Friday, June 29, 2007

Antakya, part I

Today we are on a field trip, and this marks the first time we have left our monastery for any significant period of time.
We headed down to the heart of Hatay province where we visited the sites of Alalakh and Tayinat. First we stopped by their dig houses as pictured below.

This is their lab.

This is a view of the Amuq plain from Tayinat. The mountains on the right are in Turkey, while those on the left are in Syria.

Alalakh from Tayinat.

Tayinat is just visible in the distance in this view across Alalakh.


This is an Iron Age structure found at Tayinat. Notice the outlines of unfired mud bricks especially apparent on the right side of the structure.

For those interested in the history of archaeology, this is Leonard Woolley's dig house at Alalakh.

We have more pictures from the city of Antakya itself. However, time runs short. I promise more pictures soon.

Ben

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Sometimes getting there is less than half the fun

It was around our second hour (of three) of sitting in the plane on the runway at JFK airport when we realized our trip was going to take a lot longer than we had planned.


36 hours later, we arrived at our lodgings just outside İskenderun. In between, we missed our connection flight in London, then in turn missed our 7pm connection flight in İstanbul. In London, however, thanks to some quick thinking we arranged to take the first flight (7am) out of İstanbul. Events conspired against us (again) there, too, as Turkish Air managed to not actually book us on the 7am flight. So we waited until 11am and, after a layover of about 10 hours, we took the 1 hour and 15 minute flight to Adana. From there it was but a short taxi ride to our fantastic Catholic resort.

We, by the way, were the three proprietors of this blog and two undergraduate students from PSU, Brendon and Dan. Witness Amanda's photographic genius:





All is not bad, thankfully. Our lodgings are excellent (far better than is usual for archaeological expeditions), everyone here is very nice, the food is great, and the view is great. A few pictures:








Finally, a photo of some of our group:
That's it for now, I'm rushed for time. We will update in a few days.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Visas Received

A week or so ago, we all Fed Exed our passports to Sandra Scham, a fellow survey participant who lives in northwestern Washington, DC. She took them to the Turkish Embassy in DC in order to get our entry and transit visas.


Fortunately for Dr. Killebrew and unfortunately for those of us who would not mind seeing Cyprus, this bureaucratic hurdle was cleared easily. Sandra has mailed the passports back, and hopefully everyone will receive them before their flights leave.

Here's what a Turkish research visa looks like.