The Floor Below
The main problem with being trusted as a full on archaeologist, is, well, that you often still act like a novice. I've gone through two floors already, just troweled on by as if they didn't even exist. Only when Shahina (In-Field Site Director from Cambridge just like my Stanford/Cambridge prof Ian Hodder) came over and calmly asked, "Um, is there any particular reason that you decided to trowel through the floor?" What floor?
You can tell I went through the floors by looking at the profile of their remains on the wall - varying colors stacked on top of one another, though none of them plaster. Lots of the floors are plastered nicely and heavily. The plaster on those builds up after so many years of plastering and replastering that it's like an inch or more thick. I was looking for said plaster when I went through the other floors - why the hell didn't they plaster them??
It's okay, though. The other people who were working with me said they probably would have done the same thing. I didn't get in trouble, I was only told to stop since I was done with the area. It's not like I ruined anything, per se... every area we're uncovering this year will be completely covered and supported with sandbags until... the rest of eternity? After we're done excavating, the roofs above our site will come down, and so the sandbags will protect the fragile mudbrick from the destructive elements, which in central Turkey contains the entire spectrum: from rain and snow to tornadoes. I'm working in the 4040, an area named because it's forty meters by forty meters, all to be uncovered over the period of four years. One strip is uncovered each year, forty meters long by ten meters wide. We're 'fast-tracking' this area. I've worked in three or so dwellings over the past couple of weeks, but the Berkeley team undid one dwelling in seven years when they excavated an area nearby before. Archaeology can be extremely tedious and detailed if you want it to be. It'll take forever. Or, you can go the less tedious, less detailed route and uncover a lot more a lot quicker. I prefer the latter, though we admittedly lose some data. Oh well, we need to do some of this quickly! Only about 1% of the entire mound has been excavated to date. Anywho, one day they may put a permanent structure over the 4040 and turn it into an indoor museum. All the sandbags will be removed, and all our hard work will actually get shown. Unfortunately, plaster and walls have to be glued and preserved otherwise every week or so; this stuff is old and doesn't hold up well. This would be so much easier if these people had used stone! I wouldn't have gone through a stone floor.
Some of the most exciting things the site has uncovered so far this year: a bear-shaped stamp (I asked where the inkpad was. Some people laughed, a few glared.), a second large, detailed, headless mother goddess statuette (the first was found in the sixties), and a really well preserved pillar made of plaster. We've never seen anything like this before in all the other dwellings excavated. It's like half a meter tall, too!
Wow, he's getting excited about bear stamps and animal bones. Yeah, well, no Indy Jonesesque jungle chases or holy relic finding to report as of yet. But I've still got a little bit to go!
You can tell I went through the floors by looking at the profile of their remains on the wall - varying colors stacked on top of one another, though none of them plaster. Lots of the floors are plastered nicely and heavily. The plaster on those builds up after so many years of plastering and replastering that it's like an inch or more thick. I was looking for said plaster when I went through the other floors - why the hell didn't they plaster them??
It's okay, though. The other people who were working with me said they probably would have done the same thing. I didn't get in trouble, I was only told to stop since I was done with the area. It's not like I ruined anything, per se... every area we're uncovering this year will be completely covered and supported with sandbags until... the rest of eternity? After we're done excavating, the roofs above our site will come down, and so the sandbags will protect the fragile mudbrick from the destructive elements, which in central Turkey contains the entire spectrum: from rain and snow to tornadoes. I'm working in the 4040, an area named because it's forty meters by forty meters, all to be uncovered over the period of four years. One strip is uncovered each year, forty meters long by ten meters wide. We're 'fast-tracking' this area. I've worked in three or so dwellings over the past couple of weeks, but the Berkeley team undid one dwelling in seven years when they excavated an area nearby before. Archaeology can be extremely tedious and detailed if you want it to be. It'll take forever. Or, you can go the less tedious, less detailed route and uncover a lot more a lot quicker. I prefer the latter, though we admittedly lose some data. Oh well, we need to do some of this quickly! Only about 1% of the entire mound has been excavated to date. Anywho, one day they may put a permanent structure over the 4040 and turn it into an indoor museum. All the sandbags will be removed, and all our hard work will actually get shown. Unfortunately, plaster and walls have to be glued and preserved otherwise every week or so; this stuff is old and doesn't hold up well. This would be so much easier if these people had used stone! I wouldn't have gone through a stone floor.
Some of the most exciting things the site has uncovered so far this year: a bear-shaped stamp (I asked where the inkpad was. Some people laughed, a few glared.), a second large, detailed, headless mother goddess statuette (the first was found in the sixties), and a really well preserved pillar made of plaster. We've never seen anything like this before in all the other dwellings excavated. It's like half a meter tall, too!
Wow, he's getting excited about bear stamps and animal bones. Yeah, well, no Indy Jonesesque jungle chases or holy relic finding to report as of yet. But I've still got a little bit to go!