A Day in the Life at the East Church, Antiochia ad Cragum
Liza Davis, 2024 Member-Supported Fellowship Recipient
This summer, I had the privilege of working as a trench supervisor at Antiochia ad Cragum, a Roman city located outside of Gazipa艧a, T眉rkiye. Antiochia was an important regional hub and boasted a large colonnaded street lined with shops, multiple baths, areas for the production of olive oil and wine, monumental tombs, and several early Christian churches. In the 2024 season, excavation began on an east-facing apsidal building located on the road approaching the city鈥檚 Main Gate from the east. This building has been described as a church by earlier researchers, and so we decided to creatively title this new area of excavation the East Church.
Daily life as an excavator at Antiochia quickly fell into a pleasant routine. We left Gazipa艧a around 5:30 and arrived at site by 6:00 AM, early enough to see the sun rising and watch flocks of swallows soaring high overhead. Breakfast is served on site by Ay艧e, a woman from the nearby village of G眉ney and the wife of Rahmi the site guard. For the uninitiated, Turkish breakfast is quite the spread: tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, a variety of cheeses, jams and jellies, and bottomless ekmek (bread). Sometimes there would be hard-boiled eggs, borek (a savory pastry made from phyllo dough, cheese, and parsley), or potatoes with scrambled eggs. And, of course, strong Turkish 莽ay (tea) served in the ubiquitous glass cups and sweetened with as many cubes of sugar as you desire.
After such a feast, it could be difficult to get motivated to go to work, but the sun rose quickly and the relative cool of the morning soon dissipated. It was about a ten-minute trek to the East Church, laden with our field packs, cameras, iPads for digital trench recording, and RTKs (Real-Time Kinematic devices, a kind of super-powered GPS that allows for centimeter-level accuracy). We divided into our two trenches and got to work. One trench was just outside of the building, in what has been deemed the church鈥檚 narthex, and the other (my trench) was in the apse of the building. We began each day by going over our daily goals and cueing up the all-important dig playlist. Somehow, our trench anthem ended up being 鈥淧aradise by the Dashboard Light鈥� by Meat Loaf鈥� do not ask me why, because I don鈥檛 know. But I can tell you that those opening chords will forever remind me of dusty days in the East Church.
We took a 莽ay break at 10:00, huddling in the shade cast by some standing walls south of the church. Twice a week, there would be pi艧i, fluffy discs of fried bread鈥攄elicious and filling. After the break, we would return to work for a few more hours, reassessing our progress toward our daily goals and adjusting as necessary. At the end of the day, my trench mates would clean up our tools as I took some final notes in our iPad-based recording software (called Kiosk) and took closing photos of the trench for the day. Around 12:50, we would begin the walk out, which always felt much longer in the heat of the afternoon than it did at 6:45 AM. Lunch was served at 1:00 and was a veritable feast of Turkish home cooking: stuffed peppers, eggplant and potatoes stewed in a spicy tomato sauce, cac谋k (a cold yogurt and cucumber soup鈥攙ery refreshing), bulgur and rice pilaf, and once a week a delicious semolina and peanut cake soaked in honey. Lunch was always a fun, social time, spent discussing the day鈥檚 progress with people working in other areas at site.
The four weeks I spent at Antiochia this summer were such an incredible opportunity for me. My dissertation research focuses on early Christian experience in the eastern Mediterranean, so the chance to excavate an early Christian church was so important for me. This fall back at Brown, I will be working on my dissertation, greatly enriched and informed by the days spent at Antiochia this summer.
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