Introduction
This article considers the historical background to contemporary archaeological labour relations between local and foreign team members in fieldwork projects in Türkiye, problematising the invisible labour of cultural intermediacy performed by native-speakers of Turkish for the benefit of their non-Turkish-speaking colleagues. We first illustrate some of these dynamics through an autoethnographic approach by presenting our own experiences to reflect broader patterns governing the time, work, and professional priorities of native-speakers effectively working a ‘second shift’ (after Hochschild).1 Our historical focus rests on the experiences of the Ottoman archaeologist and museologist Theodore Macridy Bey (1872–1940), whose own scholarly activities were secondary to his role as facilitator, which, in his case, was part of his formal duties as a representative of the Imperial Museum monitoring foreign expeditions. Many of the logistical and interpretative tasks undertaken by Macridy are today carried out informally by local archaeologists as side-jobs, often without pay or recognition. Highlighting the circumstances surrounding the earliest local and foreign partnerships,2 which often played out on unequal terms, is a crucial step towards historicising contemporary labour relations in Türkiye and exploring the origins of extractive practices still clinging to archaeological fieldwork in the Middle East today.
Histories of Archaeological labour
From its beginnings, archaeological excavations in the Middle East have relied on seasonally hired local labour for the bulk of earth removal, leaving the archaeologist to make sense of and record what is being exposed. Thus, the division of labour is between ‘unskilled’ workers who do the hard physical labour, while ‘trained’ archaeologists are tasked with the interpretative, intellectual labour.3
Recent research into histories of managing hired labour have brought the practices of early excavators under scrutiny, highlighting the overlooked contributions of local workers to the production of archaeological knowledge.4 The implications of such work for decolonising archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa are evident, as is its potential to shape ongoing discourse on archaeological ethics. Coming to terms with the historical background of how certain archaeological actors become invisible also holds tremendous epistemological significance for ‘understanding the social fabric of knowledge itself’.5
In our own examination of invisible local labour on foreign-led archaeological fieldwork in Türkiye, we shift the focus to labour relations between archaeologists themselves. In doing so, we aim to highlight a previously unaddressed form of inequitable labour practice whereby the time and work of local colleagues are informally but habitually co-opted to meet the translation needs of their foreign counterparts.
The resulting value hierarchy of leading (foreign) vs supporting (local) work also has a bearing on how archaeological knowledge is produced and consumed. Where translation work disrupts or takes precedence over the archaeological activities of local colleagues, this diminishes and marginalises their professional contributions, reinforcing the notion that archaeology is the prerogative of foreign experts, with local collaborators taking on secondary roles. Extensive reliance on others for communication – whether it is to gather information, gain understanding, express opinions or contribute one’s own knowledge – can also take away from the epistemic value of the work of ‘leading’ archaeological actors.
Modern Dynamics
The history of archaeology of the Turkish Republic (founded 1923) has sustained a longer and more stable trajectory as an autonomous discipline than its neighbouring nation states in the Middle East. It is also significant that archaeology in Türkiye has never come under foreign monopoly, though Western institutions remain an established and significant part of the archaeological and scholarly community.6
During the early years of the republic, both the subject matter as well as the scientific/scholarly practice of archaeology were heavily promoted as part of a state-sponsored effort towards building a new national identity drawn from the ancient Anatolian past.7 While the over-zealous claims of early republican archaeology were soon put away,8 Turkish archaeology remains heavily nationalistic not only in spirit, but also in its fundamental structure, being very closely controlled by the state. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism (Kültür ve Turizm Bakanlığı) is the sole authority for reviewing and granting permits for archaeological work. All new permits from the Ministry must also receive presidential approval.9
A key part of this regulatory framework is the Ministry’s appointment of a government representative (temsilci) to all Turkish and foreign archaeological fieldwork projects each season. Broadly speaking, the duties of such a representative today are similar to those of Ottoman antecedents. Representatives file regular reports on the organisation and progress of archaeological work, including information about the excavation site, team members, and findings. Their end-of-season report must contain an exhaustive inventory of all finds; representatives have sole authority over selecting which artefacts will go to the local museum and which others can remain in the excavation depot. While it is not the representatives’ responsibility to appoint, oversee or manage hired workers, they do have a say over excluding individuals, for instance, if security concerns arise. Informally, representatives can also be instrumental in providing bureaucratic guidance and advice to excavation directors, and mediating between archaeologists and the local communities though they have no official obligation to do so. It is also extremely rare for museum representatives today to know or be willing to communicate in a foreign language, let alone provide translation services. They are, effectively, interlocutors who also need interlocutors. Seeing as representatives must live with archaeological teams for the full duration of a season, communication for work purposes is not the only need that must be met; social interaction also requires third parties to facilitate interaction between representatives and non-Turkish-speaking staff. It is often an informal and therefore invisible task that falls on local archaeologists, adding to their ‘second shift’ in between or after regular work hours.
Over the last few years, the idea of an archaeological second shift and the invisibility of translator/fixer10 work in Türkiye has been put to various audiences11 whose responses and feedback have been remarkably consistent in validating the central premises of invisible labour as outlined here. From among these audiences, local archaeologists from Türkiye and the Middle East unanimously reported experiencing the double burden of informal translation work. While some non-native speakers admitted not having been previously conscious of the implications of translation work from their side of the language divide, others did acknowledge prior awareness, whilst also expressing frustration at being excluded from decision-making mechanisms, or insufficiently empowered to effect change.
To many, heavy reliance on translators seems an immutable fact of working in the Middle East because it is often considered too time-consuming, too expensive, and simply too impractical to teach Western teams difficult languages such as Turkish, Arabic, or Kurdish, when it is far simpler to get locals to facilitate communication. What this really means is that priorities lie with protecting the time of Western archaeologists from being dissipated into language-learning whilst also reserving funds for living or research expenses. Incidentally, the latter seldom include fees for translators. We believe that this kind of linguistic exceptionalism largely manifests as an unconscious habit which initially developed out of explicitly unequal partnerships between Western experts and local intermediaries in the Middle East, but never fully transformed into a reciprocal exchange of knowledge between professional colleagues whose production as well as consumption of archaeological knowledge are valued equally.
