Engineer Amongst The Ruins by Mert GÜNEŞ

The one thing I got most often from the people I met in Labraunda was “Ah, so you’re the engineer.” While it certainly was unusual for me to be there given my background, I was lucky enough to fulfill my childhood dream of taking part in an excavation. My stay in Labraunda was quite an experience. The site itself is marvellous, anywhere you look you can see parts of history, any rock you step on has probably been in use for thousands of years. It has a fine balance with nature where you’re surrounded by forestation but it’s not the middle of nowhere, and you may encounter the occasional lizard or most likely a spider. I even saw a porcupine once. The sunrise and sunset are quite beautiful and the night sky is visibly clear with no shortage of stars after about nine pm, which is refreshing after the rather blank night skies of bigger cities. The mountain air and the freshness of the water has something about it that gives you strength no matter how tired you get, even for someone such as myself who’s always had trouble getting up or sleeping early, Labraunda made sure I was ready for the day at first light.  

Andron A at sundown

A few words on equipment for those who’d wish to come work here; have a good sunscreen and clothes that cover your skin but won’t make you sweat all the time, since even half an hour at midday is enough to make you hurt for the next few days. Laundry is done daily so a lot of clothes is not necessary, I’d recommend two or three sets of clothing for wearing during the day and something comfortable to wear during night time. A thermos is not necesary but it would be convenient to have during particularly tough days of excavations. 

The North Stoa

Aside from these general observations, my own experience was mostly about the rough work of archeology. In the three weeks I’ve spent here, two of them were in the North Stoa Excavation where I helped in any way I could. The work was mostly physical in nature, digging, shoveling, hauling buckets full of sand or rocks and operating the wheelbarrow. At first it was all a bit foreign to me but you get the hang of it, and your body adapts the proper technique quite fast. The work, however exhausting it may be, is actually a good workout as long as you don’t strain yourself by going above your limit with the load. Don’t fret it if you get some back or wrist pain, go a bit light for a while and it’ll be just like new. 

Working in the North Stoa

The general excavation procedure is to label the layers of earth as seperate “contexts” and carefully dig through each of them, while collecting any findings and putting them in bags that have the proper contexts written on them. The findings can be pottery, roof tiles, glass, bone or metal which is the rarest, which is why everyone gets excited when a piece of bronze or a coin is found. The one thing that went against all my engineering instincts was the use of manually operated cranes from the 50’s. These cranes were left by the first team of excavators of Labraunda and they’ve gathered quite a lot of rust. I’d say the notion of “safety factor” can’t be applied anywhere near those cranes but they are a must if you want to move blocks that weigh two to five tonnes in a harsh topography where no machines can be brought. I’ll probably go back with a new set of gears to help out a bit.

The infamous crane during operation

There’s also place for finer work in the trenches such as cleaning the context surfaces, taking height readings with the dumpy level, taking photos of the excavation for documentation and of course, using the trovel and brushes for the more delicate findings. Luckily, I’ve had the chance to participate in all of these activities as well, I got to witness the finding of some coins and a few figurines and I’ve found some rather nice looking pieces of pottery and bones myself.

Working with the trovel

Taking readings with the Dumpy Level

The last week was spent on washing the hundreds of ceramics and roof tiles we had found, and broadly categorizing them. Every step has a proper technique to follow and while washing ceramics one has to be careful not to scrub too hard, for there may be brush marks left on the findings, or some ceramics may lose their paint if they have any. 

Washing ceramics

Categorization starts by laying out the individual pieces on a large piece of geotextile cloth then seperating the roof tiles, then sorting all ceramics by color. The sorted pieces get selected among themselves based on whether they provide any clues of a drawable profile, which can be a base, a handle, a rim etc. My final task was to help out in the drawing of a section of the great terrace wall, by putting up a ladder and measureing block widths and their distances to a set line, which was nice.

All in all, Labraunda turned out to be a generous host full of pleasent memories to spare, and I am greatful that Bilkent and my instructors allowed me to have such an experience.