Day 9 - Graves and Fish Bribes

The graves in Trench 1 are creating interest for Zsolt and Sam, who are both funerary archaeologists. Sam particularly is in his element excavating graves, picking up the slightest detail and sampling areas of the body for parasites etc. His excellent paper on late antique graves at Sagalassos, with Peter Talloen, forms part of a collection of articles on Burial and Memorial that we are just about to publish in the Late Antique Archaeology series. For myself, I still feel a twinge of regret at transferring a body from the ground to a plastic box in the store, especially the children. I understand that we need a window of study but hope one day these remains can be restored to the place where they were left for eternity by parents or descendants. These were bodies laid with care, with packing made from the ruins of the opus sectile floor, but of poor people, with no objects placed in the graves. A last section of the opus sectile floor has been revealed, showing a pattern of lozenges, one of two carpet types seen here, plus a border. The basement is now too deep for further full excavation, but the last part of our work revealed a cut down wall, the remnant of an earlier phase.

In trench 2, the floor has now been reached in both shop and portico. This occurred shortly after I reorganised the labour and foolishly accepted a deal that I must buy the digging team 2 fishes at the restaurant on Monday evening, when our dig comes to an end. It was also a consequence of the arrival of Serdar, the chief of the workmen, coming from trench 1. Despite being ill (our latest casualty, illness so far affecting 6 people), he did the work of two men, quickly establishing wall faces and walking surfaces. I lost another bet, that Peter set me, involving the front wall of the shops. It was indeed buried behind rubble, with a clear line appearing where we thought there was collapse. The floor of the portico itself seems to be slowly emerging as a mix of beaten earth and some loosely organised slabs, comparable to further along the same street. Doorways into our shop have, however, eluded us.

9.1 LAA Burial and Memorial in Late Antiquity

9.2 T2: the shop floor, showing a cut-down bar counter, in the centre of the image.