Before launching the historical analysis, we illustrate contemporary dynamics through an autoethnographic approach in which we describe our own experiences of undertaking a double burden of invisible translation work in the field. We do so to highlight how such dynamics can disadvantage and marginalise local archaeologists into secondary roles not dissimilar to Macridy’s own time. Just as we introduce Macridy in his own historical context so that his writings can be meaningfully contextualised, we provide self-reflexive personal histories and articulate our own positionalities as relevant to situating our lived experiences of invisible translation work and how we understand and problematise language politics more broadly.
Personal Histories
A fundamental premise behind this article is that the personal is political. While it is not our intention to universalise our own experiences, observations, or viewpoints, we are conscious that neither of us are unique in having carried various forms of a double burden on fieldwork, serving as translators and cultural mediators countless times, whilst also keeping up with our actual tasks as students and later as professional researchers. Our stories are part of a much wider pattern and therefore can serve as case studies here.
Yh
I am an archaeologist of Middle Bronze Age Anatolia, specialising in socio-religious history. As an active field archaeologist with a day-job lecturing in a history department, I teach ancient Middle Eastern history reconstructed as much from material culture as from textual sources. My own training in archaeology has been heavily art historical during my undergraduate degree in Türkiye; and broadly Assyriological during my postgraduate studies in the UK, where I have been living now for 18 years.
Born and raised in Ankara, I would most likely be described as a ‘white Turk’ insofar as this signals belonging to a privileged, educated, urban middle class maintaining a Westernised lifestyle.12 I never wanted to be anything other than an academic archaeologist, and have always had the financial security to not have to consider an alternative to this non-lucrative career path.
Since my first field season in 2003, I have participated in 22 individual field seasons, as part of eight different projects, all in Türkiye. I have always had the privileges, resources, and the home comforts of working in my own country where I speak the language, understand the dynamics, and can rely on a network of friends and family whenever necessary. In other ways, I am very much an ‘outsider’ in the rural communities embedding archaeological fieldwork, as anyone – especially women – from my socioeconomic background would be. In addition to this, I am a Turk living abroad, and have attended numerous field seasons with a foreign spouse. It is not unusual for other Turks to assume I am not ‘entirely’ or ‘properly’ Turkish. Being perceived in this way places me also in a position of liminality vis-à-vis international teams. Most of my schooling, all of my higher education, and professional career in archaeology have been in English-speaking settings, giving me greater cultural/linguistic familiarity with Anglophone settings and rendering me as a more approachable, more accessible, and more acceptable version of a Turkish colleague.
I have been called upon as a translator and fixer to colleagues since my very first field season, which has significantly influenced my identity as an archaeologist. On numerous occasions as an undergraduate, I was strategically assigned to excavation areas not on the basis of my archaeological skills, interests, or educational needs but because I could translate for non-Turkish-speakers. My early field training was thus largely shaped by prioritising the work of others, rather than focusing on my own development. Translator first, archaeologist second. In my later career I have internalised this perception as a natural part of my role on fieldwork.
FTÇ
My academic career began in philology. I studied Japanese language and literature for my undergraduate degree, which enabled me to qualify as a tour guide, working initially with Japanese groups and later also for English-speakers. Visiting ancient sites regularly, I was drawn to archaeology, eventually deciding to pursue a career in it. My archaeological interests have been widely varied: I have worked on Byzantine architecture, Islamic ceramics, and most recently, the history of archaeology.
Born to a middle-class family, I grew up in Denizli, a prosperous city in western Türkiye where the standard of education available to me was higher than the national average. Keenly learning English and German at the age of 11, I was aware that foreign languages would open doors for me. Indeed, my language skills have greatly facilitated my access to educational and professional opportunities, including a PhD in Canada. I now live in Germany, where I have been working as a postdoctoral researcher and museum guide since 2018. As a graduate student, I participated both in excavations as well as surveys spanning the Bronze Age to the Mediaeval periods. All of these projects were undertaken by international teams, in which I was part of a minority of Turkish-speakers.
I wrote my doctoral thesis on the history of archaeology, with a specific focus on Ottoman archaeologists, and continue exploring this topic in my current research. Having initially viewed it as a biographical study, I recently recognized the distinct autobiographical dimension of my research. Studying Ottoman archaeologist Theodore Macridy’s letters and field notes, I found many of the challenges he faced were uncannily similar to some of my own experiences of working with international teams in Türkiye. What especially resonated with me was Macridy’s constant juggling of all kinds of tasks, from building crates to appeasing local authorities, and still making the time to restore pottery vessels (albeit poorly). In Macridy’s case, facilitating archaeological work for others was part of his job, for which he had instructions and received a salary. I, on the other hand, never joined a project in any formal capacity other than a student or researcher, yet found myself performing a variety of non-archaeological tasks I had not necessarily agreed to undertake. Once, on a survey which I had hoped would teach me more about pottery, I found myself acting as translator instead, helping conduct interviews with villagers. Being a conduit for information for others took precedence over being myself a recipient of new skills and knowledge. On occasions when I was asked to give tours of nearby ancient sites, I was conscious that the skillset being invoked was not my knowledge as an archaeologist, but my background as a professional guide.
Shared experiences of invisible labour
Both of us have performed a wide variety of tasks to facilitate the educational and professional activities of non-Turkish-speakers on international archaeology projects. A large portion of our fieldwork hours have been invested in on-the-spot translations between non-Turkish-speakers and local workers, communicating with visitors, or even providing simultaneous translation on lengthy site tours, leaving our time prone to fragmentation. In addition to disruptions to our work, our rest hours were often cut short whenever non-Turkish-speakers and house staff struggled to understand each other during the normal course of their day, for example, when sherd-washers needed instructions; when a menu or a shopping list had to be decided with the cook; or when contact with the outside world became necessary or inevitable, such as when a delivery arrived, something needed repair, or the team received an official visit from local dignitaries.
