I didn't choose the dig life. The dig life chose me Bl

Another summer, another exciting season digging in Turkey! We made a lot of progress excavating the mound this year, which is to say we moved a lot of dirt- much of which is still ingrained into my pores :P There wasn't much in the way of remarkable artifacts this year - a few small intact jars and a nice bull's head figurine was all - but we did uncover some nifty architecture! I got assigned to the Iron Age trench and in addition to the usual pitception (one pit cutting into another cutting into another @_@) we found what appeared to be some circular structures:

So Many Circles

The plaster lining appears to have been for drainage and the burned circle would have been where organic construction material (wood, canvas, who knows) burned. The folks in the next trench down ran into some very well-preserved mud bricks that comprised some exterior structures and the Hittite casemate city walls (see 'em in the balk?):

Hittite Casemate Wall

...one wall of which included another infant pot burial like the one we found last year. On the subject of burials, we also stumbled on a middle-aged Byzantine lady buried right in the middle of town. 10 years of finding no human remains, and now four burials in two seasons - what are the odds?

Byzantine Burial

The other surprise this year was discovering a stone circle sitting right under our noses. One of our team was out on a walk not far from the mound and realized he was standing amidst one of the ancient calendar/compass structures. It's at least 4,000 years old, probably much older, and one of very few documented in our region:

Stone Circle
(the stones in the field are the circle, and that's our mound in the background)

Off site it was another typical summer in the Middle of Nowhere, Turkey. This year's subsidized crop was wheat and the whole Anatolian plateau was one large, waving amber field. The cows were being herded east this year so we couldn't set our clocks by when they came home, but there were three flocks of sheep in town which provided no end of bleats and bell clanking. We had the usual crises like the electric going out and the water pump breaking, but on the whole the amenities were nicer than last year. Still waiting for the day we get sit down toilets though!

I finally went to a kuafor for an authentic Turkish haircut experience. Apparently you don't tell the barber what kind of haircut you want; the barber decides the haircut you need, and generally it looks like something out of an 80's high school flick. For just $8 you get the full treatment: 2 shaves with a straight razor, a mud facial, an open flame to your ear hairs, and much much more! It was, uhhh... unforgettable :P

Off the top of my head I can't think of any other remarkable news! Just back now and glad to be back in the land of sit down toilets. How've your guys' summers been?