We are pleased to share a new publication in Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı, the annual publication of excavation results put out by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. This article reviews some of the activities conducted during the limited 2021 season at Kaymakçı. See below for details!
A recent chapter in a book focused on the long-term history of Manisa province explores the impact of droughts on the wetland area of Lake Marmara. The work is based on years of hand-collected “Cobra” core data from the lake basin. See below for bibliographic details.
Vardar, Serdar, Roosevelt, Christopher H., and Christina Luke. 2022. “Kuraklığın Kontrolündeki Marmara Gölü Sulak Alanına Paleocoğrafya Açısından Bakış (Gölmarmara-Manisa).” In Manisa: Akademik Araştırma Işığında (Fen Bilimleri & Coğrafya & İktisat) Cilt-4, edited by Yüksel Abalı, Orkide Minareci, Sermin Çam Kaynar, and Leman İncedere, 510–529. Ankara, TR: Berikan Yayınevi. ISBN 9786258365962 / 9786257457521.
This new article focuses on how laser-aided profile measurements can increase the accuracy and speed of archaeological ceramic analyses, including profile and photograph illustration, morphometric analyses and classification. See below for the bibliographic details of this “online first” article!
Demján, Peter, Peter Pavúk, and Christopher H. Roosevelt. 2023. “Laser-Aided Profile Measurement and Cluster Analysis of Ceramic Shapes.” Journal of Field Archaeology 48 (1): 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2022.2128549.
Abstract
Ceramics are one of the commonest sources of archaeological information, yet their abundance often confounds documentation and analysis. This article presents a new method of documenting and analyzing ceramics that includes laser-aided profile measurement to capture ceramic shape and other information quickly and accurately, resulting in digital outputs suitable for both publication and morphometric analysis. Linked software and database solutions enable unsupervised machine learning to cluster shapes based on similarity, eventually assisting typological analysis. Following an overview of current practices in ceramic recording and both standard and computational shape classification analyses, the new approach is discussed in full as a documentary and analytical tool. A case study from the Middle and Late Bronze Age site of Kaymakçı in western Anatolia demonstrates the benefits of the recording method and helps show that a combination of automated and manual shape clustering techniques currently remains the best practice in ceramic shape classification.
A new article describes how Architectural Energetics methods are applied in archaeological research, with a brief case study on Kaymakçı. See below for bibliographic details.
Kaner, Ebru. 2022. “A ‘New’ Method in Archaeology: Architectural Energetics.” TARE: Türk Arkeoloji ve Kültürel Miras Enstitüsü Dergisi 2: 173–83. https://doi.org/10.54930/TARE.2022.5693
Abstract
The question of how the ancient structures, which evoke admiration among visitors to excavation sites, ruins, and museums, came to be, has puzzled almost everyone. Although experimental studies have sought answers from time to time since the 1900s, many questions were answered with the introduction of the field of study of architectural energeticsinto archaeology in the 1980s. In this study, architectural energetics is used to answer many unanswered questions, such as how the labor force was calculated and whether the economy of the society could be understood with the resulting costs, what kind of social structure this society had, how the labor force was organized, the distribution of gender roles in the workforce, and how to calculate the population of the settlement. The goal is to find answers through the method and provide confirmation of the existing information. Although the use of this “new” method has been applied to specific architectural structures in many settlements in various parts of the world or to the texture of a city or settlement, this process has not yet been the case for Anatolian archaeology. The aim of this study is to practice the method of architectural energetics in Anatolia in the future.
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!
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
