We arrived tired but with luggage intact at the Diyarbakir airport just before midnight on Thursday night. Chelsea and I joined two of our team members, Valentina and Hilary, in the Istanbul airport after a somewhat mad dash through from the customs hall to the domestic terminal.
We were met at the airport in the regional capital by our long-term driver, Mehmet, and two of our team who had arrived earlier via bus from Ankara, Willis and Hayley. If one has the time, the bus is really the way to travel in Turkey. The bus system is cheap, the buses are comfortable (i.e., air-conditioned), and the scenery is spectacular as one goes east from Istanbul and the coast, across the high plateau and into the rugged mountains of the east. Flying is a lot quicker! We had a short wait for one more of our crew, Paola, before driving through the dark down the familiar road to our field camp in the village of Tepe.
The field camp is a series of three buildings owned by the Ministry of Agriculture. We rent all three buildings (but not the grain storage silos) for the two months or so that we are in the field. Below is a picture of one of the buildings. By archaeological standards, this is a luxury accomodation: running water, indoor toilets (although with a manual flush system) and electricity. Well, at least some of the time. In fact, this morning the electricity went out. This is not an unusual occurence, but normally it is out for just a few hours, often less than an hour. Today, however, it stayed off for 11 hours. We had our internet set up and running this morning, and I was eager to check the blog when all the power went out. Such is village life in southeastern Turkey. The entire village was out of electricity as work was done at a local power station, we’re told.
The village has an official population of around 10,000, but it seems unlikely to me that this is accurate; I would estimate maybe 3,000. There is a single main street with houses set behind either side for a few blocks. There is a lot of new construction in the village this year, a new hospital being built with European funding, and a whole row of old shops along the main street had been demolished and new buildings were already rising in their place. I’m told that the price of cotton is high this year (well over 300% of last year’s price) and the village appears to be prospering.
Well, the electricity just went out again. I have about three or four minutes to post this on battery power before we lose the internet again, so I’ll sign off for the night. The pictures will have to wait until we have electricity again. I’ll update you on our work tomorrow and introduce some of the team.
2 replies on “We made it… and then the electricity went out.”
Thanks for blogging–it helps to get a picture of Tepe and the challenges of fieldwork. Best wishes for electricity access,
Ann
Every fieldsite and every season has its own challenges. This year it does seem to be the electrical supply. We lost power at least a dozen times today, often just for fifteen minutes or so, but sometimes longer. We have considered getting a gasoline-powered generator for years, but they are noisy and require constant maintenance, so for now we just put up with darkness and no computers from time to time.