We have on countless occasions accompanied foreign staff to markets and shopping centres, pharmacies and hospitals, government offices, phone shops, repair shops, bus stations, and banks. We have been asked to help arrange holidays, hire cars, book hotels, chase lost baggage, and resolve any number of major and minor crises, complications, and misunderstandings. We have been asked to attend official meetings with museum directors, military police commanders, and local bureaucrats; and have been ‘invited’ on outings, only to discover we were expected to translate for the duration of the trip. We were never officially but always informally ‘on call’ on meals out to translate menus, explain dishes, query restaurant staff about ingredients, and help place orders.
A particularly heavy intellectual and emotional load associated with translation tasks, perceived as a natural extension of the native-speakers’ place on an international project, is to act as a mediator between government representatives and foreign team members. Especially in teams with the level of Turkish knowledge among foreign staff is so low that even the most rudimentary conversation is difficult, it inevitably falls on native-speakers to take on the duties of a host and maintain a sociable environment for the representative. We have both found this to be a way in which a lot of leisure time effectively becomes ‘work’, and conversations become segregated. Perhaps the most demanding aspect of the double burden of native Turkish-speakers, in our shared experience, is being tasked with producing translations in writing, such as excavation reports to be submitted to the Ministry (at bi-weekly intervals during a season, as well as the more comprehensive, end-of-season reports); official petitions, letters, and applications on behalf of projects or for individual colleagues. One of us has translated, at short notice, a lengthy field manual one into Turkish, and another into English.
The greatest impact of invisible translation labour on our own work and identity as archaeologists ultimately comes from the cumulative time burden and the attritional mental load of a large number and variety of extra tasks. The result is not only a leisure gap leading to greater levels of exhaustion and burnout, but also a performance gap, because local archaeologists are more likely to fall behind, and be regarded as less productive or less successful. The inescapable result of such gaps is the further othering of local archaeologists, which is especially problematic in a discipline with the colonial legacy of attributing the ultimate authority of discoveries, decisions, and interpretations to Western experts. We now turn to historical dynamics to highlight how relegating local archaeologists to secondary roles effectively continues old habits. As the discipline is investing increasingly more into identifying, acknowledging, and if possible, redressing the damage of its colonialist past, this important self-reflexive process is not complete without confronting ongoing practices.
Ottoman Dynamics
A historical awareness of the politics of language, interpretation, and cultural mediation surrounding Western archaeological presence in the Middle East reveals how the original dynamics between ‘Western master’ and ‘Oriental servant’ in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have largely transferred onto the professional relationships between foreign and local colleagues, who are ostensibly equals in collaboration but continue to be trapped in uneven power dynamics prioritising the needs, amplifying the voices, and enhancing the visibility of the former at the expense of the latter.
Dragomans
Before state-appointed officials representing the Imperial Museum, archaeological expeditions relied on the services of paid fixers who were chosen and hired especially for the job, called dragomans: ‘guide[s] and translator[s], engaged by foreign travellers [to Egypt and the Middle East] to facilitate their journeys.’13 Dragomans interpreted the ‘Orient’ for their clients, but also ‘enabled a foreign visitor to insulate him- or her-self from the Orient in a way which offered an illusion of engaging with it.’14
Histories of dragomans,15 which contribute to the broader literature on the invisibility and socially liminal position of interpreters,16 are highly informative about the multifaceted complexities of such a job. Particularly for querying contemporary practices of field archaeology, it is important to appreciate the skills, knowledge, and resilience required from a dragoman as translator, interlocutor, and overall fixer. For example, Haj Wahid, Woolley’s dragoman at Carcemish, was ‘a servant […], engaged as cook, dragoman, and general factotum’ expected to be ‘ready to act as interpreter, to drive a bargain, to drive out on messages.’17 Consequently, the job of a dragoman was considered the most respectable of all jobs paid for by Western employers as it involved working closely together, required building mutual trust, and even acting as a deputy. Woolley trusted Haj Wahid ‘to entertain guests in our absence and generally to protect our interests.’18 It is important to note that even though he could rely on the services of a dragoman, Woolley also invested in learning local languages.19 Another such figure was Flinders Petrie who was critical of other Westerners’ disinterest in languages which he called ‘linguistic chauvinism.’20 Both men recognised that being able to communicate in local languages did not completely remove the need for an interlocutor, who was still uniquely qualified to interpret the ‘sites and sights’21 of an unfamiliar cultural setting. Such a need also exists today.
Tighter regulations by the Ottoman state (see below) introduced a new type of local interlocutor to foreign expeditions, in the form of official agents appointed and reporting to the Imperial Museum in Istanbul. While many expeditions did continue to use their own privately hired dragomans, quite a few of the latter’s duties could also be transferred to museum officials, who found themselves acting as fixers/facilitators. The appointment of museum officials certainly introduced new complexities and tensions,22 partly because it blurred the balance of power between foreign archaeologists and local interlocutors as master and servant.
Theodore Macridy’s field experiences constitute an excellent case study in this regard, as we encounter him in numerous and complex positions of liminality and hierarchical ambivalence.23 He is both an assistant and facilitator at the behest of European expeditions, as well as an overseer, and thus also in a position of authority to which Europeans were to some extent accountable. Consequently, he is both the object of dislike and anger, as well as one of appreciation and acceptance.
