All my workmen were excited to have a few days off for Eid al-Adha, the festival celebrating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael. Hundreds of millions of animals were sacrificed for this event, but we’re out in the desert, far away from the festivities. I’ve spent most of the time working on my dissertation, but managed to do a little wandering in the desert and took the requisite animal photographs:
Here are a couple of the reconstructed fort at Kalet auom elmaa:
Two magpies are sitting on a chimney outside my window. They’re nodding and peering around, feathers ruffling in the slight wind. Behind them the sky is cinematic–so far English skies have most others beat in terms of cloud variety, color and just general confusion. Some of the clouds race north along the horizon, and a small gray puff wanders S/SW and still more hover, unimpressed by the action.
I’m glad it’s both of the magpies though, as I’ve been told that you have to salute a single magpie and I’ve been gamely waving my hands at the poor things for the last few days. I never really expected to live in England, not like many Americans, but Bristol is fantastic–a nice mix of city living with a great art scene and a sleepy old shipping town where shops close at random hours and a “late night” barber shop near my house advertises being open “until 7 in the evening!”
The Bristol museum is incredibly well curated (hopefully get around to posting about that later) and has a series of old maps of Bristol hanging around the second floor. Walking around the exhibit brought me through the days when there was a stately house and a big square, then a slow creep of blocks and streets along the river front, then the block of housing where I live appeared, up north, some time between the 1850s and 1880s. I’m perched on a hill, and as I write I can see a wide swath of chimneys, red tile, stone. The high street (Americans, read: main street, with all the shops) is only a block away and I wandered down there this afternoon to the green grocer, passing by the fish monger, the butcher, and a few local pubs. For something that was relatively unplanned, we managed to find a very sweet place to live for a couple of months.
When my friend Guy came to visit Oakland he found that he was much more culture-shocked than when he was in Brazil or many other places. Things were just a half-step…off. I think I understand that better now. Ultimately, Bristol is an art, hip college town and that caters to my taste pretty well, but there’s always that half-second of hesitation after you’ve asked for a train ticket or another pint, “ah, American.”
It’s a nice thing though, to write your dissertation in relative solitude, without the endless whirlwind of social things that I tend to have when I’m in places where I actually know people. I miss my friends, I get lonely, but after I write my daily allotment, the back streets of Bristol are mine to explore. If only things weren’t so damn expensive, I’d be set.
Leaving on a trip and wondering if you should take your iPhone? Here’s a few things that I’ve figured out over the years if you want the most out of your trusty phone without paying huge bills.
1) Suspend your service. You can call ahead of time and tell them an exact date to suspend your service. They’ll ask why and you’ll just say that you’ll be out of the country and not using your phone. You MUST do this in order to make absolutely sure that you won’t get destroyed by data charges. Yes, you can keep your phone on airplane mode, but some of these tricks make it easy to slip up.
2) Wifi is your friend. When you get to a cafe or a hotel with wifi, let your phone download all of your messages, upload any photos you want to take, etc. Skype on iPhone is genius and when I have wifi I use it to call home and text people. But most importantly:
3) Use location services. The nice thing about iPhones (and maybe other phones, I wouldn’t know) is that the location services still work even if you suspend your service. Your compass works too. So you are able to pinpoint where you are on the globe and use it to navigate in google maps. But wait, how can I do that if I’m not connected to google maps?
4) PROTIP: when you get to a place with wifi (or you can even do it ahead of time), center your google maps over the place you are going to be, then use the top and front buttons to snap a screenshot. This will allow you to use the navigational services with a street map and google maps won’t try to reload. You can even zoom in and out. Sadly, you can’t use it to search. You can always use the little “crosshairs” button in the corner and it will track with you.
5) Check to see if Lonely Planet has published an iphone guide in the city you are going to visit. The Istanbul one was nice because I didn’t have a regular guidebook, but wanted to explore some of the outlying areas. These have ready-made maps of all of the places, and will locate you on them even without internet service.
6) Use your screenshot ability a lot. When you get to a place that has wifi, check out all the places you want to visit and snap photos of the screens. This has saved me numerous times when I need an address or I am having trouble communicating and can just show a cab driver what I mean. Take screenshots of any important websites–iPhone’s safari app has a tendency to try to reload webpages at the absolute worse times.
