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CONSTANTINOPLE/Istanbul - Uncovering Yenikapi

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Bianca
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« Reply #15 on: March 03, 2009, 09:44:23 am »



Recording the team’s finds, Texas A&M graduate student Rebecca Ingram draws a life-size sketch of an oil lamp on a plastic sheet while a colleague photographs another artifact.
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« Reply #16 on: March 03, 2009, 09:45:55 am »



Ingram and nautical archeologist Sheila Matthews work on planks that are covered in plastic to prevent evaporation, which can crack the wood. Yenikapi, says Matthews, is “revolutionizing our knowledge of ship construction during Byzantine times.”
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« Reply #17 on: March 03, 2009, 09:47:03 am »










The delicately-fashioned sole of a wooden shoe bears a Greek inscription on the instep that, according to Gökçay, roughly translates: “Wear this shoe in health, lady, and step into your happiness.” Intrigued by the handiwork, the museum archeologist scoured some 20 villages in Central Anatolia to seek out cobblers and carpenters using similar traditional woodworking methods. Among the craftsmen he encountered was an 81-year-old carpenter still turning out wooden forks, spoons, plates—and shoe-soles—employing techniques that have changed little since Byzantine times. None of the modern shoes, however, bore inscriptions.

Among the tools unearthed are peculiar drills with iron bits set into wooden cylinders. Kocabaş explains that a horsehair bow-string was looped around the cylinder and the bow was moved rapidly side to side to turn the iron bit— another woodworking technique that can be seen in Turkey today.

Once the documentation, conservation and reconstruction process is well under way, the archeologist plans on fabricating a replica of one of the Byzantine ships. “Building a replica, using saws, axes and other tools similar to the ones the Byzantines used, is the best way to get an authentic, hands-on notion of boat construction,” he says. How to make the ship symmetrical and correct mistakes; how to fit the frame and planks together; how to shape a keel that steadies the craft but doesn’t slow it down; how to seal the hull against leaks—all of these technologies will be revealed, he hopes.

Then, the ultimate pay-off will be actually taking the replica out on the water. Visiting the waterfront Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark in June 2007, Kocabaş accompanied a curator on a late-afternoon spin aboard a replica of a Viking ship, taking an exhilarating turn rowing beneath the billowing canvas sail.
“It was fantastic,” he recalls. “A total dream.”

Texas A&M’s Sheila Matthews similarly dreams of piecing together a functioning replica, a spanking new double of one of the waterlogged hulks she confronts daily at the dig site. But first, she says, comes the less glamorous reality.

When I meet her under one of the site’s preservation sheds, the red-haired archeologist is ankle-deep in mud, carefully lifting a 120-centimeter (4') plank from a seventh-century cargo ship with the help of a pair of student-assistants. The boat lies alongside a small pond of opaque water that has formed from the mist sprayed by the overhead hoses.

“Gently, gently,” Matthews coaxes, as the trio presses a board-and-foam support to the plank to ease it from the muck. “If this wood slips into the water, I won’t be the one to fish it out, I can promise you that!” Fortunately, they’ve all had ample practice in this sort of maneuver and shift the plank without incident to
a nearby table for cataloguing.

Later, seated on wooden steps descending from the shed entrance down to the boat, Matthews, who has been toiling over ships at Yenikapi for the past three years, reflects on why the finds here are so revealing.
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« Reply #18 on: March 03, 2009, 09:48:25 am »



A ceramic shard’s two-tone glaze remains almost entirely intact. Aegean plates, Balkan oil lamps, North African amphorae; glass, metal, ivory and leather—all evoke a widespread, long-lived mercantile empire centered on Constantinople.
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« Reply #19 on: March 03, 2009, 09:49:52 am »









“It’s the amazing details,” she observes. “Just from examining the tool marks, we can tell if the planks were fitted first—the style of boatbuilding used in the seventh century—or if the frame came first, then the planks, a technique that didn’t become wide-spread until around the ninth century.” If the planks are joined by wooden tabs called tenons slotted into mortise notches, the ship was constructed around the seventh century, Matthews explains. If they’re joined by wooden dowels, it was built after the ninth century. “Exotic stuff, no?” she says with a smile and a shrug. “It’s what we nautical archeologists live for.”

Even seemingly insignificant minutiae give clues to the extraordinary sophistication of Byzantine shipwrights. Analyzing the dowels used on different categories of vessels, archeobotanist Nili Liphschitz from Tel Aviv University determined that the pegs connecting planks on the cargo ships were hewn from the trunks of trees, whose rigidity kept the hulls from bending. She ascertained that similar dowels on lighter galleys were made from more supple tree branches to impart the flexibility needed to prevent the longer boats from snapping in two.

According to Matthews, such principles of ship design were handed down from father to son or from master to apprentice. “You didn’t find the design written down anywhere,” she explains. “You just built with what you recalled.”