Ottoman archaeology
In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, a growing awareness of history and archaeology radically transformed the study of the past in the Ottoman intellectual arena.24 Above all, the intensifying European rush for antiquities greatly influenced the ways Ottoman archaeologists engaged with the past and the ways they negotiated their presence within new structures of power, which evolved into an ambition to gain superiority in the field over their Western counterparts. A turning point came in 1881, with the appointment of Osman Hamdi Bey as director of the Ottoman Imperial Museum in Istanbul. Eager for the empire he represented to catch up with its European counterparts, Osman Hamdi expanded the museum’s holdings, established modern methods of display, commissioned scientific publications by the museum, and launched archaeological expeditions. As well as scientific undertakings, these expeditions were also tactical state enterprises to confront the growing demands of Western powers actively engaged in archaeological excavations within Ottoman lands.25
Osman Hamdi explicitly acknowledged the limits of his own archaeological expertise and the weaknesses of his team, which he strove to compensate by working with foreign specialists in conducting field research, analysing artefacts, and preparing museum catalogues. This collaboration played a significant role in the training of local specialists to address the shortage of qualified staff in the museum whilst also helping grow the museum collections in a short amount of time. Thus, foreign excavations served as field schools, where the officials of the museum were trained in archaeological method and theory.26
While such collaborations opened up entirely new opportunities for the exchange of knowledge and transfer of expertise between the Ottomans and the West, they were also the site of troubled relationships. It proved difficult to sustain reciprocity and collegiality between Western and Ottoman archaeologists, as each side viewed the other with some suspicion. Ottoman archaeologists continued to be viewed from an Orientalist lens of Western superiority, and were not always accepted as professional peers. It is quite telling, for instance, that Osman Hamdi Bey, whilst working with Felix von Luschan on the Zincirli excavations, was added to von Luschan’s collection of photographs cataloguing the native peoples of Anatolia as ‘racial types’.27 Even as a prominent member of the aristocratic Ottoman intellectual elite, educated in France and thoroughly invested in establishing modern standards of archaeology and museum practice, the powerful director of the Imperial Museum, Osman Hamdi could not escape being the object of Western scholarship rather than a partner to it.
One of the key sources of tension was the new antiquities law conceived by Osman Hamdi Bey in 1884. This new law imposed firm restrictions on the ownership of antiquities, their export, trade, documentation, and protection, stipulating that the Museum ‘had a monopoly to explore, examine and excavate on all the ancient sites/lands.’28 The Museum also held the right to grant excavation permits to universities, scientific societies as well as individuals who could prove scientific proficiency.29 Most importantly, the new law expressly prevented the removal of antiquities out of Ottoman lands and required that every archaeological expedition led by foreign teams be monitored by an official from the museum, who would keep a daily record of all finds and submit it to the museum administration on a regular basis.30 The new regulations not only imposed considerable bureaucratic and logistical challenges to running campaigns, but also created hostility and conflict between the members of foreign archaeological missions and museum representatives.
Theodore Macridy Bey
Theodore Macridy was born in Fener, Istanbul in 1872 as the son of a Greek military physician, Konstantin Macridy Pasha. Biographical information on his life is fragmentary and mainly based on obituaries.31 He attended the Fener Greek High School and subsequently the Francophone Lycée Impérial Ottoman de Galata-Sérai (Mekteb-i Sultani). After graduating, he worked for the Ottoman Public Debt Administration (Düyûn-ı Umûmiye) until he was appointed secretary of French correspondence at the Ottoman Imperial Museum. Shortly thereafter, Macridy was appointed as commissar, tasked with the inspection of foreign excavations conducted under the authority of the Imperial Museum. Even though he officially remained a secretary, he spent most of the year on the field until 1907, when he was promoted to Conservator.32
A number of things made Theodore Macridy an ideal interlocutor for European expeditions. Like many dragomans hired by Western travellers, he was a Christian, and therefore represented a familiar point of reference in contrast to Muslim ‘Orientals’. He was bilingual in Greek and Turkish, and fluent in French, a language in which he also published. As an upper-class Greek gentleman from Istanbul, Macridy was in some respects too much like the Europeans, which made him an outsider in the remote places fieldwork took him to manage workforces of rural peasants. He would have been especially out of his element in Syria and Lebanon, as he did not speak Arabic fluently. State officials sent from Istanbul would not have been particularly welcome in Arab provinces to which the prestige of the Imperial Museum did not extend. He also found the climate difficult to bear.33
For his first assignment in 1897, the Museum dispatched Macridy to Ephesus to monitor the joint excavations of the British Museum and the Austrian Archaeological Institute. During this time, he was also assigned to the German mission in the neighbouring site of Miletos. From 1897 to 1907, which is the period covered by his letters, Macridy accompanied European teams in Ephesos, Miletos, Cos, Baalbek, and Boğazköy-Hattusa. From 1900, Macridy also began to lead his own fieldwork projects at numerous sites, including Langaza (Thessaloniki), Notion, Sidon, Raqqa, Akalan (Samsun), Thasos, Alacahöyük, and Daskleion (Bandırma), as well as Ankara and Istanbul where he continued active fieldwork into the late 1920s, during the Republican era.
When he embarked on his first journeys, Macridy had no prior field experience nor any formal training in archaeology. His job description involved the organisation of fieldwork logistics, providing security for the excavation teams and their finds, facilitating their communication with local communities and administrators, and dealing with workers. Above all, he had to ensure compliance with the 1884 legislation, which meant he was tasked with monitoring the teams and regularly reporting on the excavations and discoveries, to the museum in Istanbul. Soon, however, Macridy began to actively participate in the excavations, acquainting himself with excavation methods, mapping and documentation techniques, collection strategies, and the conservation of artefacts. Over the years, he trained himself in field archaeology, mainly through observing and assisting his Western colleagues. The shortage of qualified personnel at the Museum meant Macridy had to work on several expeditions simultaneously. Between 1897 and 1907, he frequently travelled long distances between Jerusalem, Damascus, Baalbek, Beirut, Sidon, central Anatolia, and around the Aegean coast of Asia Minor.
At the end of a tiring 6-day journey from Baalbek to Palmyra on horseback,34 the expedition eventually arrived at the Temple of Bel, which had been converted into a mosque. Quick to think on his feet, Macridy appointed the imam as field supervisor for the workers so that he himself could dedicate his attention to archaeological work. After spending four full months in Baalbek and its surroundings, however, Macridy was suffering from illness and exhaustion:
I am very ill. I have told these gentlemen that it will be very painful for me this time to accompany them in my present state of health adding that I will ask permission to be excused. They believe that this is a way of causing them misery and having to pay road fees and allowances by keeping an unknown person with them on top of it.35
In the end, the Germans accept Macridy’s ‘good services’36 though Macridy himself does not seem to have felt his work and efforts were appreciated: ‘I have literally worked for the King of Prussia and treated … not marvellously.’37
Complaints about sour relations with German teams are not uncommon in Macridy’s letters, in which he recounts episodes of meeting resistance, scorn, and ridicule from his colleagues who are extremely demanding, whilst also dismissing or undermining his contributions. During his time in Baalbek, Macridy complains that he has no time to write letters on account of ‘work[ing] like a slave.’38 In another letter, he also laments that he does his very best to please some of these gentlemen but that it is not always easy nor possible. He was clearly not on the dominant side of power relations.
