| Entry: | First impressions
Even though it came as a surprise the chance to excavate Catalhoyuk came both as a priviledge and a pleasure, even more because of 2017 being the last opportunity to do so. I would have thought it not difficult excavation-wise if this was my first season here (and those were my exact thoughts upon fist setting eyes on the trenches few years back), but little did i know then, which became quickly apparent even then - not to mention all the further involvment with the documentation or the material.
So, all things considered it should be noted that I was somewhat terrified. Thankfully Justine Issavi and Arek Klimowicz kindly encouraged and given me advice when I needed it. And sorely was it needed, because building 131 had quite a few issues.
Let's talk about building 131. This building covers the area of roughly 50 square meters and had been partially excavated during previous 3 campaigns. There was not a single pre or post-excavation plan documenting features for any of the previous campaigns. That could be circumvented to an extent by addressing the ArcGIS plans. Situation at the beginning of the excavation was somewhat overwhelming with a number of remnant units that could not at that or any other point in time be phased properly. They could be linked with the remaining layers but not to already partially excavated ones. My designated area of the building was space 500, whereas Ahmed Kzzos' was 504. If one goes through unit sheets for space 500 the frequent use of syntagm "dug out of phase" and "partially excavated" makes it tricky to determine how to approach or formulate the excavation strategy.
Space 504 had even more problems. This space was severely eroded and trampled since it was first exposed, with no discernible features. Thankfully Ceren Kabukcu was present on site then and now and had her notes to ascertain the existence of features in this space, otherwise there would be no clear record of their existence. As for the few units that were excavated in 2014, apart from the archaeobotanical reports, it took almost 5 hours for Arek and me to sort out. Again with some reservations as to what the authors really wanted to convey. Hence all the arbitrary layers in this space, that Ahmet, Arek and Kevin managed to sort out in the end.
After the initial two weeks of feeling headless, things finally started to fall into place (mainly due to getting some phasing in parts of the building). After all this building 131 team gained a new team member - Kevin Kay - whose remarkable knowledge of the site proved to be of invaluable help. |
