[MUSIC].

Hey folks, I'm back with Elizabeth Murphy.

And I want to keep going on with this,
this new case study
we have going of Sagalassos or we agreed
to call it Saga, I think.
[LAUGH] And for unit three and, you know,
how do we find things?
I just thought we could ask Elizabeth, you
know,
how, you know, how they found things at
Saga.
And then it sort of seemed like maybe that
wasn't the best or the, the brightest
question.
Because it sort of sounds like there was
this city that basically kind of got
abandoned, and no one ever really lived on
top of, of it again.
And so, maybe bits of it were covered over
with, you know, erosional sediments.
But on the whole, it was kind of there to,
it was kind of there.
>> It was kind of there, yeah.
There was a lot of actually standing
mon-, monumental architecture still on the
surface.
>> Mm.
>> At the time in which the currents
direct-, direction of the team,
today, when he went through and he was on
a large survey project, actually,
>> Mm-hm,
>> And they were visiting known sites
in the area, and he
came across this, and it was, it was known
by the locals, obviously,
>> Mm-hm.
>> And there had been some earlier,
kind of, European explorer types.
>> Uh-huh, uh-huh.
>> Who had, who had also documented it.
But there was full-standing architecture
still available
at the second one when they first started.
There were standing walls and things like
that.
>> And that's about, how long ago when
it first started, 20, 25?
>> yeah, yeah, it's been going on for
almost, well, 25 five years now already.
So yeah, so it's, it's been a long,
long-term project And
so, so, it was well known that there was a
site there.
>> It's a, yeah, we've talked a bit
about that.
The idea that Pompeii was buried, but that
there
seems to have been some later awareness of
something there.
And then, every now and then, there are
monuments, like, I think we
talked a bit about the Lion Gate
of Mycenae that never, never really
disappears.
So, there we got Saga the city.
But clearly you guys didn't just,
you're not just doing the monumental
architecture.
So, I was wondering if we could just run,
you know, we've
sort of been talking about a range of ways
to find things.
So satellite imagery?
Aerial imagery?
Did you guys use that?
>> Yeah, definitely.
We've used aerial imagery across the
sites.
Because the site is located on essentially
the side of the mountain.
You can actually understand a lot about
its topography by looking down at it,
you can see some, some features in the
surface as well from the air.
And a variety of other techniques have
been
used including well, surface survey across
the area.
>> Okay, on the city itself, or around
the city?
>> To see the extent of the city, yeah,
both.
>> Both?
Okay.
>> And we've also used well a lot of
geophysical studies as well, which have
been particularly successful
in the area where I've been working in the
Potter's Quarter because the kilns are,
are very visible.
>> Yeah.
They must pop.
You know, what, what, what ground
penetrating radar, magnetometry?
>> Magnetometry is the best for finding
kilns.
>> Actually that's true.
>> So those pop out very nicely.
So, using magnetometry results, but using
the combination of
the different techniques, you can see
things like roads.
You can see things like buildings and the
extensive buildings.
>> Sweet, yeah.
>> And so that was very, very effective
in understanding kind of
how far the city actually extended into
the suburban areas around it.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Yeah, I think with ancient cities we
often think of, you
know, that, you know, there's kind of a
city and then a countryside.
And actually one of the cool things about
Saga
is that it did have suburbs it seems, a
suburbia.
For example the Potters Quarter that
Elizabeth has mentioned a couple times
now.
So you had aerial, you had remote sensing,
you had survey, and of course.
>> Excavation.
Yeah.
The originally, in at least in the area
where I
worked, they did these series of what are
called sun dodges.
Which are usually small kind of
excavations that
are limited in scope to try to understand.
Yeah, the really kind of a.
>> What, like one foot by one foot kind
of thing?
sort of little bit bigger than that?
>> About a meter by a meter.
>> Meter by a meter, okay.
>> And so, sun dodge is going in to see
what the, what type of material is
available in those areas.
What the chronology is.
>> Right.
>> For, for different segments of the
site.
And then larger scale excavations were
directed looking at
both the geophysical results and also the
sun dodges.
>> Oh, that's interesting.
So the, so the sun dodges were sort
of ground truthing some of the geophysical
results.
And then the sun, then the, the sun dodges
ground truth the
geophysical and then they excavate, the
larger excavations ground truth the sun
dodges.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Yeah, oh boy.
That's wonderful when you can layer things
like this.
In some countries it's very hard to get
permits
to, to, to do that kind of multiple
technique.
So if you survey, you can't do anything
else
or if you dig, you can't do everything
else.
And it, there really is a pleasure to, the
sense of layering, I think.
You know?
So, so you've seen it from soup to nuts or
from bird's eye view to?
>> [LAUGH] Yeah.
To down, yeah.
Down to the really the natural sterile,
sterile soils.
And that's another area actually that
we've
that the project has developed rather
nicely.
Is the understanding the soils and
the natural geomorphology, what's called
geomorphology
which is understanding kind of the natural
geological soil processes across the area.
>> Mm-hm, yeah.
>> And so, for example, because there's
so much industrial
activity there's also some natural clay
beds in the area too.
Which are probably, it's probably part of
the reason that,
that it was established for ceramics
production in the first place.
>> I was going to say, I wondered if,
that's, there's a
reason why the Saga is famous for its, its
pots, yeah.
Yeah, we've talking about geology and
working with geologists.
And it helps you to understand now, you
know, why the
city might have been put there or why
certain activities evolved there.
But also, I imagine how the, how the shape
of the city, the morphology
of the city has changed depending on
what's going on in the surrounding
environment.