Stone Mirror

A Novel of the Neolithic

Rob Swigart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781598740172
• eBook ISBN: 9781315419671
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Arqueología

A Turkish farmer finds a large obsidian mirror on top of a mound. How did it get there? What did it mean for its creator, and what does it mean for us? In this teaching novel by writer Rob Swigart, the story toggles back and forth between a Neolithic village—and the changing fortunes of the family who finds this wondrous tool—and modern archaeologists whose excavated treasure stirs journalists, governments, and goddess worshippers alike. Through an engrossing tale across millennia, Swigart's novel provides both a basic reconstruction of Neolithic lifeways and a primer on contemporary archaeological politics and practice. For archaeology students, and for anyone curious about artifacts past and present, Stone Mirror will be a fun, informative introduction both to archaeology and to the people they study.

1 Now

Time

The object was fixed in darkness. Around it swirled shouts, wails of lamentation and rage, the hard sounds of things breaking apart, dust, and chaos. There were passions: hatred and terror. And there was death.

In time, all faded. Then there were footsteps, the muted clatter of brick placed on brick, the cutting of wood, the cries of children; and, less often, the scrapes of digging, burial, and more grief.

Gradually the living receded, growing ever more faint as the years came and went and dirt piled upon dirt. The voices died.

If the object could be said to do anything during all the noise and confusion, it would be that it dreamed, and in dreaming did its work. Dreams are inward, reflections of things neither seen nor heard, but their effects are real, and timeless, and always ready to return.

Millennia passed in a silence modulated only by the clicks and whispers of insects, worms, small burrowing animals, the languid reaching of roots, the infinitesimally slow sifting down of soil particles, salts, and moisture. After a time even these ceased, and only the occasional deep, sub-base rumble of distant tremors in the earth disturbed the stasis of the object and its home.

Above in the middle world the seasons came and went; the harshness of cold-time; the terrific heat of warm-time; snow and rain. The world grew warm and dry, but below in the dirt the temperature stabilized.

The ruined town and all the lives it had held were gone from sight.

Then the object could no longer be said to dream, even after what it had done, after all it had meant. It simply was, a made thing, drained by time of its human significance.

Until Satchi Bennett brought it up again into the light.

The Excavator

Satchi leaned over the railing of the roof terrace and contemplated the street six floors below.

It was a broad avenue with trolley tracks running down the center. He could see cars, taxis, and a small bus called a dolmus. It was evening, and the street was brightly lit, the noise of traffic pleasantly distant and abstract, unlike the staccato bray and sputter of conversation behind him.

Satchi had turned his back on small talk. Jones, seated at the bar with the man from the Ministry might think him antisocial, but he didn’t really care. What the hell, he was antisocial!

Jones was a great man, of course. Things happened around Jones because he was a celebrated archaeologist, host of dozens of television specials and movie documentaries, appearing against backdrops of jungle, desert, pyramids, or other picturesque ruins. His magnificent mane of gray-blond hair would ripple in a gentle breeze, adding motion to his famous smile. His sonorous voice soothed and excited by turns. Things happened to Bryson Jones because...well, he made them happen.

Despite all this, Satchi thought this junket was a time-killer. He hated to kill time, but for the moment he had nothing else to do. Susan had politely but firmly asked him to leave three years before, so he had no family. He was between projects, along for the ride. He had few friends; he didn’t care much about people, after all.

What he really cared about was dirt.

As a boy in Toledo his favorite toy was a large yellow dump truck. He could sit on top of the cab and fill up the back. He still had the little plastic shovel. He would push with his feet and drive across the broad expanse of his mother’s back yard. It was enormously satisfying to build the mound of dirt, load after load. Usually his mother would come out and order him to put the dirt back where it came from, thank you. Unmaking the hole was almost as satisfying as making it. Later he would learn that this was called backfilling.

He loved dirt. He loved the way it looked, its colors and textures, its sense of density. He loved the feel of it, dry or wet, trickling through his fingers. He loved its smell. But most of all he loved the things it hid. When he uncovered them little by little, it was a tantalizing striptease of the buried past. That, he told himself, was why he had become an archaeologist.

Of course, a Freudian might have had other ideas.

