ILIPINAR HÖYÜK

A student’s perspective

(August-September 2001)

The site of Ilıpınar is located just outside Orhangazi, a town halfway between Yalova and Bursa. It lies at the west end of the Iznik Lake.

The excavation house (or more popularly, the ‘dig-house’) is situated close to the shore of the lake’s southwest corner, c. 9 km away from the excavation site.

Dutch, Belgium and Turkish students work every year together in the project, as conservator, find-processor or trench supervisor.

This year’s Bilkent archaeology student, Ayşegül Vural, was together with two Dutch students - Emil from Leiden University and Ilona from Groningen University – all supervisors of a number of trenches.

It was Ayşegül’s first excavation experience. It must have been a ‘jump in the deep’, from the schoolroom into the trench. She received moral and practical support from Emil, who was already in his third season here. He of course knows the excavation system and the difficulties of excavating burned and collapsed houses with multiple floor levels.

Every supervisor has 5 local workmen, some of them working here for their 8th season. Most of them came already as small boys starting as ‘waterboy’ and later quickly becoming specialists in excavating ‘burned mud structure debris’.

After a few days’ work, the first layer was removed, and the supervisors had to draw the layout of the houses. Ayşegül just had finished at Bilkent the HART 218 course, which teaches drawing during fieldwork, with the final project recording a simulation of an excavation trench. Another advantage was that the teacher of that course is the same person who organizes the fieldwork here on this höyük, so that the work procedures are the same!

Ayşegül Vural

(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 2001)

The workday starts at 07.00 when breakfast is served, and transport to the höyük leaves at 07.30. There is one tea break. Lunch starts at 12.00, when a car brings the students back to the dig-house. A warm lunch is served. Around 13.30 the work starts again until 17.00. After returning to the dig-house one can swim in the lake, relax a little, do some laundry etc. Dinner is served at 19.00 and afterwards work on day-notes and drawings takes place, usually until 21.00 but sometimes deep into the night. All this routine: 6 days a week. Long hot days, which the people at home imagine as a pleasant holiday! At the end of the excavation one is obliged to write a summary, in which the developments in the trench are described by the supervisor.

According to this, AE must have been used for supporting the second floor. After the first cleaning process we found clusters of collapsed wall pieces just near destruction RA and destruction RC. Around these mud-bricks blocks we found lots of oven pieces. Inside of the destruction RC we found the bones of a small dog and Roman potsherds and tiles were found. Collapsed floor pieces were seen around southern wall AE. After the first drawing (Drawing III), we removed lots of mud bricks for reaching the plastered surface of the second floor.”[1]

This work has to be done before the supervisor returns home; if done later one starts to forget the details of the work or the report will never be written!

After the report writing a party was given in a restaurant in Orhangazi, where all the workers, supervisors and staff said “good bye” and “maybe see you next year!”

Houses 35-38 on the south flank in 2001

(photo: B. Claasz Coockson 2001)

B. Claasz Coockson

[1]Part of Ayşegül Vural ’s summary.

Newsletter No. 1 - 2002, Pg. 15

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