7) Use Foursquare while you are abroad if you can. You’d be amazed at how widespread it is, and the tips that people leave in various places are great.
8) Download a yoga program. While I am fully inculcated in the P90x cult and have the series on my laptop, having a yoga program can be really nice if you want something a bit more low-key.
9) Use it to take photos. My DSLR can be a real drag to tote around the city and I don’t always want to take the trouble to get it out and stick it in peoples’ faces. iPhones are a lot more casual and often can get pretty decent results. Moreso if you want to run it through the many programs I’ve talked about before. I also find that I’m a lot more willing to take silly shots of food and other things I want to remember.
10) Download a couple of decent games. Dear lord I’ve been on planes, trains, buses until I thought I would die…I’ve finished all my reading and have no desire to watch Avatar in Turkish again and I just want the trip to be over. I prefer card games for getting through the truly braindead wee hours.
Any other suggestions? I thought about getting a data plan with my iPhone while I was in Turkey, but decided to muddle through without it and it has been good enough.
It seems strange that I was at Catalhoyuk only a couple of days ago. Oh Catalhoyuk, you busy little excavation out on the Konya plain. In less than a week’s time there it was like I’d never left–my feet were covered in mosquito and flea bites, I was tired and mildly ill from Efes and Raki and I think half of my clothing blew away in a freak windstorm. Still, I wasn’t part of the current project madness–writing up the current round of volumes and excavating. It was a little strange writing in my corner in the seminar room all day, but I got a lot of dissertation work done, a pace that I hope to keep up for a few more months.
I’m in Ankara now, staying at ARIT to check out their incredible archaeology library and perhaps investigate our permit situation a little bit. I’m not sure why Ankara gets such a bad rap–okay I’m quite sure, compared to Istanbul most cities look pretty bad. Still, there are big, lovely parks around and everyone is friendly. I have never seen so many blond Turks in my life! ARIT is up in the hills in the embassy district, right across from the president’s house–something I didn’t realize until one of my fellow hostelers showed me the tennis courts and the guys with machine guns that you can see from our balcony.
The ARIT library isn’t open on Sunday so after I type out these few words I’ll head out to the Museum of Anatolian Civilization and the Atatürk Mausoleum, maybe checking out Ulus while I am at it. It’s been a strange trip so far, I’ve spent most of the time alone, either writing or going on long walks in various cities. Alternately, I was back at Catalhoyuk, where I was around so many dear friends that I didn’t have time to talk to them all. I feel a little addled, but good–after another couple of weeks of this my wanderlust might quiet down for a little while. Maybe. Probably not.
A little over a year ago, I spent a night in Hama. That day, Dan, Melissa and I were checking out sites in western Syria for potential projects and had gotten ridiculously lost in the mountains. The mountain towns were lovely, friendly and felt refreshingly relaxed. But it was late, and we were all tired, starving, and indecisive – a potentially lethal travel combination. We crashed in our hostel and then went out to get felafel. It ended up being the best felafel I’ve had in my life. Then we wandered the streets. It was the beginning of June and dead hot during the day, so most folks came out at night to socialize. At first it seemed like it was a shibab-dominated scene–boys were everywhere. But there were women around as well, enjoying the night air. We walked by the famous waterwheels – great, groaning, wooden dinosaurs that are monumental in scale and lit up like a carnival. The splashing water cooled the sweltering night, a miracle of relief in the desert breeze.
I hadn’t expected much out of Hama; it was a way-point in a misshapen quadrangle between Damascus, the coast, and Aleppo. But more than the groaning waterwheels, or the dark, cobblestone maze of the old city — the people of the city. The women. Or, one woman. There were a group of ladies on the street just wearing hijabs without a full veil, only slightly older than me, chatting and eating ice cream. I smiled at them, well, because I don’t generally see a lot of women while travelling in the Middle East and I miss their company, if only on the street. It’s a strange and lonely feeling when you recognize it.