The traffic below was distant, the way objects buried in the soil were distant. The distance was like time. From up here it was like looking down into the past.

Such thoughts were drifting through his mind like large, placid fish when a man leaned against the railing next to him. Something about the intent way he held his cigarette between the third and fourth fingers and puffed at it in short, sharp intakes while staring intently at Bryson Jones attracted Satchi’s attention. The shapeless gray sports jacket he wore over an open-necked shirt, through which a tangle of black chest hair grew up to join his three-day stubble, sagged to one side. Without taking his eyes off Jones he dropped his cigarette, crushed it underfoot, and immediately lit another. After a moment he patted the side pocket of his jacket.

Satchi felt a stirring of disquiet.

There was a story everyone knew. God knows, Jones himself never tired of recounting it. A few years before, Jones had been making a documentary on the multicultural prehistory of Indonesia. Apparently the subject matter offended a certain young man’s nationalist agenda. He’d apparently brooded for days, tracked Jones back to Kuala Lumpur, burst into the lobby of the hotel where the archaeologist was giving a press conference, and fired four shots from a small-caliber revolver. Three of the bullets put neat holes in the concierge’s teak desk; the fourth shattered an expensive chandelier. The police apologized politely. The would-be assassin was well known. He had, they said, a history of mental troubles. They whisked him away, leaving Jones shaken but unhurt.

It was ridiculous to think that the object in the man’s pocket was a gun, but it was heavy, and the man seemed nervous. Best not take chances. Satchi edged closer.

Jones, Listening

Bryson Jones, perched precariously on a metal bar stool, was listening attentively to the man from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. It was an ordinary night, warm and comfortable, a night for small talk and dinner.

The man from the Ministry repeatedly mopped his receding hairline with a large white handkerchief as he explained some of the more important features of the region. For instance, did Dr. Jones know Konya, this lovely city, was once the capital of the Seljuk Turks?

Of course he did.

Anatolia, the whole of Asian Turkey, in fact, was one of the oldest continually inhabited landmasses in the world, filled with archaeological sites from the Palaeolithic to the Republic. No doubt Jones knew all this as well.

He sounded like a travelogue.

Jones, ever mindful of the potentials of image, glanced down into his glass of rakı. The ice was slowly melting, releasing thin white streamers from the small cubes, like the slow release of stories from the ancient past. It would make a nice picture if he ever did a documentary here. Rakı was a kind of national drink.

He looked up with his most ingratiating smile. “Anatolia is rich in heritage, Mr. Nevra, perhaps the richest in the world. Turkey is a fortunate country, indeed.”

The sun was sinking below one horizon and a full moon was lifting above the other, a satisfying symmetry, the hands of the universe so evenly balanced, rising and falling.

Jones gave an encouraging smile. Mr. Nevra said Konya was home of the Mevlani Sufiorder, better known as the whirling dervishes, founded by the poet known to the world as Rumi.

Jones was diplomatic, amiable, and quick-witted. He had the gift of conveying an impression of sympathetic attention, as if each word were a revelation. He didn’t produce this effect for any special purpose, but if for some reason it turned out there was a purpose he was prepared. Bryson Jones believed, above all else, in being prepared.

Mr. Nevra went on talking and mopping his forehead. Jones went on listening.

To the west, the sky was still striped with pale rose, lavender, and green; everywhere else it had turned velvety and dark. To the east, the full moon was drifting up between the metal arms of two cranes hovering over a round, half-built office tower. A trolley rattled past six floors below. The first stars were just visible.

Jones smiled, and sipped, and nodded, drinking in every word. Every encounter was a possibility, every meeting freighted with potential, with hope. There was no such thing as coincidence.

First Contact

The stranger shook himself like a dog emerging from water and reached once more for his jacket pocket. Satchi leaned forward, but the man merely patted the pocket and flipped his cigarette over the railing. Satchi let out a sigh, torn by the absurdity of the situation. He, Satchi Bennett, prepared to protect Bryson Jones! It was doubly absurd, since there clearly was no danger.

Why should Satchi Bennett, who didn’t care much for his fellow man, want to protect Bryson Jones, who cared very much for people, especially if they could do something for him? Why, indeed? This was why Jones had detractors, people who called him a media whore, a prima donna, an egotist.

