As I’d previously mentioned, I was digging a lovely burned building at Çatalhöyük before I left. Happily, several interesting discoveries were made in that short time. We uncovered a seated stone figurine with a beard that was painted (sadly, I don’t have any photos, but I’m sure it will make the official Çatalhöyük press release), an interior wall with plaster on both sides, a red-painted niche, part of a collapsed roof, and plaster “caps” on the pillars. We had originally planned to excavate the building down to the occupation surface (some 1.8m below the collapse!) but the building was halfway in the large “Mellaart” section, where there was ongoing work to understand the phasing of the tell, keying off the 1960s excavation. It was decided that though the building had great finds and a good chance of answering some broader questions about life at Çatalhöyük, we were unable to dig it properly and so excavation will cease–it will be conserved and backfilled carefully, waiting until the entire building can be exposed. I deeply respect that decision–though it was a bit disappointing at the time, I completely understood.

Anyway, the plaster “caps” were a great find; the caps were illustrated in the original Mellaart reconstructions, but there weren’t any particular notes or photographs of them, so we weren’t sure if they were an elaboration of the building or an actual find.  We found two, and while the easternmost cap was unlikely to be disturbed, the westernmost cap (they were both on the north wall) had fallen off the pillar during the building’s collapse and cracked in half. The directors decided to lift the cap to preserve it, and possibly to investigate how it was constructed.

It was well photographed in situ and drawn from several perspectives by the site artist, Kathryn Killackey. We planned it, recorded it fully, and then it was ready to go. Shahina also mentioned that she might like a quick photoshop of it, “put back in place.” I took a few of my own photographs after we had lifted the cap, to get more exposure of the pillar:

Sadly, my camera’s light sensor is broken–which only became obvious after I downloaded these photos and the pillar cap was already gone. So I had to merge Jason Quinlan’s photo above with my own, like so:

I also did a semi-crazy full repair job. Fans of bad photoshop jobs, rejoice!

I then decided that I didn’t like the angle of the original job and tilted it some, erasing the part of cap where it had broken in half and tilted upwards in the back.

So, not perfect by any means, but about an hour’s worth of fun. The best part was moving around the cap and seeing exactly where it had fallen off–like two puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly.

Cross-posted from the Dhiban Excavation and Development Project Blog:

As the sun sets on Tell Dhiban, the colors become deeper, pink-tinged, and the limestone blocks look stunning against the blue sky. The wadi turns golden and a small wind picks up, cooling off the air. It’s really the best time to work up on the tell, and I saw several sunsets from the edge of my trench in the last week of the excavation. Everyone was working furiously on their trench reports and Harris Matrices. I was staying a couple of days later than most people, so I was up on the tell, drawing and photographing mostly alone.  It was nice, a break from the busy work days with so many people in the trench all the time.

In the last few days, I had tea with Zaid and Abu Jamal up on the tell. The teapot is a symbol of hospitality in Jordan, and the sugary sage tea they served was lovely.  I sat with them, chatted a bit in our patois of English and Arabic and realized that I would miss Jordan in the year to come.

Thanks to Dhiban for the hospitality and we will see you next year!

And written a couple of weeks ago:

The transition from Dhiban to Catalhoyuk was a bit strange—it was like starting the summer over again. I ended up having a day in Istanbul to soften the blow, where I got a haircut, bought new socks, and drank with the Damascus city planner and his friend at a table in the Beyoglu. Istanbul is my favorite city in the world and I still hope to live there at some point.

Finishing up at Dhiban was a bit of a whirlwind with all of the drawing, photography, and reports to write. Then it was off to a 3:30AM flight from Amman after another 18 hour work day.  Catalhoyuk seems relaxing after such an intense excavation (mudbricks being a bit lighter than ashlars) but it has its own stresses and I was happy to meet with the Southampton visualization team and spend my days drawing mudbrick elevations.

