Restoring ancient structures

Do you ever wish you could turn back time? A University of Nebraska-Lincoln group, led by architectural engineering assistant professor Ece Erdogmus, crosses many miles and centuries each summer. With her specialization in masonry restructures and a love of her homeland, Erdogmus leads restoration of a Roman temple from the third century C.E., in the ancient city of Antiocheia ad Kragos on Turkey's southern coast. She developed the project with art history professor Michael Hoff from UNL and professor Rhys Townsend from Clark University, and since 2005, several UNL students have joined the field work team. Funding has been provided by the National Science Foundation and Harvard Loeb Classical Library Foundation, as well as UNL funding.

Friday, July 17, 2009

July 17

Work continues to move right along! The progress is impressively swift by both the Clark students and University of Nebraska students. The crane again arrived to remove more history from the temple mound. An exciting piece of the puzzle, the pediment (pictured left), was slowly moved from the ground in front of the temple (where the block would have originally been welcoming visitors) to nearby block field A. The work began with drawing the resting side, continued with documentation, moved along with digging strap slots underneath the block, and culminated in 40ft joyride on the crane;a job well done by all those involved! In other news, a fellow engineering student and I are tasked with more accurately approximating the dimensions of the temple as it originally stood. As we anxiously await for the temple to become more revealed, we can only make an educated guess as to how the temple was constructed. We believe, with instruction from Professors Hoff and Erdogmus, that the temple had at least three levels of marble blocks: foundation, floor, and wall. Today was spent designing an intricate plan to determine the width of the temple using surveying equipment and two foundation blocks (from opposite corners) that appear to be near original position. Unfortunately, no conclusive results have been found at this time.

After lunch that day, the governor of the Gazipasa region visited the site. Over a cup of tea, he told us general information about Gazipasa and about how excited he is that we are working on the project. The main source of economic income for the region is currently agriculture, but the emphasis is slowly being shifted to tourism, with the help of attractions like the Antiocheia ad Kragos temple project. He also mentioned that areal photographs were recently taken of the site, which has us all excited to see them!

Also worth mentioning is this impression of a column drum, created by UNO student Jake Zach:

posted by Holly Brink at 9:51 AM