the American Journal of Archaeology was the internationally consulted summary of yearly archaeological activity in Turkey.  Beginning in 1963, Mellink conducted her own research project, the excavation of an Early Bronze Age settlement at Karataş-Semayük near Elmalı (northwest of Antalya).

Unique among American projects was surely the exploration of Nemrud Dağı by Theresa Goell.  Not an academic, Goell was nonetheless a fully trained and fully committed archaeologist.  When Goldman fell ill during the 1948 Tarsus season, Goell took over.  Soon after, she visited Nemrud Dağı and decided she had to learn more about it.  The site was remote; conditions were difficult.  Nonetheless she persevered, from 1953 to 1973.  The full results were published after her death in a really wonderful book*.  But we have a priceless record of the extraordinary experience, for her brother Kermit filmed the work and the daily life, and her niece, Martha Goell Lubell, put it altogether – life story, films, research -- in a fabulous one-hour documentary, “Queen of the Mountain.” 

* Donald H. Sanders (ed.). Nemrud Dağı: The Hierothesion of Antiochus I of Commagene. Results of the American Excavations directed by Theresa B. Goell. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996.

New trends

The above projects continued methods and scientific goals that had their roots in pre-World War II archaeology.  Beginning especially in the 1960s, several new factors began to complement such traditional approaches.  Some have affected archaeologists of all nationalities, whereas others have concerned American archaeologists in particular.  I would like to present six such trends.

1) The discovery of Neolithic cultures in Turkey.  

Already attested in Mesopotamia, Neolithic settlements were revealed in Turkey in the 1950s and early 1960s thanks especially to the British excavations at Hacılar and Çatalhöyük.  During the Neolithic period people made the important transition from hunter-gatherer societies to settled communities, with control of food sources (domestication of plants and animals), development of fixed villages and towns, and new technologies such as pottery, with metallurgy to follow.  Americans would eventually take part in illuminating this important era: Robert and Linda Braidwood in a joint Turkish-American-German project at Çayönü (near Diyarbakır); Jacques Bordaz at Suberde and Erbaba (west-central Turkey); and, in the early 1990s, Michael Rosenberg at Hallan Çemi (near Batman). 

2) The development of underwater, or nautical, archaeology

This was due to an American initiative.  When the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania was contacted about the likelihood of investigating a shipwreck discovered off Cape Gelidonya, southwest of Antalya, Rodney Young, chair of the Classical Archaeology department, assigned graduate student George Bass to the project.  Bass learned how to scuba dive in a local YMCA pool, then went in 1960 to direct the excavation of this wreck of ca. 1200 BC, then the earliest ship known anywhere in the world.  He published the results for his PhD dissertation.  Bass went on to found the Institute of Nautical Archaeology.  Based at Texas A & M University, the Institute has undertaken excavations throughout the world.  In Turkey, with its important regional center in Bodrum, the Institute and its members have cooperated with the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology and Turkish colleagues in the excavation and conservation of several more shipwrecks in Turkish Aegean and Mediterranean waters.

News flash: This summer, a team from INA directed by Cemal Pulak, in partnership with Hakan Öniz (Underwater Research Center, Kemer), plan to begin excavation of wreck located near the Gelidonya wreck.  It is tentatively dated to the 16th or 15th century BC, even earlier than the Uluburun wreck (14th c. BC). But the remains are very deep, at 55m, so the diving will be difficult. 

3) Scientific analyses  

Scientific analyses of excavated materials now include a wide range of methods.  Among these is dendrochronology.  Here, too, as for George Bass, another dissertation prepared for the Department of Classical Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania led to the creation of a distinctive research niche.  Peter Kuniholm began by examining the wood used in Phrygian tumulus burials at Gordion. From the growth rings of these logs, he was able to construct a relative chronology, following the model developed for the archaeology of the southwestern United States.  Since the 1970s, Kuniholm (long based at Cornell, now at the University of Arizona) has taken countless samples of wood, especially from Turkey and Greece, from periods ancient, medieval, and modern, and extended his chronology back 6000 years.  In the process he created an awareness of the value of dendrochronology that otherwise would not have existed.

4) The influence of Anthropology 

You will have noticed that I have made no mention of a Department of Archaeology.  That’s because in American universities there are no Archaeology departments (with a few exceptions).  Archaeology is typically taught in departments of Classics, Art History, Oriental/Near Eastern Studies, and Anthropology. 

