Greetings from Gazipaşa

Hey folks! Greetings from Gazipaşa, Turkey.

I find myself here embarking on an adventure much dreamed about: an Indiana Jones-esque escapade digging up an ancient Roman city by the mediterranean coast in modern-day southern Turkey. It is pretty awesome.

I have managed to find a tenuous post link, you will all be happy to know. My first night in Turkey was spent in Antalya, where I visited Hadrian's Gate. And lo and behold, when I bought a stamp to send off my first postcard of the trip, it featured Hadrian's Gate. So here it is:

Now I am in Gazipaşa, a good three hour bus-ride from Antalya, where our dig-house is located. Our dig-house is normally a soccer club's football rooms, which have been transformed into dorms for our purposes. It is a pretty great set-up. Our site that we are digging up is about half an hour from here, and is the Roman city of "Antiochia ad Cragum," or "Antioch on the Cliffs."

The above photo is taken from the entry gates to the Roman city, overlooking the countryside with the Mediterranean sea beyond.  The Roman city is amazing. There is a temple that dates to the end of the 2nd Century AD; the remains of three bath-houses - one major one surrounded by an elaborate mosaic inside the city gates, one smaller bath-house outside the gates, and one down by the sea; there is the remains of the colonnaded street, which would have had shops lining it and a stunning view over the Sea.

Getting a site tour

Inside the outer bath-house

Part of the colonnaded street

A road sign in Latin

The focus of our excavations this season is on what we think is the city Agora, or marketplace. And after two days of glorified gardening - removing a thousand different types of prickle bushes - in order to reveal the ground surface, by Friday we were ready to get into it. I am in a trench with Mary Ann, and we are excavating on top of a mound that may be a temple. I am pretty excited to get into it next week.

Mary Ann and I standing in the middle of our trench pre-excavation

Anyhow, after our first week of work, our hard slog was rewarded with a swim in the "Pirate's Cove."

You can't really beat that, right? 

So, that is my first week in Turkey done... and I am very much looking forward to the second.

Show and tell: vintage ads and Aboriginal art

This week I am just doing a short little post with some show and tell. I love show and tell... have I mentioned that before?

Since it's my party and I'll cry if I want to - scrap that, its my blog and I'll write what I want to, I am straying from post this week to bring you some vintage ads from the April 1974 edition of National Geographic. I just had to share this advertisement with my archaeologist friends:

100 stone arrowheads for just $15!! We are wasting our time looking for stone tools in the field, we can just mail-order them! Who knew??

Turns out I don't have to stray too far beyond my favoured topic of stamps to bring you the arrowheads ad though, because right below it was another one that also caught my attention:

It has been a quiet (yet busy) week in my little post world, but I don't want to leave you empty handed, so here are some pretty stamps to ponder.

The above stamps are from 2003 and feature acrylic on canvas paintings created by the Papunya Tula artists of the Western Desert. These works are all recent paintings produced between 1999 and 2002 and my "2003 Collection of Australian Stamps" book explains "the painting movement has helped to preserve traditional cultural aspirations, protect tribal lands and revive inherited concepts of social order". All the artists are Pintupi people. I think the paintings, and the stamps, are exquisite.

In sharing the above contemporary works of Aboriginal artists, I also wanted to flag with you, lovely readers, an upcoming extra special blog post that will explore rock art. Should be fun! So watch this space!

Postcards from the Past: Archaeology and Family

In my last blog post on Sunday I mentioned that I had a massive week last week. As it turns out the above postcard represents a synergy of all that massive week contained! Let me explain...

My working week was massive, because I was taking part in another fieldwork session out past Ballarat on an old gold-rush era site (I blogged about it back in July here). It was our very last week of fieldwork last week, and we all felt like we were the stars of 'Time Team', with Tony Robinson in voice over saying something  along the lines of

"with only five days before this site is bull-dozed to make way for a new freeway, the archaeologists are working against the clock to find out what they can of this fascinating microcosm of life on the road to the goldfields in the 1860s..." 

