Day 1
investigating the shoreline

The Journal of the
Black Sea Project

July 1, 1998

Well, it's officially begun: our third season of archaeological field survey. We're located in the hinterland of the town of Sinop on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. Today we'll begin a geomorphological survey of the Akliman marsh.

Preliminary analysis in 1997 by Ugur Dogan, a geomorphologist from Ankara University, suggested that the shoreline used to be far inland from its present location (see the 1998 Field Survey page).

This year we invited Mark Besonen from the University of Massachusetts to conduct two weeks of geomorphological survey in Akliman by sinking more than a dozen sediment cores in selected places. Our program of core-sampling will allow us to document not only the history of shoreline change in Akliman, but may also shed light on changing environmental conditions in the region.