The women hesitated, smiled back, and then one lady grabbed my arm. I wasn’t actually all that surprised by it, as I’ve become accustomed to displays of sisterly affection and warmth from a wide swath of amazing Middle Eastern women, but what came next did surprise me–she wanted me to have a bite of her ice cream. I didn’t really get it at first, but even after several demurrals, she insisted. We shared a melting bite of ice cream, laughed, hugged, and went on our way into the night.
So tonight, as the protests in Hama rage on, I’m thinking of her.
Solidarity with people who are yearning, aching, struggling to be free. Always.
There weren’t any photos at all in the last post, so I thought I’d make up for that with this post. Yesterday I visited Al Jamail (or Al Gemeel or any number of spellings–Arabic romanization is random at best) to take a look around and remember how to take photographs. I barely touched my DSLR all fall, and I have a fairly new macro lens that I wanted to get accustomed to, so I kitted up, intentionally leaving my zoom at home, and went out to see Qatar very close up.
I took along my iphone for back-up, grabbing touristy shots with Hipstamatic. I was told that Al Jemail had been fixed up to film a movie there, and there were parts in better repair than others.
Sadly, I took a lot of photos of garbage, since that was mostly what I could see from very close up. The beach is entirely covered, along with most of the ruins.
Still, it was good to see a more traditional village in pretty good repair, as it gives me a better idea of what the ruins we are digging up looked like a century ago. Oh! And I also found a fishing lure! The survey team has taken to collecting these so I’m glad to contribute.
In tiger stripes, of course!
Almost everything interesting in Bristol was closed when we got there yesterday–the markets, the anarchist collectives, the galleries. Still, I wanted to see more of the city than the university campus and the small neighborhood where I was holed up during the snow & sickness. In particular I wanted to check out Stokes Croft, informatively dubbed “The People’s Republic of Stokes Croft.” Sound familiar?
The neighborhood graffiti and murals were interesting–one of the first well-known Banksy murals is over the main street and the nearby squats are completely covered in art. I also wanted to see Turbo Island, a small area in Stokes Croft that was excavated to investigate heritage and contemporary homelessness–an interesting experiment in contemporary archaeology. From John Schofield’s email announcement of excavations on Turbo Island:
As some of you will know, the project that Rachael Kiddey and I have been doing with homeless and vulnerably housed people in Bristol is taking a new turn. During our perambulations last summer (and ongoing) we regularly returned (physically and in conversations) to Turbo Island, where Stokes Croft meets Jamaica Street – people kept telling us (hi)stories about the site, how it was a ‘speakers corner’, and how they used to hang pirates there. So we thought it would be fun and interesting to involve them in a small excavation of this place where they spend so much time – to perhaps uncover some of the stories of Turbo Island.
There wasn’t a lot left to see besides a few Tiki heads and the Stokes Croft museum was closed. Another time, I suppose.
After Bristol we ran off to East Quantoxhead, a tiny town on the north coast of Somerset that is famed for the huge ammonites that are eroding out of the beach head. The town is built out of the local rock, so there are fossils in all of the walls and houses. We looked around a bit, but had to hurry–the sun was setting and we wanted to get to the beach before it was dark!
The short walk follows a small stream through lovely green fields and out to the beach. I swear I want to spend a summer just walking through England, eating pub food and taking photos. It was foggy and gray, so the trail looked like it disappeared into nothing, like we were on the edge of the earth, instead of looking out over Wales.
The beach itself looks like it was intentionally cobbled with smoothed limestone and alternates with dark and lighter sediment. The light was almost gone, so we only saw a couple of small ammonites–not the huge ones that we were hoping to find. I think the area has also been heavily quarried by fossil hunters–it’s too bad, really.
So we headed back through the fog, down sunken, hedge-lined lanes and over to Exeter to meet with a few friends. It’s cold here, but I’m not sure I’m ready to leave for Qatar in a couple of days!
I’ve spent most of the last week in Dulverton, near the border of Devon and Somerset in western England. As I mentioned in the last post I’ve been ill, and just now coming out of it, so I haven’t been able to wander as I would have liked. It’s also been pretty cold and snowy, which I have been assured is absolutely peculiar for this time of year. Luckily, the frost has started to thaw, and everything is still ridiculously green beneath all the snow.
