Dreams & Reality. Hopes & regrets.

So, we come now to the end of our daily blog for 2024.. We do have something to show for our work, to Ankara, and to others, in the form of a report. The first signs of green shoots are showing: a grant won from the BIAA to continue laser scanning and a promise of financial support for survey elsewhere from John Osborn now made good. We will not be able to repeat the scale of our furious two week dig but the scholarly community goes on.

Did we achieve all we hoped on site? Well, not all. The shops I hoped to excavate, to begin a project on late antique retail, did not turn out to be shops, but a church. The paving slabs that I hoped to tie to the early 6th c. Agora Gate steps turned out to be late 6th to 7th c., perhaps the result of a second relaying, seen elsewhere along the street. But we did retrieve further confirmation of the date of the Agora Gate rebuild from the basement dump in trench 1, some traces of an earthquake at this time, and a very late and interesting chronology for the colonnaded street shops. The history of the Lower Agora has also been rendered a lot more interesting with the opus sectile -clad church, the cemetery, and its destruction sequence, which make for a busy late 6th to 7th c, here. The street sondages can undoubtedly be built on further, though the 4th c. phasing of the avenue, which seem clear in spolia use, has eluded us in ceramic terms. Nonetheless, as a case study of generic reused material, the project has gone fairly well, both in terms of the fortification and of the street. Laser results suggest a range of new possibilities to follow up.

Is this ‘Late Antique Archaeology in practice’, as I initially intended? Perhaps, in that new archaeologists have been exposed to excavation in experienced company for the first time, from Türkiye, where the future is bright for this subdiscipline. Did we manage to try new methods – yes on recording spolia – at which they did very well. Did we manage to tick off all the training checklist as planned for a full initiation? Certainly not. We were no model field school, to be sure, but a lot was achieved in short time, with the company of professionals from Canterbury Archaeological Trust and elsewhere, to inspire the new recruits. Let’s hope they take the study of late antiquity to other sites across Türkiye during their careers, both academic and professional. Undoubtedly, there is potential for a taught field school at Sagalassos, but it is difficult to see how this can be combined with the very stressful realities of digging for research, and reporting only a few months later in a coherent manner. That is probably too much, and a study tour perhaps serves some of the same purposes better, as we saw at the end of the dig.

What of the ‘mid-life crisis’ I was suffering from? Was it a clever idea to dig through a career crossroads to try to build a new future in Anatolia? Probably not. The crisis in the UK HE is real, and I returned home to learn that whilst I had escaped the cut, other colleagues had not. These were good colleagues and it could well have been me ending my career. Yet the 20th of August came and went and I kept my job. I could not find a new one, no matter how much we dug at Sagalassos. Yet, I have kept my own for another year. Hopes of a transition to a dream post at Bilkent are now impossible. The move would be too much for my family and I must accept that. Furthermore, the various schemes I tried to make excavation possible, amidst university contraction, now look ill-starred. Survey plus sondages may work in future but open area excavation is best done in the UK. One cannot run a large project in the Med on a single domestic credit card, in restrictive payment systems, with top-slicing of donated funds. It is just too difficult. The crisis was real and no amount of positive thought or will could change that. We also brought financial loss to Peter as director when we hoped to bring support. But we will not forget the chance we were given and the exhilaration of being on the mountain excavating such a site.

It remains for me to thank all of those involved in supporting us this year: to Buse for translating long documents into Turkish; to Zehra for mastering logistics, both before and after the dig; to Peter, for his work on the permit, on domestic support and travel, and his infinite patience; to all the workers, who pulled out all the stops to finish on time; to Zsolt, Solinda, Francis, Martha, Simon, Kelsey and Courtney for giving up holiday time to make the project work; to the depot team of both Turks and Belgians; to Jeroen for his ceramic dates; to Senem for many episodes of problem solving; to Emir for so many pertinent questions. Of course, to Mustafa and his family for our food, to Hasan, Ahmed, and many other drivers, often fetching us in the middle of the night from the airport. And to Paul Dyer for dedicated financial support, and to the development office at Kent for managing his gifts. What a team. Wherever they are now I will remember their support with gratitude.

20.1 Survey team photo

20.3 Trench 1 backfilling