Virtually all American archaeologists presented so far were trained in Classics, or perhaps art history or oriental studies, the dominant mother fields for the study of ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern art and cultures.  Archaeology as practiced in anthropology departments has been heavily influenced by developments in cultural or social anthropology.  Moreover, it has concentrated on other regions of the world, such as the New World and pre-Classical Europe.  Anthropological archaeologists tend to develop theoretical aims for their research, questions they would like to answer through excavation, whereas the traditional Classical archaeologists pick a site because of its interesting historical background or art and architectural remains, and they study whatever happens to come up, formulating generalizations accordingly.  The quality of work of both schools can be high; it is the approach that is different, and of course the whole background of study can differ. 

After World War II, the archaeological component of the field of anthropology took up an interest in the ancient Near East.  Robert Dyson of the University Museum began his highly influential excavations at Hasanlu in northwestern Iran in 1957, and over the next two decades trained many students who went on to prominent positions in Old World archaeology.  Iran in particular become focus of research for American archaeologists educated in anthropology.  After the fall of the Shah in 1979, the new regime shut down all foreign archaeological work.  Americans who had built their careers in Iran were suddenly dispossessed. These intellectual refugees sought new areas.  Afghanistan was closed because of the Soviet invasion (also in 1979).  Iraq and Syria welcomed some, although political tensions with the United States created underlying uncertainties for such projects, and the 1991 Gulf War closed Iraq to American and European excavations.  I hardly need to remind you that subsequent turmoil in the region has created grave challenges for Near Eastern archaeology and for cultural heritage preservation.

To return to 1979: Turkey proved to be the most sympathetic home.  Just as Turkey welcomed German refugees in the 1930s, so too it welcomed the scientific refugees from the political turbulence in the east. All pursued projects in Anatolian prehistory, many in the southeastern quadrant of Turkey, the area closest to those regions heretofore familiar.

A unique confrontation of the two schools of American archaeology in the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East was to be found at Gordion, where Mary Voigt, a Dyson student and former excavator in Iran, directed excavations from 1987 to 2012, while then project director G. Kenneth Sams, a student of Rodney Young and veteran Gordionite, represented the school of archaeologists trained in Classics and art history.  From all reports this was a stimulating encounter.  

5) Large-scale salvage projects and surface surveys

The building of dams on the Euphrates River gave rise to two major archaeological salvage campaigns, both supervised by Middle East Technical University: the Keban project (Elazığ province) and the Atatürk and Karababa dams project in Adıyaman and Urfa provinces.  Government permits, not always easily obtained, were freely granted for those areas to be flooded.  The resulting projects proved important training grounds for archaeologists of all nationalities.  American salvage excavations in the early 1980s at Gritille and Kurban Höyük offered excavations experience to many, including anthropological archaeologists who in previous decades would have trained in Iran.  Dam projects on the Tigris and its tributaries, still ongoing, have continued these excavation opportunities, with American projects presented among them. 

A word on surface surveys.  A surface survey is the exploration of landscapes, without excavation, to record cultural remains.  Although surveys have long been conducted, procedures became more systematic from the 1980s on.  Today, scientific analyses are often part of the methods used, such as remote sensing.  At Gordion, for example, the survey of areas extending far from the main mounds have dramatically changed our understanding of the extent of the ancient city.

6) Medieval archaeology

Medieval archaeology is an up-and-coming field.  Traditionally, medieval remains were dismissed, as being of little interest.  Many classical cities continued to be inhabited in the Middle Ages.  Archaeologists interested in the Romans, Greeks, and earlier peoples, impatient to get to these periods, often brushed away the medieval remains as quickly as possible.  For Medievalists – whom we might sub-divide into Byzantine and Islamic specialists, this latter further divided into Seljuk and Ottoman specialists – architecture was all-important.  Excavations were done to learn more about the big buildings: churches, kervansarays, palaces, and other remains of civic and military architecture.  The detritus of medieval daily life was not of interest.

Fortunately, attitudes are changing.  Americans involved in this transformation include Scott Redford, a specialist in the Seljuks; Asa Eger, interested in early Islamic forts on the Byzantine-Syrian frontier; and Robert Ousterhout, a Byzantine architectural historian whose research on rock-cut settlements in Medieval Cappadocia has revolutionized notions of society in that region. 