But Satchi didn’t dislike Jones, either. It was simply that they lived in different worlds: he liked dirt, and Jones liked celebrity. And, Satchi added without irony, it was true Jones had a gift for raising money and sponsoring big projects, and big projects were what paid Satchi’s wages. True, his wages weren’t much, as his exwife had been fond of repeating, but it was what he did.

Without someone to do the actual digging, people like Jones would have theory without data, empty. Yet without people like Jones, there might not be any digging to do. So Satchi waited expectantly.

The big man approached Jones and Nevra. The Ministry man stopped his monologue and said, “Well, Dr. Jones, I hope you will allow me to introduce you to my cousin, Özgür.” He listed his cousin’s qualifications (some archaeological training), interests (Anatolian civilizations), and pedigree (third cousin on his mother’s side). The pedigree also involved a surname with too many unpronounceable vowels for easy assimilation. Jones did not try to repeat it.

Satchi pursed his lips: this guy had simply been waiting to meet Jones. Why had he, Satchi Bennett, been alarmed? He was just another fan.

Jones shook hands and was immediately drawn into a new round of small talk – it was hot this year, wouldn’t he agree? But it was not as hot as two years ago. Jones agreed that it was hot, but expected that it would be hotter in August.

Özgür spoke idiomatic, if somewhat stilted, American English. Jones was a professor, was he not?

Yes, he was.

Even Satchi, who did not count social skills high on his list of necessities, recognized that this apparently aimless exchange was going somewhere, and that it had something to do with the object in the jacket pocket.

Dinner appeared. Conversation everywhere faltered, there was much scraping of chairs, people sat at the tables scattered around the roof terrace; muted talk started up again. Satchi looked around, hoping to eat alone, but it was too late. Jones was inviting him to join them.

Conversation dragged on at length about absolutely nothing. For instance, apparently the Konya Plain was experiencing something of an economic boon, with heavy investments in agriculture. Wheat seemed to be the staple crop – wheat and sugar beets. Both officials seemed particularly proud of the sugar beets.

The starters came and went. Many of them contained eggplant. The main courses arrived. They too contained eggplant.

Özgür turned to Satchi. “And what is it you do, Mr. Satchi?”

“Satchi’s my first name. My surname is Bennett.”

“Really? And where would such a first name come from, then? Perhaps it is Indian?”

“A baseball player. Satchel Paige. Before I was born he played for the Cleveland Indians.”

“Ah, I see.”

“My father was a Cleveland fan. I’m an excavator.”

“Satchi digs,” Jones said. “Diggers always leave theory to people like me. Theory, and explaining it,” Jones added with a smile.

Özgür murmured something about the importance of theory and fell silent. Sticky concoctions of honey and nuts arrived, followed by small cups of thick Turkish coffee.

With an ingratiating nod Mr. Nevra found pressing business elsewhere.

Satchi watched the coat pocket, but Özgür gazed pensively at the full moon and appeared to have forgotten about it. Then he shook himself and poured Jones a glass of rakı. “You know of Çatalhöyük, of course.”

“Of course, a large Neolithic settlement that flourished between around 7600 and 6200 BCE. There’s a model long-term archaeological project under way there.”

“Yes, of course, it’s a very famous place.” Özgür nodded vigorously. “And are you visiting other sites, Dr. Jones, like Çatalhöyük?”

Jones studied the surface of his drink. “Besides Çatal we’re going to Pinarbași, and to Așıklı Höyük, but I believe they are not quite contemporary with it. Why do you ask?”

Silver-yellow moonlight caught Özgür on his right cheek, and the harsher light from the interior of the restaurant lit the front of his fac...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 NOW
• 2 THEN
• 3 NOW
• 4 THEN
• 5 NOW
• 6 THEN
• 7 NOW
• 8 THEN
• 9 NOW
• 10 THEN
• 11 NOW
• 12 THEN
• 13 NOW
• 14 THEN
• 15 NOW
• 16 THEN
• 17 NOW
• 18 THEN
• EPILOG • NOW
• Glossary
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Author