There is a little bit of dramatic-license in there, but you get the drift. We were on a schedule. A road is being built. We worked like maniacs. Tony Robinson may or may not have been there. Here are some happy snaps:

It was a very fun week, and the archaeology was pretty interesting. Will found a coin from 1835, a pocket knife and a jet earring. Rach found an ink well. Ben found a bottle of some magical ointment that was a cure-all for gout, rheumatism and sore breasts! And I found some broken ceramics. Oh, and a sewing pin, when it pricked me in the finger. Dang! But what a fun week we had. Massively exhausting, but great fun.

Then, on Saturday, I turned around and drove back from whence I came, to Ballarat, in order to trawl through my Grandparents possessions, as they have just sold the family home. That was a massive day for all sorts of reasons. It is so sad to see the house go, as it has been in the family for generations. I loved spending all my school holidays there as a kid, playing in the garden with my cousins and sisters. My sister Emily got married in that garden a couple of years ago, and so the house holds all sorts of special memories. Here are some happy snaps of the house and garden "Glenholme":

My Grandma gave me her stamp collection, but I also took another special item of 'post' from the house... Great-Great-Great Aunty Mabel's postcard collection. There will be many more blog posts about Mabel's postcards, because they are so wonderful. She collected her postcards are from such exotic places as Ceylon, Zimbabwe, Norway and Hong Kong. The lady knew how to travel.

But as I was reading through them last night, I was super delighted to find the postcard from much closer to home, which I began this blog post with. This is a postcard Mabel received in 1905 from a party taking a picnic in an old 'Cobb and Co' coach right near the archaeological site I had spent my week digging up. So past and present, archaeology and memory, work and family life all meld together in the image on the front of the postcard, and the message scrawled to Mrs Cuthbert of Glenholme on the back. How absolutely lovely, and how absolutely thrilled I am.

Swedish treats: Forstadagsbrev Part 1

Last week I bought a desk. A beautiful wooden desk with seven drawers to hide all my stuff in. As a result, I spent the weekend finally unpacking the last box from my move to North Fitzroy... which happened four months ago!

Anyhow, as I was unpacking said box, I found these wonderful first day covers that my parents brought back from their trip to Sweden earlier this year. As they gave them to me just as I was moving, I put them in this box and promptly forgot all about their very existence. So, boy was I delighted when I found them the other day. This first one is my favourite, for three very good reasons:



             1) Map Postmark
             2) Viking ship stamps
             3) Map and flag illustration on envelope.

There is not much more you can ask for, in a first day cover, really. And this particular cover taught me the Swedish for first day cover:

              FORSTADAGSBREV

I like the ring of it.

Now, I have always been partial to Vikings, but I am especially more so since watching the entire series 1 - 5 of True Blood over the course of the past two months... Those of you who have seen it will hear what I am saying, but basically, Eric Northman makes me want to move to Sweden. Anyhow, all desire for undead Viking Vampires aside, you have to admit the woodcut design viking ships featured on the stamp are pretty special.

And speaking of ships, this next cover features the Vasa, sunk in 1628 and now housed in a museum in Stockholm.

The FDC

The ship in the museum

The Vasa is a war ship from the time in the 17th century when the Swedes were a force to be reckoned with, and had acquired power over much of the Baltic area. In 1961 the shipwreck was salvaged, and the stamps feature some of the different sculptures that would have adorned the ship.

I visited the museum in Stockholm that houses the Vasa in 2006, and I have to say that it was one of the highlights of my stay in the city. Not only is the Vasa fascinating because it represents a time in history when Sweden was an imperial power and because the ship is almost a microcosm of society, but the thought of the archaeology of an underwater salvage is enough to float my boat (sorry! I couldn't help it!).  The pamphlet that comes with the FDC (issued in 1969) states "the restoration of the ship continues - a puzzle with more than 10,000 pieces." And that right there, my friends, is why I love archaeology!

Since I have actually been to see the ship featured on the stamp, I am doubly pleased that Mum and Dad picked this one out as a souvenir to bring back for me. It is pretty great, you have to agree.

