Ellen Meyers visits Turkey
Ellen Meyers spent six weeks this past summer learning, studying and exploring the country of Turkey. She and the four other St. Olaf College students traveled together and visited several famous sites; the students of sociology / anthropology explored an earlly Christian site. I spent six weeks, from July 10 to August 17, learning, studying, and exploring the lovely country that is Turkey.
I first stayed in Istanbul for five days before I headed down to Gazipaşa, which is a small farming community along the southwestern coast of Turkey. While in Istanbul, I and the four other St. Olaf students who all traveled together visited several famous sites: the Hagia Sophia (an ancient Christian cathedral turned into a mosque after the Muslims conquered Constantinople), the Blue Mosque (one of the largest places of worship in the city), the Topkapı Palace (the now-abandoned former palace of the sultan and his wives), and the Basilica Cisterns (built by the emperor Justinian to supply water to Istanbul). All of those sites were beautiful. They were so ornate, with all of the stained glass, the marble, and all of the gold filigree and engravings. While we were in Istanbul, we also tried a bunch of delicious Turkish food; I don’t know what most of it was called, but there was a lot of lamb and rice, and it was wonderful!
We left Istanbul on July 14 and traveled down to Gazipaşa, a small town in the south, where we began work. Every morning we woke up at 5 a.m. so that we could have breakfast at 6:00 and begin work at 6:30. We would then pick, shovel, trowel, and dump buckets full of soil and brick debris until 10 a.m., stop for a snack break, and resume our work until 1 p.m. At 1:00, we had lunch, and then all crowded onto our tiny bus for the drive back to our house. Let’s just say that a bus designed to hold 22 people got very hot and cozy when there were 27 of us packed into it. The rest of the day was ours to nap, read, do our assigned documentation for that day’s work, explore the little town, or do any other activities we wanted to do until supper at 7 o’clock. I helped make supper fairly frequently, and it’s amazing to me just how much can be communicated despite language barriers. The woman who cooked for us spoke no English, and I knew only a few words in Turkish, but even so, we managed to cook supper together. And in doing that, I learned more words to talk about food than all the other students I was with. Afiyet olsun! (This means “Enjoy your meal!” in Turkish).
The Turkish students we worked with were so nice! Most of them spoke a little English, but we were able to teach them more English in exchange for Turkish lessons from them. We all lived together in one house, with six of us to a room. In total, there were about 30 people living in the house. I shared a room with three other St. Olaf students and two Turkish students. Our next door neighbors had a herd of goats and sheep, which we heard constantly anytime we were at our house. They would invite us in for tea when we walked in to town past their house, and everyone else in town would wave and say “Merhaba” (which means “hello”) whenever we walked past. Everyone there was so friendly and welcoming to us!
Our site was an early Christian site. We initially thought it was a church that was built in the 5th century A.D., but after we finished our excavations this year, we found a second foundation underneath the first one, so we now think the church was built in the 3rd century. I personally worked in the residential part of the site, where we believe either a small dormitory or large personal living quarters housed the church official and his family and/or servants. While up there, we found tons of pottery shards, a few pieces of glass and a couple of coins. I and one of the TA’s was put in charge of our pottery collection, and we did all of the sorting, organizing, and documenting of every single one of the 3,100+ pottery shards that came from our site. I was glad to learn about some of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into archaeology in addition to all the digging and other labor that happens up on the site. No human skeletons were found this year, but there were quite a few other animal bone fragments up on our site, most likely from the wild goats or other small animals that live in the mountains. In order to get there, we had to climb up a small mountain with a very thin, rocky path covered in brush, but once we made it to the top, the view was amazing. The only real problem was that it was very hot — about 95 degrees in the shade, and 110 in the sun.
We had Saturdays free to ourselves, so we usually went into town to explore or eat more yummy food, or we would sometimes go shopping. There was a small open air bazaar that was a few miles away from the house we lived in, so we usually walked there on Saturdays to buy handmade dresses or pants. On Sundays we went to other sites near ours so that we could see excavated sites and try to understand some more about the history of ours. We also went to the beach fairly frequently on the weekends to swim in the Mediterranean, and on Fridays after our work was finished, we went to a nearby cove to swim. According to legends, the cove we swam in was the one where Julius Caesar was held for ransom by pirates. It was so beautiful there, and the water was so clear. The water got to be about 100 feet deep after only walking a few steps into it, but I could still see the sand and rocks at the bottom because the water was so clear and blue.
I was never concerned about our safety while there; we had a much higher risk of twisting an ankle at our dig site than we ever did of experiencing any events that could make the news back home. I learned so much about the people who live there — the Turks are friendly, welcoming, and eager to share their customs and traditions with anyone who has an open mind and sense of curiosity. They are generous people who welcome visitors into their homes for a cup of tea and pleasant conversation, despite the language barrier. They are fiercely loyal; once you make friends with a Turk, they will do just about anything for you. Respect means everything to them. They are all so polite, and I never once worried for my safety when I was there. Some of the girls taught me to do some Turkish dances (or tried, would be more accurate), in preparation for an engagement party we were invited to attend, and even though they laughed at me when I struggled to learn the steps, it was all in good fun and we all laughed together. We each shared our favorite types of music and books with each other, and all in all, I learned that the American students and the Turkish students had more similarities than differences. Though we come from different countries and speak different languages, we share similar interests and goals, both personally and academically. Though it was very nice to return home to my own family again, I miss Turkey and the people who live there and would love to go back again if I ever get the chance. For more pictures, turn to Family & Friends, Page 5, in the Springfield Advance-Press.