It's not just an excavation by Merve GÜNAL

Hi ! It’s Merve, again! But this time it is not related with like digging “digging”, kind of. It is related with how you preserve what you or previous archaeologists unearted before! 

I joined Labraunda excavation team in 2017. It was my first classical period excavation, and I had no idea about the methods and processes in a classical period excavation. In my first year, I really liked and felt satisfied to see a project from start to end so I stayed the full season this year. In that year, Olivier Hoca nearly put me in every part of the excavation. For example, working in the ceramic lab (it really helped me to understand ceramics such as how to examine it and how to do the documentation of it), marble conservation (how to clean marble pieces without harming ancient marble and how to make it last longer and stronger) aaaannd RESTORATION! (how to preserve what you’ve unearthed starts here). I’ve become familiar and close with the Labraunda team during my first year by working with almost all of them for two months. LoL. In 2017, me, Melanie and Anıl unearthed the Doric House structure to examine the mosaic floor levels of it. We already knew there were mosaic floors from the old excavations notebook.

                                                  Şekil 1: 2017version of Doric House. MELANIIIEEEE !!!

After a fine cleaning of the mosaic floor, we did mortar restoration over there with Görkem and Cristina! The mind blowing thing for me back then was when CRISTINE USED ANCIENT MORTAR MATERIAL TO RESTORE THE MORTAR OF THE MOSAICS!!!!!! WHAAAAAAAAT?????? (*insert “Despicable Me’s Minions “Whaaaat????” GIF in here ahahahah). Cristina (love youuuuu!) had the recipe thanks to the mortar sample examinations, so she re-created it. It is really good tho. We finished the Doric House restoration and then we decided to present this mosaic floor to tourists to give a sense/meaning to them. So, we left the part where mosaic floor is located open for tourists to see! We were really proud about what we did because it was perfect and beautiful !!! Now, since you have the story of the Doric House, I can tell what happened to it…

My first day in 2019 season started in the Oikoi structure. The restoration team members was Sena (luuuv), İrem (luuuv pt.2 also a Bilkenter), Görkem (yeeeeeyy) and our specialist Cristinaaaaaa!!!

Sena and İrem were cleaning the pillar’s stones from lichens and moss with scalpel and I joined them. I learned this technique from Erica while we were doing marble conservation in 2017. Almost every day we came back to the Oikoi for cleaning the pillars because EVEN AFTER ONE NIGHT, THOSE BELOVED, PRECIOUS MOSSES AND LICHENS WERE APPEARING AGAIN AND AGAIN AFTER EACH REMOVAL WE DID!!!! We were starting to see moss and lichens everywhere we look and, after some point, you have an urge to remove ALL moss and lichens from everything you see in here. 

Şekil 2: we were treating our "beloved" lichens and mosses with love and care

It was mentally challenging at some point because before applying mortar, you should clean the tiles and stones from lichens and moss. So we did it on both the Oikoi pillars and the Doric House mosaic floor with scalpel and magical soap that made from Viking Blood LoL. It was Gran-Söpa which is made from Swedish pine trees and 99% organic. WE ARE NOT HARMING OUR BELOVED ARTIFACTS! It was challenging because somehow you are “fighting” against nature by taking care of the nature also. Then (here comes the heart broken part), my previous team members started to ask me questions like “ Did you see what happened to Doric House? Did you see what happened to what you and your team made?” and I remember that I had a medium sized heart attack. You can think like “DON’T BE A DRAMA QUEEN MERVE!!!!”  but seeing what tourists and nature made to your efforts, was little bit hard to cope with. I went down to Doric House and I saw……… Nearly all of the mortar that we applied to preserve mosaic floor lines over there were disrupted as if people jumped on it. I cannot forget the trees that appeared from nearly every level of the mosaic floor. They were acting like it is a perfect place for them to grow. So, in a nutshell, we “started from scratch”. Thank God, we have a good team and hardworking students (shout out to ma gurls!!). 

Şekil 3: I do not want to talk about this...

We worked like ants and finished both the Oikoi restoration and the Doric House restoration at the right time. When I compared the excavation and restoration, they have major differences in speed. In the excavation, you follow the process according to contexts but in the restoration, I believe, you should consider every side effect before you do something to that structure or material. Nearly everything affects your work, like; heat, rain, plants, ants, any type of biological appearance like moss and lichens etc. And surprisingly, all of them have a bad effect on what you’ve did ahahahaha. I actually learnt to be patient and behave more mindfully. Because the work we did over there is a major thing. You applying things onto the structures when the last thing that was applied onto them was like thousands years ago. It is a long and slow process so sometimes you get bored but when you see the result…. DAAAAAAMMNNNN GURRRRLLLSS !!!!! WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING!!! ahahahahaha! So, BE CAREFUL GUYS!! We all know what happened to some structures in Turkey that went through restoration process. We need more mindfull restorators and conservators who have some knowledge about archaeology and artifacts and value them.

                                   Şekil 4: T H E T E A M (finished 2 major project with lots of additional work in 3 weeks !!!)

 P.S: Just a little recommendation to all Archaeology students: as an Archaeologist (yeap, I graduated ahahahahaha), I know we all want SO BAD to dig and go to the field all clean faces and clean clothes and coming back from the field all covered with dirt and sweat (maybe some blood, but I hope not lol) and feel satistified because you just found really fine ceramics of even figurines (like this season in here ahahahahahah CHECK OUT LABRAUNDA INSTAGRAM PAGEEE!!), but I think that we also need to have some knowledge about the history of the excavation. I think every archaeologist should spend some time, even just a month, with the restoration process of the excavation. I am pretty sure, it will really help you guys!!! Thank youuu for spending your time by reading this!  

P.S 2: I think you guys earned to see what happened to Doric House after our restoration so here you go