Daily log, Wed 23.Sep.2015

  • Author: Toby C. Wilkinson

Mysterious day

The cast:

  • In the depo: AS, VS, LF, ML
  • In the otel: NS, TW

Mood

Another wet day. Today was arife for urban bayramı and most of our Turkish team had already left Didim by this morning. Only Cem waited forlornly in the Atlantik reception area for an 8 am bus.

Though the weather was wet and our numbers reduced, our spirits remained high.

Some of us, however, (well, actually most of us it seems), had not slept well. Aside from the normal joys of “Brian” [1], there were other factors at work. A rhythmic electronic noise repeating every 5 minutes kept the Atlantik-occupying team less-than-well-rested. The speculation regarding the origin and meaning of this noise was intense. Did the hotel host (the friendly Sinan) have a secret washing machine where all the bed sheets and clothes were washed after all? (Unlikely.) Could it be an alien force experimenting on human subjects? Was there some maniacal hotel guest who took pleasure in switching on and off their air-conditioning units precisely every 5 minutes? To these question no firm answers were found.

The result though was tiredness. NS decided to up-sticks early from the Atlantik and head for the relative safety and quiet of the Didim excavation house by the evening.

Work

During the day, work continued on the two essential aspects of completion of the project work for 2015: (1) the finds processing and (2) the data work.

Whilst most drawings had been completed the previous day, they still needed to be checked for accuracy by the sharp eyes of VS. AS continued to try to give preliminary dates to the finds and assess the fabrics carefully. ML and LF joined forces to work on the serious backlog of find photographs.

Meanwhile, in the hotel work-room, TCW worked on data cleaning and finding information for the museum report. NS used his R-wizardry to improve the data visualisation.

They all lived happily ever after.

In other news

  • Zafer abi slaughtered a sheep bayram.

  • Michael reportedly ate kokoreç this evening, after an unsatisfactory hams dinner at the Atlantik

  • TW noticed that the team had covered an area of 130ha over the 3 weeks of intensive. This is twice the expected 60ha originally planned at the beginning of the season, and all with a smaller team than originally expected. Well done everyone!

[1]: The “famous” “singer” who renders his sweet tones in the cafe opposite the Atlantik apart, every night between 20:00 and c. 02:00. (The cafe is called “Cafe’s Bar and Restaurant”. All bases covered there then. It is mostly frequented by rather bored-looking British tourists).