A perennial source of resentment tension were the regulations imposed by the 1884 legislation, regarded as ‘an inconvenience for foreign teams’.39 One such regulation stipulated that all expenses related to excavations, including the salary and travel expenses of the commissar and security detail, were to be covered by the excavators. Consequently, the organisation of finances became a major point of conflict between the Museum, local administrators, and foreign teams. Enforcing the rules and arranging the logistics, especially appears to have been a headache for Macridy. In one of his letters from Djerash, he reports that while the Germans wanted to make extensive travels in the desert to map out new territories and explore new sites,40 they were not so eager to cover the expenses of the Ottoman officials accompanying them:
We left Palmyra […] and after an 80-hour walk we arrived in Karyatein exhausted from fatigue and insomnia. […] The next day, a binbachi and 20 horsemen/gendermas came by the order of the vali to accompany us on our trip to the Djebel Druze. Professor [Otto] Puchstein […] got angry and refused to travel with the escort […] I explained to the professor (who believed that all these horsemen would be fed at his expense) that this was an indispensable/irrevocable measure of the government and that he had to take care of it. He told me to telegraph the vali [to ask] for the return of the escorts, which I did politely and he himself [sent] a hundred to his consul. […] [T]he professor got very rude and said unpleasant things to me and notified me that he would return to Damascus if the escorts continued to accompany us. […] [He] did not know what he was saying to hurt me so I had to remain very patient.41
As the person officially in charge of enforcing the rules, Macridy is the inevitable target of Puchstein’s ire. He serves, in quite a literal sense, as a tête de Turc.
The difficult dynamics of being a commissar appointed to monitor and report on archaeological work must have had an impact on Macridy’s professional ambitions. On the one hand, as a bureaucratic agent of the state, he represented the very authority regarded with disdain by foreign archaeologists. On the other hand, Macridy too was a scholar in his own right and strove to be recognised by his peers on archaeological merit. He did not always find this easy.
In Palmyra, he uncovered a relief-decorated sarcophagus, which is the only occasion that his name is mentioned in the final publication of the German excavations.42 In his own report, Macridy writes about this ‘magnificent sarcophagus’ with pride.43 In Kiehla, he makes a surprise discovery of an altar, which he identifies as Nabataean from the inscriptions.44 He describes the altar in detail in his report, photographs it and prepares it to be transported to the Museum. His actions reflect the full range of the professional practices of an archaeologist, starting with discovery, leading to identification, recording, and the necessary preparation for preservation. The day after the discovery of the altar, Macridy is jokingly offered 1,000 Marks from Puchstein for the piece, which he considers a great insult, leading Puchstein to later send his assistant Bruno Schulz to apologise.
The joke would have been especially demeaning because of the way it alludes to the common practice of rewarding workmen with baksheesh for finding good pieces, thereby reducing Macridy, an educated Istanbulite and a field archaeologist, to the level of a rural peasant hired for physical labour and kept motivated by tips. Macridy’s intellectual labour in identifying and recording an archaeological find is ignored.
Another reference which suggests that Macridy was not always accepted into the fold comes from a letter written in 1907 to D.O.G. by Heinrich Kohl, architect on the Boğazköy team:
It was a blessing for Puchstein and for me that Makridi’s company was absent during the last weeks […] The Turk was blessed with luck as he ransacked the Hittite capital with nervous restlessness and abnormal ambition.45
Now, Macridy was Greek, so describing him as a ‘Turk’ has the subtle effect of othering him further from the Germans. Kohl also seems to imply that in a ‘Turk,’ ambition for excavating is somehow an ‘abnormal’ trait.
Ludwig Curtius, another member of the German team at Boğazköy, was similarly dismissive of Macridy as a scholar, and characterised him as volatile and untrustworthy:
Makridy Bey was the strangest mixture of semi-scholarly dilettante and passionate enthusiast, of civil servant loyal to his superior Halil Bey and secret merchant, of restless explorer and sudden indifferent connoisseur, of nobility and kindness today, of cynical intrigue tomorrow. Sometimes he felt like Iago in Othello.46
The unflattering comparison to the scheming, treacherous Iago is too close to trope of the ‘deceitful Oriental’ to have been unintentional.
As it happens, the dislike was very much mutual. Macridy, for his part, describes Curtius very scathingly as ‘a nuisance,’ ‘the parasite of the team’ and a ‘nasty sycophant’.47 Among Curtius’ ‘faults’ is ‘learning Turkish,’ suggesting that Macridy felt protective of his linguistic monopoly. A German archaeologist able to speak Turkish would have been less dependent on him and his services. Perhaps Macridy was especially anxious to hold on to this one clear superior advantage he had over the Germans, as he felt that their relationship was not one of genuine collaboration.
In the same letter Macridy expresses more bitterness, describing the expedition as an ‘invasion’ and comparing his place in it to one of servitude or captivity:
Emancipated at last from the invasion (because collaboration would be a bad joke). We left with Winckler on 2/12 August after shipping all the antiques […] Finally it’s over and […] and I breathe the free air of Samsoun].48
He clearly did not feel he was part of an equal partnership.
It would be thoroughly unfair, however, to portray Macridy entirely as a marginalised, long-suffering stooge to thankless and cruel colleagues. Hugo Winckler, for instance, praised him for his organisational talent and social skills in dealing with locals. During the surveys at Boğazköy-Hattusa, Winckler especially sought Macridy’s services as a professional colleague, as well as describing him as a ‘friend’: ‘At my request, the Ottoman Museum had provided me with my friend Th. Macridy Bey, who had already led the excavations in Saida [Sidon], because of his diligent and prudent intervention.’49 Similarly, in an obituary written by Kurt Bittel50 Macridy is praised for his quick-wit and humour, tireless zeal and a distinctive flair for fieldwork and public relations. Bittel describes Macridy’s meticulous attention to every detail in the planning and organisation of the excavations, from the negotiations with the landowners and peasants to the supervision of the workers. More importantly, he also acknowledges the scientific contributions of his Ottoman colleague, crediting him not only for his managerial but also archaeological skills.
