Working in Turkey

Got the scanner working again, so thought i'd lob a few pics of Aphrodisias up



The walk to work in the morning. 6.30 am start to get ahead of the sun.



Marble Storage Jars, one had been broken so we fixed it.



Only 10% of the City had been excavated, you could see the later developments, drainage, trenches backfilled with bits of old Tesserae, broken glasses & tools.



Woke up here one morning.



Ancient Graffiti.







We reported this to the Archeologists, they got very excited about it. Apears to be sperm swimming round an egg, but 2000 years before the invention of the microscope



And finally, me and my boys. The locals that we were training up to do the work Lovely Lads, very proud people.

 

When was that Zigs??

 

2003 I think, don't get jobs like that very often.

 

No I wouldn't think so. Very interesting!! How long were you there?

 

3 weeks, only had 2 days off in that time though. The Dig was being run by New York University, we were sub contracted to teach the Turks how to consolidate the ruins that were being uncovered. Rather than the dig it up & let it crumble attitude that the Italians have to Pompeii for instance.

We used to play "Moule" with the site Tortoises.

 

Note the silly hat. After weeks of dunking it in cold water to cool down, it was well and truely Tree'd. I left it in my room when I left, it was brought out to the taxi as I was going.

Left it on the bus at the Airport, it was given back to me on the plane:DOH:

When I finally put it in a bin at Heathrow, I was still looking over my shoulder

 

Would be a very interesting place to visit!

 

Sorry, saw the title and thought this was a thread about how to use up christmas leftovers.

Seriously though, interesting stuff Zig. Always amazes me to think about how they constructed these places with the technology and tools which were available at the time.

 

Now that should have occured to me so soon after Christmas:DOH::D

We still use Roman Tech in construction today. The Hydraulic Lime Mortar they invented, and the Lewis Pins for lifting Girt lumps of masonry.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_(lifting_appliance)

I visited the Marble quarry in the mountains where they got the stone for the city. Looks like it had been cut out with lasers the cuts were so clean.

We had to re set marble seats in a small ampitheatre that had been moved by Earthquakes, between the seats we found chicken bones, pigs knuckles & roman coins.

You could imagine them sitting there watching a play & eating snacks.

 

Did you do all that damage yourselves then, or were there other teams

Jack McH

 

Took us a good few bottles of Raki but we managed to achieve what the barbarians failed to do in just 3 weeks

 

Thought you'd missed this one

 

West Bay by the looks of things.