Yenikapi Excavation and a Day at the RCAC

This past week, the first-year Masters students had the opportunity to visit the Yenikapi excavation site in the middle of the historic Sultanahmet district.  Of course we all accepted heartily and cancelled any afore-made plans.

To boot, we were driven in a shuttle from campus in the morning - always a welcome gesture when it precludes having to commute into downtown Istanbul, particularly during rush hour.

Of coure, even a skilled and experienced Istanbul driver can come across the regular difficulties; what is one to do if they miss their exit on the highway?  Why, back up on the highway and take your exit!  After backing up into 80 mph traffic, we get lost...and what does one do when one gets lost?  Why, you park your car in the middle of traffic, get out and go ask the driver in the car ahead of you how to get to the destination.

it's hard to see, but our driver is ahead asking directions from the car in front of us

I want to say first and foremost that it is a really big deal to be invited to an excavation site such as this, and therefore, want to be as respectful as possible about information.  I hope I got all the information correct here, and I (really) hope I'm not saying anything that hasn't already been published - however I highly doubt the little information I have written here is anything new.  If you are interested in this excavation, please read an academic source on it, I make no claims for accuracy!

So we get to the Yenikapi site, and it is massive.  Yenikapi is now the excavation site, where, about ten years ago, when digging to construct a new metro stop in the historic district so as to relieve some of the horrendous traffic, the diggers came across some interesting finds.  As they began to survey their finds, they reaized that what they had come across was beyond remarkable.  They had uncovered a a Byzantine harbour, that had been sitting underneath Istanbul for over a thousand years.  Underneath the harbour, they found layers of civilization, including, at the base, remnants of a Neolithic settlement - around ten thousand years old.

the site at Yenikapi

About the size of a football field, it has been dug, by hand, over the past decade. As we walked through the site, we walked on sticky mud with sea-shells and rocks scattered beneath our feet, and I couldn't help but wonder how long these items had lain there, what sorts of people had seen them or used them over the last ten thousand years.  It was a cool experience, to say the least.
Now that we are officially in Fall, I guess the weather that I have to look forward to for the next six months is rain, rain, rain.  My friend and I went into Sariyer the night before to pick up some cheap rainboots, and cheap "rainboots" I found - or 5 TL (about $3) crocks.  These will have to suffice for the next month until I can go home and get my good LLBean boots.  So let the rain come! 

As they showed us a Byzantine ship wreck, the rain really began to pour so much that it was difficult to hear everything our archeologist guides were saying.  Nevertheless, it was conveyed that they have uncovered "otuz beş" 35 (or did they say 36?) Byzantine ship wrecks.  These wrecks are now in the form of individual planks that are being soaked in water so that they do not dry out too suddenly (after being underground for so many years) and so that they can begin to reshape them into their supposed-original shape.

We also were able to see the layers of the earth that had been dug through to form the walls of the site.  Within these layers, I saw some bones, probably from an animal of some sort.  Of course, I was completely taken aback by the intensity of seeing these bones, stuck in the wall, having been there for however many thousands of years.  I wanted to point them out to some kind of authority on the site.  Not twenty minutes later, the archeologists took us to the processing lab (a very welcome reprieve from the rain!), where items found are washed and prepared for observation and cataloging.  Within this lab, we observed hundreds of Byzantine ceramics, Neolithic pine cones (!), and...bones!  so many bones that it put into perspective the relative importance of the bones I had seen in the wall - important, yes, but to them, just another day on this historically rich archeological site.

I should emphasize that this site is in the middle of Istanbul proper, in a busy part of the Fatih municipality.  I'm not up to pace on all-things-archeological, but I do know that this is quite a historic site in and of itself, being (one of) the first sites located in the middle of a bustling cosmopolitan city.

After our tour and necessary cay (underneath a make-shift roof that made me feel like an awesomely-cool archeologist "roughing it"), we - the MA students and the fellows, made our way to the RCAC, the research center for our program.  Of course, we had to figure out a way to exit the site, which was difficult with the rain....

Istanbul rain leads to puddles, or pools!

Alas, we found our way out, and thawed in the bus as we crossed over the Galata bridge and over to the RCAC.  We munched on a tasty lunch and then got to see where we will be studying/researching over the next two years....

the RCAC building from within

The selection of books in the RCAC is spectacular, and I therefore started making the mistake (which I have done a few times here now) of picking up everything that interests me at first glance.  However, I decided to be somewhat picky and only checked out Judith Herron's "Byzantium: The Surprising life of a Medieval Empire".  This is a book that has come highly recommended to me by a Professor here as well as some of the students.  I am ashamed to say that my Byzantine history background is slightly lacking, due to taking only the required, and very Western-geared history course in undergrad.  So a little catch-up is necessary, and Judith Herron's book somehow manages to make Byzantium super exciting...

RCAC library

another view of the library at the RCAC

After the RCAC trip, I treked back home, stopping at another 3 Turkcell stores to see if I could finally get a straight answer about phone conracts/packages and whatnot.  I think I am close to getting a phone of my own and can finally return my guardian angel's lended-phone. 

Byzantine and Neolithic remains, coupled with monsoon-rain and cay, just another fine day in the city of Istanbul.