As ships are dug up, the painstaking process of documentation and conservation begins. First, each one is meticulously photographed in close-ups which are then arranged in a computer photomontage of 100 to 150 images to depict the boat in its entirety. By zooming in on the photomontage, researchers can even detect cuts left in the wood from the various tools used to build the ship.

Next, a three-dimensional computer model of each ship is created using a laser-like instrument called “total station” to map its contours. Essentially, the device records as many as 10,000 separate points on the boat’s surface and connects the dots to replicate its shape. This technological marvel is so accurate “it can copy the head of ant,” quips Matthews.
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« Reply #20 on: March 03, 2009, 09:50:58 am »



Among the finds have been baskets of 1200-year-old fruit seeds, olives and even cherries nestled next to the ship’s captain’s ceramic kitchen utensils.
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« Reply #21 on: March 03, 2009, 09:52:19 am »



This delicately-fashioned sole of a wooden shoe bears a Greek inscription on the instep that roughly translates: “Wear this shoe in health, lady, and step into your happiness.”
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« Reply #22 on: March 03, 2009, 09:53:24 am »








Once the computerized representation is complete, archeologists trace the vessel in detail on large sheets of clear plastic acetate, dismantle it piece by piece, make further acetate drawings and write exhaustive descriptions of the separate elements, then transport the planks to holding pools.

Because the fragile cell walls of the wood are supported by water, the ship timbers cannot be allowed to dry out. Instead, they are immersed in stainless steel tanks of polyethylene glycol (peg), a wax-like ingredient used in such products as skin creams, lubricants, toothpaste and eye drops. Over a period of 18 months to two years (for soft tree species like pine) or up to three years for harder varieties such as oak and chestnut, the water inside the cell walls is replaced by peg, which solidifies and stabilizes the wood.

Once the pieces are preserved with peg, archeologists re- assemble them to study how the boat is put together, then disassemble everything for storage. Eventually, some of the planks, frames and entire re-assembled ships will be displayed in a museum while preservation continues on other pieces. It’s an
on-going process that is likely to take decades, says Matthews.

“There’s a rule of thumb for underwater archeology,” she opines drily. “For every day of excavation, count on months in the laboratory.”

But instead of waiting years to put the ships on display, she suggests, why not turn the laboratory into a living museum? “You could have big rooms with glass windows and people could watch the researchers at work, examine the design plans on the walls and witness the boats taking shape,” Matthews enthuses. “It would be fabulous.”

Wouldn’t the archeologists get distracted, I ask.

“You get used to it,” she replies. “Our lab at Bodrum [on Turkey’s Aegean coast] was outside and people would talk to us all the time. Here, visitors wouldn’t get in the way if they were behind glass windows.” Such open labs exist at the Portsmouth (uk) museum dedicated to the 16th-century Tudor warship Mary Rose, she adds, so why not here in Istanbul?

So far, local authorities have not decided what ships and artifacts will be in the museum or even where the museum will be located. One proposal is to incorporate some of the nautical relics into exhibition spaces inside the train and metro station complex.
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« Reply #23 on: March 03, 2009, 09:54:44 am »



Among the “millions” of ceramic sherds recovered, says Gökçay, not all are worth cataloging and conserving. Although digging will end in 2010, conservation and study will continue for years afterward.
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« Reply #24 on: March 03, 2009, 09:55:48 am »









Kocabaş would prefer the main museum to be situated directly on the water, like the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Roskilde’s Viking ships and others. “People could see the wrecks in a proper nautical context, rather than a kilometer away from the sea, as at Yenikapi,” he points out. The ideal location, he proposes, would be on the site of the former shipyards along the Golden Horn, closer to the historic district and thus likely to attract more visitors.

But first, Kocabaş, Gökçay, Matthews, other archeologists, researchers, engineers and work crews have at least two more winters to contend with before the monster dig winds down.

“Most of the time I’m glad not to have a desk job,” Matthews muses as we emerge from the cool shed into the late afternoon sunlight. “But in the winter here, standing in the mud, as the ice-cold water starts rising and your feet and fingers start freezing, snow flies through a hole in the plastic sheeting and you struggle to hold onto your pencil to record readings from the ‘total station’ mapping, the one thing that pops into my masochist’s mind is that I actually chose this job.”

And is it all worth it, I ask.

“Oh, yes,” she replies, without a moment’s hesitation.







 Richard Covington
(richardpcovington@gmail.com)
writes about culture, history and science for Smithsonian, the International Herald Tribune, the Sunday Times and other publications from Paris. He is also a contributor to What Matters, a book of 18 essays and photojournalism on environmental, health and social issues (Sterling/Barnes & Noble, 2008).



 Lynsey Addario
(www.lynseyaddario.com)
is a freelance photojournalist based in Istanbul. This year she was awarded the Getty Images Grant for Editorial Photography for her continuing work in Darfur, Sudan.




This article appeared on pages 8-17 of the January/February 2009 print edition of Saudi Aramco World.
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