| Entry: | My first season of six weeks here at Catal is coming to an end and there is still plenty to do. Excavation in Building 131, where I ended up after finishing the documentation of Building 5, ended yesterday. Today, Allison and I cleaned out the extremely crumbled burnt surfaces of the building. I am currently impatiently waiting for the latest 3D model in order to draw the last units that were excavated this season. To pass the time while waiting for PhotoScan’s algorithms I was asked to write about my general impressions of working here at Catal Höyuk.
During my stay here I have seen so many wonderful artifacts, strange burials, confusing architectural features, overlapping and undercutting stratigraphies, and I have received fantastic feedback from the specialists on the priority tour that I am not sure where to begin. As with those cases of giving good and bad news, I have always thought it best to start with the bad news.
Among my less positive impressions are the bottlenecks that halt the excavation and documentation. Among these bottlenecks the waiting for the site camera is probably one of the worst ones. I have likely spent about one working day in total waiting for the camera. Another bottleneck is the tablets. Having one per team is just not enough now that the paper recording has ceased. It would benefit the project immensely if there was a chance for more than team member to work with documentation on site at the same time, and especially if we could work on the GIS simultaneously by working towards the database rather than on a local geodatabase.
Now for the good news; the archaeology here is like nothing that I have ever experienced before. And the instant feedback provided by the priority tours is absolutely fantastic. For instance, finding out that the hatched egg shells that Claudia and I excavated from the midden were likely the oldest known evidence of domestication of birds is something that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, and I will think about it every time I have an egg or eat poultry. The fact that the egg shells could also be dated is also a perfect example of how the puzzle of archaeology can be partially put together, and shows how single context excavation is crucial in doing so; had it not been for the shards of pottery and chipped stone from the same stratigraphical unit, perhaps only carbon-dating could have dated the it (which would seem unlikely for a midden). So, by tying together the strings of information provided by ecofacts and artifacts from a single context, within two days thanks to the specialist labs, I received information about the contents of the midden I was still excavating. These are things that I would have had to wait for weeks or months for (if I would get it at all) back home in Sweden.
Another interesting observation that I have here made concerns the accuracy of hand drawn plans compared to digital GIS-drawings on ortho photos. Since I first started studying archaeology I have always been told how much more precise and accurate a digital GIS drawing, or even drawing polygons with a Total Station in the field is compared to hand drawings. Indeed, during my years at Lund University I have “drawn” several features and contexts using the polygon tool on a Leica Total Station. I am however also acquainted with making hand drawn sections, profiles and plans, and I know how much time and effort they take to make. I was therefore amazed when going through the plans and sections from Building 5 from 1998. Some of them were at a scale of 1:1 of extreme micromorphology with spots of charcoal that were likely drawn using a magnifying glass and a very sharp pencil. I cannot imagine how painfully frustrating and annoying these plans and sections were to make in the 45 centigrade heat 17 years ago.
The plan drawing of Building 5 from 1998 had great detail and is truly a piece of archaeological artwork. However, when it was digitized and georeferenced, and subsequently compared to a recent ortho photo from PhotoScan of the same building, it became very clear that hand drawn plans are not to be completely trusted. It turned out that the plan drawing from 1998 was off by between 15-20 centimeters, while on proper georeferenced ortho photos, vertices drawn in a GIS are within a 2 centimeter margin of error. This was the first time that I have been able to see the difference between analogue and digital recording techniques first hand. This would not have been possible at many other sites. Because of the fact that Building 5 had been left more or less as it was when it was excavated, it was possible to make this comparison. Moreover, this experience made me even more grateful for the possibility to use ortho photos to draw features and units in GIS, and I believe that these will get increasingly accurate and precise in the future as Total Stations and GPS get more and more accurate. It is quite possible that 20 years from now, I will be amazed at the lack of precision of my own recordings done in 2015.
Unfortunately, illness forced me to spend a few days off site. During these days I did some work helping out with scanning Unit Sheets from 10 years ago. This experience opened up my eyes to the complex challenges of the information logistics of a project of this size. It provided me with some insight to the amount of information produced here at Catal over the years, and how important it is to employ a database system that can be modified according to technological developments and new recording and documentation techniques, while still implementing the reflexive methodology and documentation in a manner that has not significantly changed since the beginning of the project.
I believe that one of the largest alterations of the workflow in the history of the project was carried out during this season. The attempt to go completely digital will hopefully lead to several improvements; less information will be lost, all records are now digital and should be easily searchable in the database, and the accuracy and precision of geographic positions of units and features has increased.
I am biased towards the digital side in terms of my standpoint on the matter of digital versus analogue recording, especially since I am probably among the last batch of Swedish students to even learn how to make hand drawn scale plans and sections on square millimeter drawing paper. Millimeter drawing paper, like ink tape for typewriters, is almost impossible to come by these days so the transition now seems inevitable. Experiencing this transition here at Catal Höyuk I believe has provided me with insight to many of the things that must be considered for a well-functioning fully digital recording project.
I am very grateful that I was given the chance to participate in this legendary project. My impressions and experiences from this season have certainly developed my personal skills as an archaeologist and they have increased my awareness of the complexity and importance of a flexible and comprehensive recording and documentation system. Moreover I have been greatly impressed by the almost immediate feedback from specialists, fellow excavators and field directors and their abilities to answer questions of all kinds. Thank you all |