The elevations are from Building 49—the lovely little 5×5m building that I excavated last year with Dan and Lou. At the end of the season we thought we were close to the end of the building sequence and into construction levels, but the building kept producing floors and burials and kept a few of the excavators here in Turkey for longer than they’d planned. This tradition continued this year when I notice a bit of a skull coming out of the bottom of the original cut in the building—another child burial! This was a 4-5 year old that was buried with a shell with red pigment, hiding at the very bottom of the NW platform sequence.

Now I’m working in a lovely burned building in the south area, the location of Mellaart’s 1960s excavations. The building seems fairly elaborate (Neolithic column capitals! Red paint! Second story!) but I can’t get too attached because I’m headed back to Berkeley in a week. Hopefully we’ll have most of the collapse out of the building by then because we’re only digging a small strip of it—the rest goes into the section and the only reason we’re digging it is to step the large trench out for safety reasons. Still, I should have some pretty photos from the week to come.

Here’s another edition of Archaeology in Action, highlighting photography of archaeology aggregated on Flickr.  As always, I encourage you to contribute to the Archaeology in Action Flickr group, especially paired with a Creative Commons license.

Here’s a shot of a trench in Alaska, on Kotzebue Sound from Travis S., dug to test the impact of road improvement on the archaeological record.  They found faunal remains during testing, including a seal femur and bird bones.  Travis S. has heavily annotated his photographs with his interpretations, making them really interesting and informative.

Another chilly-looking excavation in Hólar in Hjaltadalur, a small community in northern Iceland.  From Siggidori’s set comments: “Hólar was founded as a diocese in 1106 by bishop Jón Ögmundsson and soon became one of Iceland’s two main centers of learning. Hólar played an important part in the medieval politics of Iceland, and was the seat of Guðmundur Arason in his struggle with Icelandic chieftains during the time of the commonwealth. Under Jón Arason Hólar was the last remaining stronghold of Catholicism in Iceland during the Reformation. The best known Lutheran bishop of Hólar was Guðbrandur Þorláksson.”

From the Heritage Underwater Maritime Archaeology project in Gotland, Sweden on a ship that sank in 1566.  This ship features an unusually long and early type of wrought iron cannon, one that could be used on either land or at sea.  I’m always impressed by the equipment and skills of underwater archaeologists who have to deal with a whole additional array of problems in archaeology.

And, lastly, keeping it real with wet screening in the rain in Bretagne, France.  Murmel.jones and crew were investigating an Iron Age site in 2005.  Looks miserable.

Whew–life has been a whirlwind lately.  I turned in my dissertation prospectus yesterday and much of the other surrounding paperwork, but I still have a lot to catch up on while I study for my orals.  I also had a wonderful time with a certain visiting archaeologist who brought me my very own MoLAS manual–a princely gift now that the dollar is worthless.

In the meantime, the Archaeology in Action group on Flickr has been hoppin’.

Here is one of several great shots of a large, open excavation from Kassandrus in Guda, South Holland.  It looks like they’re turning up the footings of several buildings and some interesting burials.

Jens-Olaf documents the excavation of an old market street in Gimhae, South Korea. I love that he also got a look at the paperwork:

There’s good photos of the stratigraphy and some interesting tools as well, if you click through to check out the rest of the photostream.

There’s also a few photos of the excavations going on at Stonehenge from Paul Cripps. The BBC Timewatch website has video, news, and a discussion forum, but it’s nice to get this more “personal” look.  I wish the quality of the photos was higher though, and that the photos were licensed under Creative Commons, but you can’t have everything, I suppose.

As always, please submit your excavation shots to the Archaeology in Action group on flickr!

If you’re an Americanist archaeologist:  Nothing.

He is clearly within an undifferentiated layer of yellowish sediment.  He’s been digging in arbitrary levels and pedestalled a biface for recording its depth, then will collect the biface and level the pedestal to the arbitrary “floor” he has excavated to in the rest of the unit. 

If you’re a British archaeologist: Everything.

He has clearly hit a surface that the biface used to sit on, and he should have levelled to that floor to preserve context, recorded everything on the surface, then removed the biface and continued until he found the next surface, as signalled by a stratigraphic change or more artifacts. By pedestalling the artifact he removes its context. 

Nice biface, regardless!

(My thanks to Travis S. for posting such a graphic example of this.)