| Entry: | "Let's just use dynamite, " Maciej, sarcastic as usual, responds to my offhanded comment about the lack of "stuff" in our midden. After sieving well over 3 tons of midden, and that doesn't include the infill it took to even reach the midden layer, we don't have anything substantial to show for our efforts. Sure we have tons of stuff, bags upon bags of bones, obsidian chips, broken clay balls, etc. But where are the things that a young, naïve archaeologist’s dreams are made of: beautifully shaped obsidian arrowheads, "mother goddess" figurines, well preserved skeletons, or maybe even well defined stratigraphy. Though I know the archaeology of the 19th century was so 200 years ago, and that it was destructive, messy, lacking in good data, and rife with other flaws, one can’t help but empathize with those excavators. I can even empathize with James Mellaart, who seems to be every Catalhoyuk archaeologist’s favourite scapegoat, because I understand how amazing it feels to find something astounding and breathtaking. It is addicting. Your focus seems to shift from understanding the details that make up the bigger picture and instead you want to make the big picture louder, brighter, fill it with more shiny objects. And coming from a materialistic society doesn’t seem to help; tangibility justifies things, like being given the opportunity to work on such a cool/important site. Also it is a lot easier to tell people, that aren’t archaeologists/anthropologists, that you spent your summer excavating Neolithic skeletons, rather than attempting to explain the stratigraphic details of a building.
And I can’t even do the latter. Our building 108 continues to be befuddling; for a student with a very poor understanding of layers and stratigraphy, the walls and layers have yet to inspire the eureka moment I so desire and need. But that isn’t saying much as it seems to confuse everyone that comes to visit our little "home." We came upon another wall Thursday. And I use the term wall very lightly, as everything in our building seems to be some sort of wall; especially walls from nowhere! There is plaster, some of the only plaster we’ve found in our building, and it is closely connected to another wall feature as well as located under the midden layer, but it doesn’t make much sense?! Oh well, hopefully these obstacles are normal and the greater the challenge the more I will learn about archaeology and the stratigraphic method. And if all else fails, I just need to find a local merchant who’d be willing to sell me some good ole TNT. (Just kidding, I think...) |