Some of Macridy’s achievements certainly show that he deserved to be so praised. For instance, during a visit to Jerusalem to monitor the field activities and also to select antiquities to send to Istanbul, he prearranged the collections of the Palestine Exploration Fund housed in a high school building, converting the space into a small museum:
All the antiquities from Mr. Bliss’s excavations and some of those from Mr. Macalister’s were thrown into these display cases. It is impossible to explain the disorder and dirtiness […] The premises, far from having the pretension of a museum, were far inferior to an antique shop. It is understandable that in such a state public access was not possible. It was first necessary to go along with the internal arrangement, methodical classification of objects, and especially cleaning. I started by bringing in a carpenter who arranged the display cases and then I took care of the classification of the objects by materials and origins according to the system of our Museum. […] In short, after six days of hard work, I have turned this room into a charming little museum that can now be opened to the public […] I replaced the old labels with new ones in Turkish and French and indicated their provenance.51
One of Macridy’s greatest ambitions was to contribute to knowledge production on an equal footing with his European colleagues and gain international recognition as a scholar. He published his first article on his explorations in Sidon in 1902 in Revue Biblique.52 He was also hoping to publish a group of steles he had excavated again at Sidon under very difficult working conditions where he narrowly escaped death after a collapse of stones and earth blocked his exit! Shortly afterwards he found out that the steles were published by Louis Jalabert (1907), representative of Jesuit missions to the French Foreign Office, who copied the inscriptions as they lay in the garden of the (excavation) house:
The steles that remained in the garden were copied by Fr. (Father) Jalabert who made a publication of them […] He ends up telling me that it is too late to go back and that he hopes that I would not be angry for that. I write to this filzlaus (sorry for the expression but it suits him perfectly) that in my article which will appear very soon I will add a few lines on the conduct without seeking to mitigate it. He knew that the right to publish belonged to me. He went in to see and copy the steles with baksheesh and they told him that Macridy Bey would be angry but he told them that I wouldn’t know anything about it etc.53
Furious at having his material for publication snatched, Macridy sought restitution, and was successful at least in having the affair acknowledged in print:
The July–August Revue Archéologique […] contains an article by R. P. Louis Jalabert S. J. on new painted stelae from Sidon […] The author claims that he did not know by whom these stelae were discovered which were not found on the surface of the ground, but were obtained by means of expensive excavations […] Macridy-Bey will provide all the necessary explanations on this point. We confine ourselves to noting the incorrect process of R. P. Jalabert.54
Ultimately, Theodore Macridy Bey occupied a difficult position within the ‘informal’ colonial setting55 of the Late Ottoman period in which he had to negotiate the complex politics of field archaeology whilst also trying to protect his own scholarly work. His letters record numerous instances in which he was viewed only in his official capacity as a commissar, and not always readily welcomed into the community of archaeological knowledge production.
Conclusion
Critical discourse on archaeological labour relations, which have so far focussed on the relationships between foreign archaeologists and local workers, must also explore the tensions and challenges faced by local archaeologists who often become de facto translators, facilitators, managers, and all-round fixers on international fieldwork projects which do not adequately invest in addressing foreign team members’ linguistic and cultural unfamiliarity with their work setting. In this article, we sought to highlight the historic origins of such tensions, which arise from early hierarchical relationships between Western archaeologists as the quintessential protagonists of scholarly knowledge production, with local facilitators cast in supporting roles.
Western scholars’ archaeological knowledge production however, is not possible without the help of intermediaries to translate the languages, cultures, and settings in which fieldwork is to take place. Such intermediaries initially emerge in the capacity of dragomans or guides, hired specifically to enable their Western employers to travel and undertake archaeological work. With the emergence of Ottoman scholarly interest in antiquities and a growing sense of ownership, some of the duties initially carried out by guides or dragomans were transferred onto a new type of local collaborator, namely officials of the Imperial Museum, whose presence on foreign missions was a legal requirement as per the 1884 legislation. While such officials engaged with the management of field logistics, they were also representatives of the state imposed on foreign teams to monitor their activities, thus breaking the earlier parameters of the more straightforward relationship between archaeologist and his servant/assistant.
These relationships, which may have been appropriate to the hiring of dragomans or guides, become problematic between professional colleagues with shared scholarly interests and competing as well as complimentary stakes in the production of archaeological knowledge. Today, the largest group of local archaeologists on international projects are made up of students and researchers, who share the same educational and professional interests as their foreign counterparts. Yet these interests can be harder to pursue for local archaeologists who perform the invisible labour of continuously making navigable the unfamiliar linguistic and cultural settings in which foreign archaeologists must work.
The multiplicity of non-archaeological jobs that we, the authors – and many others like us – regularly undertake in and around fieldwork are not at all dissimilar to the complex logistics Macridy was expected to arrange, and the many problems he needed to solve, in his capacity as local facilitator. Such tasks constituted his primary job, while his archaeological pursuits had to fit into the time he himself could create, on his own initiative. While some of these jobs fall under the official remit of Ministry representatives today, in practice they still require the time and input of native-speaking members of the team to act as translator.
We recognise that translation and cultural mediation are indispensable components of international fieldwork projects, which is why they must be recognised as jobs in their own right. Only then can such jobs be properly allocated, taking into account the needs and wishes of local archaeologists themselves. In the absence of such measures, the fundamental dynamics of labour relations between local and foreign colleagues revert back to one of dragomans as servants to European masters, or at best to the awkward liminality of Ottoman officials such as Theodore Macridy Bey.
Notes
[1] Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Second Shift: Working Families and the Revolution at Home (New York: Penguin Books, 1989).
[2] Filiz Tütüncü Çağlar, “The Historiography of Ottoman Archaeology: A Terra Incognita for Turkish Archaeologists,” Cihannuma 3, no. 1 (2017): 109–122.
[3] Allison Mickel, Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent. A History of Local Archaeological Knowledge and Labor (Louisville: University Press of Colorado, 2021).
