Author: matney

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.

Chelsea and I have made it through the first leg of our journey. We checked into the Cleveland airport with over 200 pounds of luggage, mostly equipment and supplies with a few clothes used as packing material around the computers, total station, electrical restivity meter, etc. Needless to say, archaeologists present a rather unusual challenge for TSA and the airlines. We found out the hard way that a stripped-down frame for an RM15 resitivity setup is NOT allowed as carry-on by TSA. They were unimpressed with my detailed explanation of its use and value. It was a bit of a mad dash back through security to check the frame and get to our gate.

I suppose I should introduce Chelsea Jalbrzikowski. She is a former UAkron undergraduate, now enrolled as a graduate student in Forensic and Biological Anthropology at Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania. This is Chelsea’s third season with us and is coming out to collect information for her M.A. thesis, studying a collection of Assyrian skeletons, including some very unusual cremation burials found buried under the courtyard pavement of the Bronze Palace. Chelsea also has learned a lot (perhaps more than she wants) about Assyrian pottery and completed a geophysical survey for us in 2009. One of the characteristics of a good field archaeologist is versatility; it’s important to be able to take on whatever tasks need doing.

We have a few hours more in Chicago, then it’s on to Istanbul. We are meeting up with more of the crew in Diyarbakir tomorrow night, but I’ll wait to introduce them.

Hard to believe that it is almost time to leave for Turkey. Ten months of preparation: permit applications, fundraising, recruiting personnel, planning the excavation areas, purchasing equipment and supplies, database management, endless lists, and now we are off. It takes a great deal of logistics to get nearly 30 people from nine countries to all show up in the right place at the right time, and with all the supplies we need for two months of work, but the effort is sure worth it when we get down to work!

On Thursday night, the first wave of archaeologists will arrive in Diyarbakir Airport, to be met by our driver, Mehmet, for a happy reunion. We’ll drive down to Tepe, about an hour to the southeast, and work begins in earnest on Friday. Hopefully we will be able to get our internet connection at the dig house set up quickly, so we can keep the blog updated. If everything goes according to plan, we will open up our sealed depots where the artifacts that are still awaiting analysis from previous seasons are stored, and get to work on Saturday. Inshallah! We are only in the field for two months, so every workday counts. We work six days a week, with Friday off, but this Friday is going to be non-stop work as we set up our dighouse and the laboratories. Each year we put all of our equipment in storage since we only rent our dighouse for the time we are in Turkey, so each season starts with housekeeping.

But first, we have two days of travel ahead.