One of the absolute necessities of the trip was to see an Exmoor pony. They’re a herd of semi-domesticated and vaguely prehistoric-looking shaggy ponies that live up on the moors. We managed to track a few down, nibbling on the greenery underneath the snow.
The moors themselves are pretty fascinating–they’re a high plain with poor soils, so there isn’t much up there besides heather and a few roads. I’d love to come back over the summer to wander around and find a few of the hillforts and other ruins around.
We came down out of the moors to the north coast to check out Linton and Linmouth, Porlock, Minehead, and Dunster. Dunster is an adorable little medieval town that has a nice, newish castle and a tower-folly on the Bristol channel. People were out and about even though it was a bank holiday, and some of the shops were actually open. We refrained from going into any pubs though–the day before we had a trial run at a local pub and I had an Exmoor Beast, a fairly terrible high-alcohol holiday ale and I just wasn’t up for another drink yet. Still, Dunster was nice, if a bit twee. There’s a cute dovecote, a water wheel that still grinds flower and a church with a 500-year-old rood that survived the reformation. And a pet cemetery!
The fog was thick up on the moor and in the valleys, but broke around the coast and I got a few rays of sunshine–not that you can tell from the photographs.
I should update about TAG Bristol at some point, but I caught a horrible chest cold and have been pretty much bed ridden since Sunday. Except…!
Damn the illness–we decided at the last minute to go to Stonehenge for the winter solstice. Sadly, English Heritage has closed off the rocks to tourists, limiting access for most people most of the time. But twice a year they open up the stones for druids to worship during the solstices.
While I’m not particularly religious (or a druid!) I wasn’t really interested in seeing Stonehenge unless I could lay hands on the thing, so it was perfect timing for me.
We woke up at 5, and got on the road from Bristol by 6, and were at the monument by 7:30. At first I had heard that there wasn’t going to be parking available, so we had pulled up to park on the highway, but were waved off by the police. They let us park in the parking lot anyway, and were actually pretty pleasant, for being up on a very cold and snowy morning in England, right before Christmas!
We walked up to the stones and it seemed that there were mostly onlookers there, not as many druids. People kept telling me that “travellers” were going to be there, and as I have no idea who these people are, I was interested to see them. They just looked like folks from San Francisco to me! It was very laid back, and everyone was friendly and happy. There was some kind of small ceremony in the middle and a war veteran who just arrived from Iraq was knighted.
Then the crowd started to disperse, and people seemed content to just touch the stones, take photos, and chat. The sunrise after the longest night was somewhat of a non-event–you couldn’t seen a thing in the hazy white English pre-dawn. A bit after the druids started clearing out a snowball fight erupted in the middle of the stones, with people ducking behind them and firing away! Sadly, I don’t have very good photos of that, but there’s a pretty good one here.
We went to Avebury afterwards, which was deserted, but had some distinct remains of rituals past, and lots of tracks in the snow. I was delighted to see the monuments still being used and lived with and loved.
Traveling in England in the wintertime is like walking around with your eyes mostly closed. Drowsy gray skies, fog seeping in-between your scarf and your neck, under your coat, and around your fingertips. Last night I had a few pints with friends at the Coach & Horses, forgot to eat dinner, and ducked into a minicab to get home. London is starting to look familiar to me, with the low brick houses, white trim, and wiry black fences.
This morning I caught the Cardiff Central train from Paddington station to Bristol, heading straight into a daze of snow. The snow was falling in London last night–big, fat flakes against the black night–but the glowing flurry blowing around the train is indistinct, powdery pink and gray.
I’m trying to put the finishing touches on this paper, but even as I come to the end it seems like dragging my feet through sludge. My mind wants to be doing almost anything besides writing, and so I stare out of the window at the houses, trees, and fields diffused through the smeary snow.
The English countryside is a landscape dreaming of itself, re-iterated over centuries, absolutely secure in the belief that this is what the countryside is supposed to look like, the gold standard of pastoral bliss. Low and flat and still green beneath the hulking, ponderous clouds that seem so much more layered and complex than the puffy fluff over Texas or the flat gray Bay area mist.
Writing this has made me able to start on my paper again–something about a loose, descriptive narrative allows me to segue back into the messy jargon of New Media crashing into Archaeology.
Colleen Morgan 