[4] Mickel, Why Those Who Shovel Are Silent; Stephen Quirke, Hidden Hands. Egyptian Workforces in Petrie Excavationb Archives 1880–1924 (London: Bloomsbury, 2010).
[5] Laurent Dissard, “Learning by Doing: Archaeological Excavations as ‘Communities of Practice,’” Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 29, no. 1 (2019): 6, https://doi.org/10.5334/bha-601.
[6] For the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), see Burak Dosdoğru, “Ankara İngiliz Arkeoloji Enstitüsü, 1938–53” (MA diss., Hacettepe University, 2018); Lutgarde Vandeput, “The British Institute at Ankara: 60 Years Young,” Anatolian Studies 58 (December 2008): 1–14. For the German Archaeological Institute (DAI – Deutsches Archäologisches Institut), see Yaşar Tınar, “Alman Arkeoloji Enstitüsü’nün Cumhuriyet Yıllarında Anadolu Faaliyetleri (1923–2011)” (MA diss., Selçuk Üniversitesi, 2013); Fatma Türe, Kayıp Zamanların Peşinde. Alman Arkeoloji Enstitüsü Anadolu Kazıları (İstanbul: Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 1999).
[7] Çiğdem Atakuman, “Cradle or Crucible: Anatolia and Archaeology in the Early Years of the Turkish Republic (1923–1938),” Journal of Social Archaeology 8, no. 2 (2008): 214–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469605308089965; Tuğba Tanyeri-Erdemir, “Archaeology as a Source of National Pride in the Early Years of the Turkish Republic,” Journal of Field Archaeology 31, no. 4 (2006): 381–393. https://doi.org/10.1179/009346906791071828.
[8] Selim Ferruh Adalı and Hakan Erol, “The Historiography of Assyriology in Turkey: A Short Survey,” in Receptions of the Ancient Near East in Popular Culture and Beyond, ed. Lorenzo Verderame and Agnès Garcia-Ventura (University Park, Pennsylvania: Eisenbrauns, 2020), 211–221.
[9] “Kültürel ve Tabiat Varlıklarıyla İlgili Olarak Yapılacak Araştırma, Sondaj ve Kazılar Hakkında Yönetmelik,” accessed December 1, 2023, https://www.mevzuat.gov.tr/mevzuat.
[10] Term used in a similar though not identical way to journalism, after Lindsay Palmer, The Fixers. Local News Workers and the Underground Labor of International Reporting (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).
[11] Yağmur Heffron, “Invisible Labour: Relying on Local Archaeologists as Fixers,” (paper, UCL and the British Museum in Africa and the Middle East: Current Projects, Future Agendas, London, May 25, 2018); Yağmur Heffron, “The Second Shift in Archaeological Fieldwork? Invisible Labour of Local Archaeologists as Fixers to Foreign Projects” (paper, British Association for the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (BANEA) Conference, Cambridge, January 7–8, 2020); Yağmur Heffron, “The Second Shift in Archaeological Fieldwork? Invisible Labour of Local Archaeologists as Fixers to Foreign Projects” (paper, Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), Online, November 12–15, 19–22, 2020); Yağmur Heffron, “The Second Shift in Archaeological Fieldwork? Invisible Labour of Local Archaeologists as Fixers to Foreign Projects” (paper, University of Sydney Near Eastern Seminar Series (NESS), Online, September 14, 2021); Yağmur Heffron, “The Second Shift in Archaeological Fieldwork? Invisible Labour of Local Archaeologists as Fixers to Foreign Projects” (paper, Anatolian Studies Online Seminar Series, Online, November 4, 2021); Yağmur Heffron, “The Second Shift in Archaeological Fieldwork? Invisible Labour of Local Archaeologists as Fixers to Foreign Projects” (paper, UCL History Departmental Lectures, Online, November 25, 2021); Yağmur Heffron, “The Second Shift in Archaeological Fieldwork? Invisible Labour of Local Archaeologists as Fixers to Foreign Projects” (paper, The Present Imperfect, Glasgow, March, 2022); Yağmur Heffron, “Lost in Translation: The Consequences of the Double Burden of Translation Work on the Time and Work of Local Archaeologists on Anglophone Projects in Turkey” (paper, Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Overseas Research (ASOR), Boston, November 16–19, 2022); Yağmur Heffron, “The Second ‘Sift’: Feminist Theory for Articulating Archaeological Labour Relations in Turkey” (paper, Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) Conference, Edinburgh, December 15–17, 2022).
[12] See Christoph Ramm, “Beyond ‘Black Turks’ and ‘White Turks’ – The Turkish Elites’ Ongoing Mission to Civilize a Colourful Society,” Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques 70, no. 4 (2016): 1355–85.
[13] John Carswell, “À la recherche du temps perdu,” 12, no. 1 (1982): 487–8, quoted in Rachel Mairs and Maya Muratov, Archaeologists, Tourists, Interpreters: Exploring Egypt and the Near East in the Late 19th-Early 20th Centuries (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 1.
[15] Rachel Mairs, “Translator, Traditor: The Interpreter as Traitor in Classical Tradition,” Greece and Rome 58, no. 1 (2011): 64–81; Rachel Mairs, From Khartooum to Jerusalem. The Dragoman Solomon Negima and His Clients (1885–1933) (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).
[16] Lawrence Venuti, Translator’s Invisibility. A History of Translation, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1995).
[17] C.L. Woolley, Dead Towns and Living Men: Being Pages from an Antiquary’s Notebook (London: Humphrey Milford and Oxford University Press), 99–100, quoted in Mairs and Muratov, Archaeologists, Tourists, Interpreters, 57.
[18] Woolley, Dead Towns and Living Men, 100, quoted in Mairs and Muratov, Archaeologists, Tourists, Interpreters, 57.
[22] Zeynep Çelik, About Antiquities: Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 2016).
[23] See also Ioanis N. Grigoriadis, “Developing Archaeology and Museology in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and Greece: Théodore Macridy, an Ottoman Greek ‘Liminal Scientist’,” European Journal of Archaeology 26, no. 2 (2022): 1–17.
[24] Zainab Bahrani, Zeynep Çelik and Edhem Eldem (eds.), Scramble for the Past: A Story of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914 (İstanbul: SALT, 2011).