Lastly, a tribute to the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) 

In 1964, a consortium of American and Canadian universities founded ARIT in order to assist North American scholars doing research on Turkey in the humanities and social sciences in all periods, ancient to modern.  The original Istanbul center was soon supplemented by a branch in Ankara.  Funds provided by the subscribing universities are used to maintain the headquarters, including libraries open to the public, and to provide fellowships for scholars from the supporting universities.  Several US government agencies have granted money for various purposes, including fellowships specifically for American citizens.  The fellowship programs have grown, despite ever-present budget cuts from the US government.  The privately funded Hanfmann and Mellink fellowships allow Turkish scholars under the age of 40 to pursue research outside the country.  The Coulson-Cross Aegean fellowships allow Turkish scholars to do research in Greece, and Greek scholars to do research in Turkey.  And short-term scholarships have been awarded to Turkish scholars to pursue research inside Turkey. These grants, whatever their amount, have been much appreciated because such resources are otherwise scarce.  Although the ARIT branches do not match the centers in Athens or Rome in the size of their libraries and facilities, the Institute has played a highly appreciated support role for hundreds of scholars, North American, Turkish, and other. 

Because this is an ARIT evening, I would like to end with a salute and a thank you, to our three ARIT leaders.  Antony Greenwood, the long-time director of Istanbul-ARIT, will be retiring at the end of this month after 36 years.  Our very own Elif Denel, director of Ankara-ARIT, is in the center.  And, at the right, is Brian Rose, the president of ARIT, as well as the director of the Gordion Project. 

(To the audience)  Many thanks for coming this evening!

Archaeology in Turkey: The American Contribution (Part 1)

·        Illustrations are taken from the internet, unless otherwise noted.

·        For an earlier publication on this subject, see:  Charles Gates, "American Archaeologists in Turkey: Intellectual and Social Dimensions," Journal of the American Studies Association of Turkey 4 (1996):  47-68.

Let me start with an anniversary.  Fifty years ago this summer, I first set foot in Turkey.  I had just finished my sophomore year, my second year in college; I had changed my major to Archaeology; and I was in Beirut, enrolled in the summer school at the American University of Beirut.  Mid-summer, I flew to Istanbul for one week, to see what it was like. I had never before met a Turkish person, as far as I know; I couldn’t say “evet” or “hayır;” and I stayed in a dreadful hotel in Eminönü – I remember having to prop up the window with a book -- but I had a wonderful week, nonetheless.  I could never have imagined, though, that Turkey would one day become my home, and that I would take my place in a long line of Americans active in archaeological research in this country.

(Photo: author)

It is about these American archaeologists that I would like to speak this evening.  Who were they?   Why did they come here?  What did they accomplish?  I can’t mention each and every name, but I would like to give a sampling, to show the diverse interests and approaches American scholars have had, and to identify some notable contributions that American archaeologists have made to the study of the ancient cultures of this country.

I should state here that I will concentrate on work done within the borders of today’s Turkish Republic, with only passing reference to research in adjacent areas once held by the Ottoman Empire. 

American archaeologists in Turkey before World War I 

The first American project was at Assos, in northwestern Turkey.  From 1881 to 1883, Architects Joseph Clarke and Francis Bacon conducted excavations here, on behalf of the Archaeological Institute of America.  1881 – a date easy for us to remember, because that’s the year Atatürk was born.  The photographer for the expedition was John Henry Haynes, whose important career in Anatolia, and Mesopotamia, long forgotten, has been rediscovered in recent years by Robert Ousterhout. 

For a first foray into Classical archaeology, Assos seems a surprising choice.  It was a remote town that figured little in ancient history.  But the interest of Clarke and Bacon was Greek architecture, and Assos contains an early and unusual temple of Athena, ca. 540-520 BC, spectacularly located on a hilltop overlooking the Aegean and the island of Lesbos/Mitilini.  In a region dominated by the Ionic order of Greek architecture, this temple is a surprise: it’s built in the Doric order; it has sculpted metopes, also a Doric trait; but it also has a frieze above the columns, which is relief sculpture in the Ionic manner.  The finds from these years are divided between the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Istanbul Archaeological Museum, and the Louvre.  

The intellectual background

 Why this choice?  And why explore ancient remains at all?  To answer these questions, let’s have a look at the larger intellectual background of the 19th century. 

Scientific archaeology began in Turkey in the second half of the 19th century under the influence of European scholarship.  Coloring this was a long-standing interest in the ancient Greeks and Romans.  Classical culture had been known throughout the Middle Ages, of course, with Latin as the liturgical language of Western Christianity and as the common language of educated people.  From the Renaissance on, Roman and indeed all Classical culture continued to be valued for its moral and political authority.  As a result, Latin especially, but also Greek were widely studied, even in Protestant areas, well into the 20th century. 