There is one last FDC that I am going to share with you now from my little Swedish collection, just because I think it is beautiful:

The stamps on this last cover illustrate scenes from the Arctic Circle, in northern Sweden, where on the summer solstice the sun is above the horizon for 24 hours.

The one showing the Northern Lights is my favourite of the group... and it has taught me yet more Swedish: 

NORRSKENS FORSKNING

The Northern Lights - totally up there on my list of things/places that I simply must see before I die.

Thanks for tuning into I heart post for another week... and watch this space for still more Swedish delights in Part II of this post, which I will be uploading on Sunday. Until then, keep it real, nerds and hipsters. Over and Out. H.

Queen Nefertiti and the Brunswick Lion: Sunday Stamps

The week before last I had a very lovely surprise waiting for me in my postbox; a postcard from Budapest, written twenty years ago that my lovely friend Johanna found for me in an antique store. She sent it to me not so much for the card (which itself is cool), but for the very awesome Deutsche Bundespost stamps.

The stamp that especially caught Joh's eye was the one depicting Nefertiti's bust. The bust portraying the Egyptian Queen dates to around 1340BC. It was uncovered in 1912 by a German archaeological team and now resides in Berlin.

I love the Nefertiti bust - it exemplifies all the glamour and mystery and artistry of the Ancient Egyptian civilisation. I would love to see it for real one day. Berlin is definitely on my wanderlust list.

I also really liked the stamp beneath Nefertiti on the postcard, but I didn't know what it depicted and so had to turn to google. It turns out that the Braunschweiger Löwe is the Brunswick Lion, which dates to around 1166, from the reign of Henry the Lion. There you go. Thanks Wikipedia.

I don't know what the technical term is, but I really love the simple block prints of these designs, using only two (or three on the 100 stamp) colours. They are just such bold, striking designs. I have decided I am officially a big fan of Deutsche Bundespost. Another reason to go to Germany, I suppose!!

Thanks so much for the postcard Johanna!

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This has been my entry into Viridian's Sunday stamps, which this week was a free theme. 

Check out other entries here:

Archaeology / Gold Rush / Stamps / Yay!

On site at Burrumbeet. The big skies out there are amazing.

Howdy folks!
The past two weeks I have been away on fieldwork, hanging out with the archaeologists and digging up what was an old hotel on the busy road between two goldfields in the 1850s and 60s. It was a really great two weeks and we uncovered what is a really interesting site, which is indicative of a bustling little township in a place that is now the home to only a handful of people.

Text from my stamps presentation pack

Gold was officially discovered in 1851 - and then it was on like donkey kong. People poured into the colony. Men mostly, but from all corners of the globe. The gold-rush era transformed the fledgling colony of Victoria - only newly separated from New South Wales - and as a result of this new found wealth, roads were built; railways established; and not a few hotelkeepers made their fortunes rather cleverly, not by seeking gold, but by selling grog to those who were.

Of course, you will all be pleased to know, the gold rush, which had such a momentous and lasting impact on the colony and on the country, has been commemorated in a stamp issue (everything comes back to the stamps!)

The stamp designs are based on the drawings of artist ST Gill and depict life on the gold fields, which was a very hard slog that didn't necessarily result in a large payday.

The site that we were working on the past two weeks was about a days journey between two goldfields; and therefore a perfect resting place, so many hotels and grog shops sprung up. Judging by the misty mornings we encountered, it would have been damn cold on them goldfields sleeping under a canvas tent.

So, here are a few happy snaps from our time on site. It was such great fun.

Stringing up a new trench on a very misty morning.

Uncovering a bluestone wall: foundations of a pub?

Heads down, bums up: getting deeper into the trench

 Wendy & I on another very misty (cold) morning. We wouldn't have been able to see each other but for our hi-vis!

The hotel site is really intriguing, and we still have more work to do out there. The gold era catches my imagination and I love it! Yay for archaeology and history and post all coming together into my life! What a great couple of weeks!