[25] Tütüncü Çağlar, Filiz. “Laying the Foundations of a Discipline: Contested Paradigms of Archaeology in the Late Ottoman Empire.” In Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie (BIKA). Jahrbuch der Ernst Herzfeld-Gesellschaft e.V. Vol.9 Spaces and Frontiers of Islamic Art and Archaeology, edited by Iván Szántó, 99-115. Wiesbaden: Dr Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2023.
[26] Filiz Tütüncü Çağlar, “From Raqqa with Love: The Raqqa Excavations by the Ottoman Imperial Museum (1905–6 and 1908)” (PhD dissertation, University of Victoria, 2017).
[27] Edhem Eldem, “Bergama Sunağı Odağında Osmanlı İ̇mparatorluğu’nda Arkeoloji [Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire with a Focus on the Pergamon Altar],” Youtube, January 5, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUuAyZVmQ3E.
[28] Alev Koçak, The Ottoman Empire and Archaeological Excavations: Ottoman Policy from 1840–1906, Foreign Archaeologists, and the Formation of the Ottoman Museum (Istanbul: Isis Press, 2011), 161.
[30] Çelik, About Antiquities, 150–155; Margarita Díaz-Andreu García, A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology: Nationalism, Colonialism, and the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 116; Wendy M. K. Shaw, Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2003), 110–130.
[31] Aziz Ogan, “TH. Makridi’nin hatirasina,” Belleten (Türk Tarih Kurumu) 5, no. 17–18 (1941): 163–169; Picard, Charles. “Theodoros Macridy-Bey († 1941),” Revue Archéologique 21 (1944): 48–50; Kurt Bittel, “Theodor Makridi,” Archiv Für Orientforschung 14 (1941): 380–81.
[33] Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Djerash (Gerasa), June 14, 1902. Letters to Halil Edhem Bey, Istanbul, 1902–1907, Halil Edhem personal papers from the private collection of Edhem Eldem.
[34] Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Djerash (Gerasa), June 14, 1902. Personal collection of Edhem Eldem.
[35] Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Baalbek, August 1/14, 1902, private collection of Edhem Eldem.
[36] Otto Puchstein et al, “Zweiter Jahresbericht über die Ausgrabungen in Baalbek,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 17 (1902): 109, https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47179.14.
[37] Puchstein, “Zweiter Jahresbericht über die Ausgrabungen in Baalbek”, 87–124; Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Baalbek, August 1/14, 1902, private collection of Edhem Eldem.
[38] Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Saida, Bostan-eh-Sheikh, August 13, 1904, private collection of Edhem Eldem.
[40] Otto Puchstein, “Grundplan der Stadt Palmyra. Straßen und Plätze, Basilica und Wohnbauten,” in Palmyra – Ergebnisse der Expeditionen von 1902 und 1917, ed. Theodor Wiegand (Berlin: Heinrich Keller Verlag, 1932), 17–35.
[43] Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Damascus, May 21, 1902, private collection of Edhem Eldem.
[44] Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Djerash (Gerasa), June 14, 1902, private collection of Edhem Eldem.
[45] Lars Petersen, “Otto Puchstein and the Excavation of Boğazköy,” in Bir Anadolu İmparatorluğunun Keşfi /The Discovery of an Anatolian Empire, ed. Meltem Doğan-Alparslan, Andreas Schachner and Metin Alparslan (İstanbul: Türk Eskiçağ Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2017), 28–41.
[46] Ludwig Curtius, Deutsche und Antike Welt: Lebenserinnerungen (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1958).
[47] Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Boğazköy, June 10/23, 1907. Edhem Eldem, “Theodor Makridi Bey ve 1907 Boğazköy Kazısı / Theodor Makridi Bey and the 1907 Boğazköy Excavation,” in Bir Anadolu İmparatorluğunun Keşfi / The Discovery of an Anatolian Empire, ed. Meltem Doğan-Alparsan, Andreas Schachner and Metin Alparslan (İstanbul: Türk Eskiçağ Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2017): 159–92.
[48] Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Samsun, August 10/23 1907 in Eldem, “Theodor Makridy Bey,” 159–92.
[49] Hugo Winckler, “Die im Sommer 1906 in Kleinasien ausgeführten Ausgrabungen.” Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 9, no. 1 (1906).
[50] Bittel, “Theodor Makridi,” Archiv für Orientforschung 14 (1941): 380–81.
[51] Theodore Macridy, letter to Osman Hamdi Bey, Saida, July 14/27, 1904. Field reports and letters from Saida, Baalbek, and Ayasuluk (Ephesus) to the Imperial Museum, Istanbul, 1897–1906, inventoried under “Lettres Reçues” in the Foreign Language Archive (Yabancı Dil Arşivi) of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum Library.
[52] Theodore Macridy, “Le temple d’Echmoun à Sidon: fouilles exécutées par la Musée Impérial Ottoman,” Revue Biblique 11 (1902): 489–515.
[53] Louis Jalabert, “Inscriptions grecques et latines de Syrie (deuxiéme série),” Mélanges de la Faculté Orientale de Beyrouth 2 (1907): 265–320; Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem Bey, Saida, July 22, 1904, private collection of Edhem Eldem.
[54] Theodore Macridy, letter to Halil Edhem, Sidon, July 22, 1904, private collection of Edhem Eldem.
[55] After Margarita Díaz-Andreu García, A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology. Nationallim, Colonialism, and the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, we would like to thank the staff at the Istanbul Archaeological Museums (formerly the Ottoman Imperial Museum) for facilitating the archival research carried out by FTÇ. Equally fundamental has been Professor Edhem Eldem’s generosity in sharing Macridy’s letters from Halil Edhem Bey’s personal collection. We are truly grateful to the editors, Dr Allison Mickel and Dr Sam Holley-Kline, whose understanding and support allowed us just the right pace to keep working during a precarious time; and to the anonymous reviewer(s) whose thoughtful comments have been constructive, encouraging, and tremendously useful. We would also like to thank Madeline Hourigan for making time for us for technical support at several key moments.
This article is dedicated to the memory of Ayşe Sarıoğlu, who only just missed reading it.
Competing Interests
The authors have no competing interests to declare.