Saying Goodbye to Gazipasa

It's hard to believe that my time in Turkey has come to a close. I've been home for a week now, and it still feels a little strange not to be waking up at 4:50am and coming back covered in dirt. The last week in Gazipasa went by incredibly quickly, yet it was one of our busiest weeks on site! The regular flow of excavation was broken up by extra tasks necessary for closing the site for the season, so the time we were able to spend excavating seemed to go by even more quickly.

The thing I'm learning about archaeology is that the site will never let you go feeling like you're finished. Our professor, Tim, had warned us at the start of the week that the best finds always happen at the last minute, but I hadn't totally believed him until the final half hour of excavation on the last day. John had been working on exposing the exterior corner of one of our walls when we realized that it didn't end in a clean corner. It actually extended out from the front of our unit into an area we had assumed to be part of the "street". Some of the other St. Olaf students came down from their units to help and with a last flurry of picks and brushes, we revealed the top of the continuing wall that curved around the front of our entire unit. This wall completely changes what we had imagined our house to look like, but Rami's whistle blew at 1pm, we were forced to stop, brush everything off, and pack up for the season. If the ancient world has any magic power, it's in the ability to capture curiosity like nothing else can. I've also learned that this work is something that I love, and I'm planning on pursuing archaeology as an actual career.

As I'm writing this post, I'm struggling to figure out how best to synthesize my experiences this summer in a way that captures the full extent of my time in Turkey. I can talk about the work, but it's much more difficult to weave in all the little moments that made this summer so wonderful. What I can say is that it's strange not to be around my team the majority of the hours of every day. I miss winks and high fives with the Turkish students, I might even miss waking up early in the morning and the feeling of sore muscles at the end of the day that let you know you've done a good day's work. I hope that I'll be able to return next year and continue the work we started this summer. Now it's time to rest up on these few weeks at home before setting off on the next adventure.

Thanks for reading!

GMH