| Entry: | Today is my first work day at Catalhoyuk. Everything is new for me. Although I have read the documents about the recording system and reflexive method yesterday, and took part in the Catalhoyuk and the Neolithic Archaeology last year at Stanford, I still feel puzzled and strictly speaking, it is a kind of exciting – Catalhoyuk is a well-known site worldwide, and now I am involving in it! I work in the TPC area, directed by Arec, a wonderful Polish archaeologist. I think it will be a fantastic experience for me during these three weeks.
My working unite is 30880, a rubled area on a platform. At the beginning, I filled the unit recoding sheet initially, the unit number, the feature number, the area code and an initial interpretation, and etc. Next I drew a sketch using the bamboo paper software on the Windows Surface tablet to indicate the context nearby and the approximate profile of this unit. And then I measured three points of this unit by total station, record the dimensions near the sketch. I think the electronic recording system is really good, I mean, the tablet, the recording database, the portable Arc GIS, all these appliances encourage people to record the findings on the site, I mean, at the trowel’s edge. If excavators do these works off site, they will be possible missing some important information or forget some details. So people being-on-the-site (as Heidegger’s jargon being-in-the-world), their involving in, their being on the spot, could have more inspirations and some insights about what they are involving in. So doing these recordings on the spot is not only good for our “objective” descriptions, but also for the reflexivity aim – to our thoughts at that time.
After these recordings above, I began to excavate with Nicola, a Polish guy. He is very warm-hearted and gave me a lot of instructions. As the excavation carried out, I felt the texture of the soil is very hard. They are some brown collapsed bricks with some grey materials that I didn’t know what they are, and also there were some small pebbles, some calcium sediments, some bones and some pottery shards. Besides, we also found a bench on the north edge. Currently, I did not reach the level of the platform, so I could know the function of this platform. Despite of that, the hardness of the walls, the bricks and the plasters impressed me a lot, since so early, so high-quality materials are seldom at the same period in China. In the Neolithic China, some houses of which we can found some similar fired clods appeared much later than Catalhoyuk. So these fantastic finding may give me some clues about the usage of the fired clods discovered in China.
The final thing I want to express is the reflexivity which I think is very instructive. Because the interpretation process, the thoughts and the knowledge background of the interpreters’ which are recorded could be good for decreasing the prejudice and bias. The excavation process is theory-laden which is related to how the archaeological knowledge constructed. So it is a better way to claim knowledge and thoughts concerning to the interpretations. I understand it is just a personal ideal wish. |
