| Entry: | "One man’s trash is another man’s treasure." This age old adage takes on no greater meaning than whilst excavating a midden. Middens are basically Neolithic dumpsters, rife with litres upon litres of ashes, coals, dung, stones, bricks, the bony remnants of a good meal, etc. But amongst this pile of once stinking garbage there lays the occasional treasure. From figures to stone bracelets, mini clay balls to worked bone points, middens offer us a rare view into the daily lives of our Neolithic ancestors. Think about it...if someone were to rifle through your trash, imagine how much he or she could discern about your daily habits and values? They could piece together your love for Trader Joe’s cookies by examining the sheer quantity of containers in your garbage and then form a hypothesis about the over consumption of sweets in our society. And by looking at the boxes of cookies consumed on site, these ideas aren’t far from the truth.
In building 108, my pod is currently excavating a midden. It is both discouraging and exciting. When one looks past the back breaking work of removing literally tons upon tons of soil and infill, sieving it, and closely searching through the remaining titbits only to be rewarded with the tiniest of bone shards and obsidian flakes, it is a pretty cool thing. Whereas all of our neighbors in the North shelter have come upon exciting burials, obsidian mirrors, finely crafted obsidian points, mass burials that intrigue and entice excavators with their mystery and burial goods, and all within several meters of starting, we have dutifully kept at removing the midden layer of building 108. Sure we are a bit jealous, okay maybe a lot of bit jealous of our fellow 4040-ians, but we are not discouraged! No, absolutely not!
Excavating a midden is no burial, but it is far from boring. Sieving may be a pain in the trowel, but it lets us examine on a much closer level the everyday workings of these peoples. These past few days, we’ve discovered figurines (maybe? animal-ish shaped things at least) and a whole lot of bullhorns that seemed to have up and abandoned their respective heads. There have been clay balls that look strikingly similar to their clay bead counterparts. Baby sized bone rings and a miniscule shell bead have been some of the most interesting items we managed to find in the sieve. When we began to excavate this midden, our finds were on the "rarer" side. We had beads and horns and figurines. But as we increased the size and depth of our little trash heap, the quantities and quality of our finds shifted. On the 16th of July, we had a dozen beads, enough for a necklace and enough horns for 5 bulls. On the 17th of July, exactly one day and several centimetres later, there were 3 beads and 4 horns. But as a replacement for clay horns, we found whole bones! For a group accustomed to the tiniest of fragments, finding an almost whole pelvis bone was a real surprise. Why are there "fire spots"? Is this an indication of our building solely being a midden for the neighboring buildings? Or is this midden a singular event that served as a closing or opening of a new building? (Tangential, but isn’t it funny that we continue to build on our landfills...loving the continuities between the Neolithic and the present!!) But what exactly does this sudden shift tell us about Building 108? For now, very little. All we know now is that Building 108 is a dump with four very confusing walls. But we can start to form an idea about the values of these people or maybe hypothesize the reasoning behind the transition between the depositions of these items.
This "trash" has definitely got me thinking. After finding the baby bone ring and the small bead, I couldn’t help but imagine these being in the position of an infant or a young child. Maciej, the cynical deadpan Masters student that he is, doesn’t think that the children of Catalhoyuk could have worn such undeniably intricate, time-consuming creations. But come on! Beyond representing the transience of life in Neolithic times, these children had to have great value in a society with an ostensibly high child mortality rate. Many of the infant and adolescent burials seem to include beautiful burial jewelry and even finely woven basket/caskets; in my opinion, these baby burials seem to exude a bit more care than some of the adult burials. So having a living, breathing baby, most have meant a lot to these people, at least enough to adorn them with beautifully crafted bone rings…that eventually found their way to the dump. Ah, the mysteries of life. |