In addition to the long-standing interest in ancient literature, chance finds of Roman sculpture during the Italian Renaissance contributed to the growing fascination with the material remains of antiquity.  One thinks especially of “Laocoon and his sons,” the dramatic Hellenistic-Roman statue group discovered in Rome in 1506.  Collections of Classical objects were formed; and at Pompeii, organized explorations began in 1748 and have continued to the present day.  

The influence of Greek texts reminds us of Heinrich Schliemann, a rich German businessman, who, fascinated by the ancient stories of the Trojan War, set out to prove their veracity.  Led to the site of Hisarlık by Frank Calvert, a member of an expatriate British business family in Çanakkale, Schliemann began excavations there in 1871 and achieved spectacular results.  I wonder, can we claim him as an American archaeologist?  He had obtained US citizenship by this point, and Calvert did serve as an honorary US consul.  But this might be a bit of a stretch.

Back to our larger picture.  The Ottoman Empire controlled lands once key provinces of ancient Greek and Roman civilization.  Because of restrictions and rigors of travel, visitors from Western Europe were few before the later 18th century.  When European travellers did make the trip and report on their findings, the impact was tremendous.  Italy was long familiar to westerners, but now the specifically Greek component of the Classical world was being revealed.

In the 19th century, European travellers continued to describe ancient sites in Anatolia, and make drawings of the monuments.  In addition, they often took objects away, actual examples of Classical art, whether or not official permits were granted.  Ottoman authorities had paid scant attention to such activities.  This is not surprising, for the Latin and Greek languages and Classical cultures naturally enough did not feature in the Islamic-oriented education of Ottoman officials or resonate in their daily lives.  Only with the quickening of interest in European culture from the 1850s on did the Ottoman intelligentsia develop along with Europeans a curiosity toward the antiquities of their lands.

Sultan Abdulmejid and his son-in-law Fethi Ahmet Pasha began a collection of antiquities in 1845, the basis for the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul.  With the appointment in 1881 – again, our fateful year of 1881 -- of Osman Hamdi Bey as director, the museum moved into a new era of expansion and activity, culminating in the opening of the present museum building in 1891.  Laws regulating archaeological activities were issued first in 1874, then revised in 1884. This last set, which included a prohibition on the export of antiquities, continued in effect with minor revisions until 1973.

To return to the exploration of Assos:  What was the immediate American context for these excavations?  In the United States, the institutional framework for the study of archaeology, Classical and other, was being put into place at this very time.  The Archeological Institute of America was founded in 1879.  Although its interests were global, the Mediterranean basin would eventually become its focus.  The two major research centers for Classical Studies were soon to come: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens (founded in 1881) and the “American School of Classical Studies” in Rome, in 1895, eventually to become the American Academy in Rome.

Note that Istanbul, although a major historical center in the larger southeastern European region, was not yet an important center for research into Classical or any other branch of antiquity.

Other Old World civilizations well represented within the territory of the Ottoman Empire were also much studied, by Americans as well as others. Texts were always the key, just as Greek and Latin texts had fueled interest in Classical cultures.  The Bible stimulated archaeological exploration in Palestine.  Indeed, in 1899, the AIA founded the American School of Oriental Study and Research in Palestine, eventually to become the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR).  In Iraq and Syria, the decipherment, in the mid to late 19th century, of Akkadian and Sumerian allowed a deeper understanding of Mesopotamian cultures.  Although the the rediscovery of the Hittites grew out of an interest in the Biblical world and the Ancient Near East, French and then German explorations at Boğazköy/ Hattusa, the Hittite capital, were given new impetus by the decipherment of the Hittite language in the early 20th century.  And in Egypt, whose ancient writing system was deciphered in the early 19th century, the study of texts and well-preserved architecture and art was well advanced by World War I.  Each of these areas would become a specialized field of study.

