Category: Voices

Getting to the Bone of It: Zooarchaeology!

Gygaia Projects

With the new excavation season, we welcomed a new crop of zooarchaeologists to Kaymakçı this year: Şengül Fındıklar, Yuka Oiwa, Duru Durmaz, and Tuğçe Yalçın.

Duru is a sophomore archaeology student at Koç University, who is quite interested in working with animal bones and maritime archaeology. She is excited to find out more about fish bones from Lake Marmara. Yuka is an archaeologist who has worked in many different places around the world, including Peru and Puerto Rico. Here, she is learning about the archaeology of western Anatolia after volunteering at Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) this past year, helping to rehouse and relabel its zooarchaeological reference collection. Tuğçe has just graduated from Koç University with a double major in Archaeology and the History of Art and History. She wants to pursue a career in Environmental Archaeology. This lab is perfect for her! Last but not least, Şengül is back from her PhD research in Tubingen University. She has been looking for fish in this year’s collections and we are sure, with the experience of previous seasons, that she will get a good catch!

We started our work with laying out our on-site reference collection, including pig, sheep, goat, dog, and even carp bones from the lake.

After an introductory workshop on Kaymakçı zooarchaeology, the team immediately started analyzing the bones recovered this season. So far, we have found many of our beloved sheep, goat, and pigs, but also a noteworthy amount of deer. We look forward to learning more from this year’s gems.

Look forward to more posts from Gygaia Projects soon!

Excavations at Kaymakçı Resume!

Gygaia Projects

After around three weeks of lab work and preparations for field work, excavations at Kaymakçı resumed in early June.

Excavations in areas 93.545, 97.541, and 109.523 aim to answer old questions and tie up loose ends in previously opened areas. A new excavation area (86.540) will be opened to test a theory about the preservation of the latest phase of Bronze Age Kaymakçı and to learn more about the function and date of building and other activities at the core of the site.

Cleaning away of two years of vegetation before opening new excavation contexts at 97.541 / Removal of winter protections (geotextile) from 109.523

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Kaymakçı at the Annual Meeting of Excavation Results in Denizli

Gygaia Projects

Part of the privilege of conducting archaeological research in Turkey is the invitation to contribute to the annual Meeting of Excavation Results organized by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism’s General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums. This year’s event was held in Denizli (western Türkiye), where Kaymakçı was well represented by Excavation Assistant Director Tunç Kaner of Koç University.

In addition to describing the results of the previous field season, these events are always a nice opportunity to celebrate and thank those who contributed to the work!

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A SOFRA Workshop

Gygaia Projects

A SOFRA project workshop with local cooperatives was held on 25 May 2022 at the Asphodel Research Center. An enthusiastic group of women demonstrated the deep love they have for traditional cooking and the strength they bring to preserving this legacy.

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April Showers… and a New Field Season

Gygaia Projects

Even with a relatively dry spring, the Carpobrotus edulis (Ice plant) ground cover at the Asphodel Research Center erupted in May, just in time to usher in a new field season vibrantly.

Pink and yellow Ice plant carpets from May

The season started with the routine (yet almost ritual) breaking of seals and opening of the depot under the supervision of our friends from the Manisa Museum. Lab work began with a depot inventory project and detailed ceramic recording and analyses. Field work in May began with preparations of the digital infrastructure that enables our paperless archaeological approach to recording in archaeology.

Overseeing ceramic inventorying on a cold May morning / Testing connectivity between the field and lab hubs

Other May field work included a continuing collaboration with Dr. Zeki Kaya (Middle Eastern Technical University) and colleagues Dr. Alper Gürbüz and Dr. Funda Özdemir Değirmenci. This year we’re working together on Zeki’s TÜBİTAK grant on “Determination of the Agricultural and Vegetation History of the Marmara Lake Basin and Gediz Valley Using Paleogenetic and Geological Data.”

An early morning sunrise before fieldwork / Alper, Funda, and Zeki inspect sediments and vegetation on the desiccated lake basin

In addition to forthcoming fieldwork planning, field walks with Zeki benefited from his sharp botanical eye in identifying a variety of local plants and trees, from wild oaks, pears, and almonds, to various thistles and an oddly situated Dog rose (Rosa canina) growing out of a Kermes oak (Quercus coccifera).

Dog rose, a wild shrub taking root from within a Kermes oak / A dog rose flower

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A New Publication on Wetlands and Conservation in the Marmara Lake Basin in the Ottoman Period

Gygaia Projects

We are pleased to announce a new publication on Ottoman-period environing, wetlands, and conservation in the Marmara Lake Basin appearing in the latest issue of Environment and History. See below for details!

Ottoman Lakes and Fluid Landscapes: Environing, Wetlands and Conservation in the Marmara Lake Basin, Circa 1550–1900

Semih Çelik, Christina Luke, and Christopher H. Roosevelt

Abstract: The study of Ottoman lakes and wetlands from the perspective of management and conservation is an emerging field. Scholars have explored Ottoman strategies for managing agricultural and extractive landscapes, yet detailed investigation of socio-political responses to dynamic wetlands, particularly during periods of drastic climate shifts, requires deeper investigation. Our research on wetlands and lakes moves from the purview of waqfs (pious foundations) to the emergence of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (OPDA). By examining the shifting perspectives of institutional authority and community responses to it from the early modern period to the nineteenth century, we discuss the complexities of wetland management in the Marmara Lake Basin within the sancak of Saruhan (contemporary Manisa) in western Anatolia. We argue that intimate knowledge of this specific ecosystem played a critical role in mitigating attempts at reclamation and land grabbing and ultimately in developing legal structures of and policies for Ottoman conservation strategies. We situate our discussion within the paradigm of environing made possible by detailed longue-durée archival narratives; these micro-histories afford a dynamic perspective into non-linear responses to ecological and political changes and provide a local lens into the scalar impacts of human agency.

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