The training area or
‘BİLKENT HÖYÜK’

The Department of Archaeology has for some of its courses an outdoor training area.
The history of this site is as follows: in 1998 the author made a model of a 10 x 10 box type trench with stone walls in it. Colored strings showed the sides and baulks. The model had no depth.

The location was in a field between the music faculty and ours. After finishing the course, work started for the construction of the road connecting the Central Campus with the Middle Campus and our site disappeared.

A request to the university for a new location and a real deep trench resulted in 1999 in a location next to the new sports center. This building project was half-way done when construction was postponed.
A bulldozer made a 9 x 9 meter pit, which was open on one side, since this is the only way these machines can work.

In the trench, walls were built by using the stones that were dug out by the machine. But the walls crumbled easily, since the stones were of a bad quality. The piled-up stone had no mortar between them.
The layout was designed to have corners of a few houses in the trench, and a round structure in the fourth corner. In the center was a long pit, with-on class days-, a human skull and bones to represent a burial.

The 1999 earthquake made no impact on these brittle walls.
This trench was used again in 2000, but needed extensive reconstruction after the winter. Enormous erosion and collapse of the wall stones had taken place. During the 2000 semester the building of the sports hall resumed, Unloading trucks turned around the trench, while the sides were used as a depot for building materials. When no students were working in the trench, construction workers used the place as a rubbish dump.

Digging of the second trench in 1999

After the 2000 semester, the trench wound up the parking place of the sport center.

A new request for a permanent site was given to the university administration.

With the planners from the building office many tours were made to find a new spot. The final choice fell on a location between the sports center and the Jandarma post just outside the campus.

Stressing that this has to be a permanent trench, a list with building materials was handed in. The university generously supplied all the requested materials.

The trench is located in a ‘natural’ part at the edge of the university property and much effort is made to try to keep its natural appearance.

After being dug in 2001 by again the same bulldozer, an open side existed in a gully. By hand the hillside was reconstructed and this work still continues. The walls were made of a better quality stone with mortar between them. This allowed the construction of higher walls and more fancy shapes.

The trench is now ready; every new season thick layers of erosion have to be cleared out, the sidewalls changing their shapes into slopes.

In this trench the basic principles of surveying and archaeological drawing are practiced.

The drawing course HART 126 has a final project: a plan; scale 1:20 has to be drawn of the whole trench, both in pencil and as a publishable ink drawing. This drawing should show all the elements that are necessary for recording: elevations, names of walls, burials, pits etc.

A photo coverage of all the walls and the features, with scales and photo boards, is part of the project.

The HART 310 class (Archaeological Surveying) uses this trench for Theodolite and Total Station exercises; such as triangulation. The surrounding slopes are used for data collecting for a contour map.

The teacher, himself coming from a country with a Northwestern European climate, has no mercy with the students: as soon as the snow melts, the work in the trench starts.

Drawing a plan of the trench
Scale 1:20
 

Getting used to scale drawing…

This is often very muddy and cold in early spring but becomes extremely hot at the end of May when all the students work hard to finish their projects in time.

Often the only thing the students see of the May-festival is the trench! Weekends are spent there and the early mornings are used to photograph the walls in dim light. Students who live in the dormitories nearby can be seen in pyjamas: running around with cameras, this view is not uncommon!

Text and photos:
B. Claasz Coockson
 

Newsletter No. 2 - 2003, Pg. 14


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