---

Finishing up during the last few days in the field always involves lots of drawing (which I had to do two trench section drawings by myself... I was very glad to be done), photos, and brushing. The excursion we went on a few weeks ago was to a few other archaeology sites, and apparently I had already been to them in Cappadocia, but it's always better when you get a guided tour from the site director.

Sorry for the delay on getting this up... due to the semester starting and other issues it took a little while to get this together. Panoramic picture is from the dig house on our site. Not too much else to say other than we ended on time this year. The big finds for our team would be finding our first dirt floor, and our first building. The buildings are different during this time period (Chalcolithic) compared to the East Mound (Neolithic) - where it's thought that these people built two story mud brick houses, needing buttresses to support this upper story. We found what we think is the lower, ground level of one of these buildings. In one of these spaces in the building was a massive deposit of full (yet broken) pots (in picture), and under this was almost an entire space filled with unfired clay balls (about the size of baseballs), and the bone hair pin (pictured as well) was found in this same area. What are clay balls you might ask? Well, the fired ones (fired like a pot would be, so they are not soft) are usually used for cooking/heating under pots. The unfired ones are thought to be used as a clay resource for making clay objects/pottery. The clay was collected from the nearby river (well, when it was still there, now it does not exist), and brought back to make pottery.

I spent my last day in Istanbul with another graduate student, running around the city from the Bazaars to the Tea Garden that I had been to last year with the water pipes. After 5 weeks and only a few minor hitches... I was glad to be home.

---