Gazipasha

Our last day in Istanbul, a few of us crossed the Bosporus to the Asian side; it was a lot less touristy.  We ended up taking a nice walk along the shore; interestingly, but not surprising, there were only men taking a dip in the water. 

After a very, very long bus ride, we finally arrived in Gazipasha (located SE of Alanya) this afternoon.  We drove up to the site to have a look; at the moment, it’s basically just a pile of blocks.  There are some blocks in the block field (blocks that have been removed from the pile, some/most of which have been drawn already) and other fragments have been lined up.  We don’t start work in the field for a little while because we need to get of residency permits (and we need to wait for our representative to the Archaeological Society before we can do that).  There is a lot of paper-pushing involved in doing research over here.  But after that, we’ll first need to remove the brush that has grown on the mound in the past year. 

Professor Townsend and his colleague have taken students up to this area in recent years to map out other ancient structures.  His colleague mentioned that as this area of Turkey develops more and more over the years, these areas that they have mapped out are being or most likely will be destroyed in the coming years.  Many, if not all the structures are not completely intact, so by destroyed I mean taken apart/removed.  There are many ways to think about this: 1. they can’t keep living in the past if they want to keep up with the development in the rest of the world (I, personally, don’t really think that); 2. there is still so much we can learn from these sites; 3. if it’s not functional, is it worth keeping around?; 4. once we learn everything we can, is it okay to destroy the evidence? 

From an American’s point-of-view, seeing that we don’t really have ancient structures to speak of, I find these ancient structures in Turkey (and elsewhere) to be a vital part of history.  The culture and history that can be found in every nook and cranny is very intriguing. For me, I’d hate to see all these places destroyed.