After Assos, the next American project in today’s Turkey was at Sardis, where Howard Crosby Butler of Princeton University, directed excavations from 1910-1914, at the invitation of Osman Hamdi Bey.   Butler, an architectural historian, had already investigated Late Roman sites in Syria.  Although Sardis was a major city in the Roman Empire, its earlier history was well known from Herodotus and other ancient writers.  During the Iron Age Sardis was the capital of the Lydian kingdom.  The Lydians were a native Anatolian people, even if much influenced by their Greek neighbors and subjects.  Butler’s aim was to get information about the contribution of such non-Greek Near Eastern peoples to Classical art and architecture.  But as it so happened, his work focused on exposing the huge Hellenistic-Roman Temple of Artemis, as well as over 1000 tombs in nearby cliffs.  The project was stopped by the outbreak of World War I.  Butler returned briefly in 1922, but died later that year.  American research at Sardis would not resume until 1958.

Between the two World Wars

After World War I, new excavations on Greco-Roman sites were begun by American teams: short-lived projects at Colophon, in the Aegean coastal territory briefly occupied by Greece, and at Pisidian Antioch, near Yalvaç; and a major campaign in the 1930s at Antioch-on-the-Orontes (today’s Antakya), then in the French-occupied Sanjak of Alexandretta, under the sponsorship of Princeton University.  

The aim of this last project was to reveal the city of Antioch, one of the four great cities of the Roman Empire, from Hellenistic to medieval times.  This goal was believed possible because in the 1930s, ancient Antioch was overlain by only a small modern city – unlike Rome or Constantinople/Istanbul.  It quickly became clear that very deep silt deposits from the Orontes River concealed the ancient city.  Quick and satisfying results were thus difficult to obtain. In the end, after the villas of suburban Daphne began yielding one fine mosaic after another, the excavators made a virtue of necessity and, giving up on the vast deep soundings, concentrated on the mosaics.  Some of these spectacular mosaics are on display in the Antakya Archaeological Museum, in the Louvre, and, in the United States, in museums at Princeton, Baltimore, and Worcester, MA. 

The inter-war period was particularly notable, though, for the American entry into the prehistoric and pre-Classical field.  

At Troy, Carl Blegen of the University of Cincinnati, taking a break from his prolific research in Greece, excavated from 1932 to 1938, supplementing the earlier findings of Schliemann and his assistant and successor, Wilhelm Dörpfeld.  The Library at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and one of the main libraries at the University of Cincinnati are named in his honor. 

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago was founded in 1919 – yes, this great research center is celebrating its centennial this year – founded by the Egyptologist James Breasted with financing from John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to promote research into the cultures of the Ancient Near East and Egypt.  The Institute sponsored teams that conducted important surveys in central Anatolia and excavations at Alişar Höyük (near Yozgat) under the direction of a German archaeologist and adventurer, Hans Henning von der Osten, and in the Amuq Plain, northeast of Antakya, by Robert Braidwood.  

In 1935, Hetty Goldman, soon to be appointed professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, began excavations at Gözlü Kule, the prehistoric settlement at Tarsus.  The results proved seminal for the understanding of Bronze and Iron Age cultures in Anatolia.  Goldman, first at Colophon in 1922, then at Tarsus, was the first American woman to direct an archaeological excavation in Turkey.  Much credit must to to Bryn Mawr, Goldman’s alma mater, the small but distinguished women’s college whose perennially strong programs in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology have encouraged many to enter the field.   The Tarsus excavations were carried out from 1935 to 1938, with two post-war seasons in 1947 and 1948.  As we shall see, those post-war seasons included staff members who would go on to direct their own excavation projects in the 1950s and beyond. 

By 1939, German archaeological research in Turkey was active and influential.  In 1929, the German Archaeological Institute had established a center in Istanbul to further its research projects.  The large projects at Pergamon, Miletos, and Boğazköy/Hattusha – to which we might add (in the German-speaking world) the Austrian excavations at Ephesus, which began in 1895 -- had already uncovered much and published well.  In addition, Istanbul and Ankara Universities were organized on German models.  

The relation with Germany had another dimension as well, one that would affect the United States.  In 1933, the Nazi regime expelled Jewish academics.  Many of these scholars, together with non-Jewish dissidents, would be welcomed in Turkey and given university appointments in Istanbul and Ankara.  Among them was Hittitologist Hans Güterbock, who joined the staff of Ankara University.  Like many, he began by lecturing in German with translation into Turkish, but eventually was able to give the lectures himself in Turkish.  After the war, this community dispersed, some leaving voluntarily, others the victims of a nationalist reaction in 1948 that led to the dismissal of these foreign professors.  Several eventually found positions in the United States.  Güterbock, for example, after a short stint in Sweden, was hired by the Oriental Institute.  He would eventually serve as ARIT president from 1969 to 1977, and remained a dedicated board member for many years beyond.