Free Love's Obsession by Judy Powell

expectations. Mostly, it is boring and routine and not all of it involves excavation. The Stewarts spent six months in Turkey but only a small proportion of this time involved excavation. For the remainder of the time, Jim and Eleanor visited museums and villages and walked or drove through the countryside with a notebook and camera. They drew and photographed objects in museums, all the while building a visual reference for use when they visited other museums, or when excavating. Their collection of photos and drawings, begun earlier in Australia, was little more than a personal field guide, but to Jim it was the beginning of something more, a ‘corpus’, a body of work. A collector at heart, Jim needed to hold things in his hands, to feel the shape and texture of objects, to own them. It was how he understood things.
    Collecting is a way of creating order, of grouping things, of putting them in place. It was then fashionable for children to collect objects, and boys and girls the world over filled albums with stamps or coins from countries they had scarcely heard of—Liechtenstein, Monaco, Bechuanaland. Most children lose interest quickly. Others become collectors. They sort and arrange, fiddle with cellophane packets and catalogue. But the dilemma—always—is how to arrange these stamps or coins. Should it be by date or colour, by country or size? How many different categories are there? Which is best? With fifty stamps it makes sense to sort one way, but what about when you have five hundred or five thousand? Maybe if you could collect all the stamps or coins you would know how best to arrange them, what categories to use. You would find the solution. This idea—of collating everything in order to understand it—was to remain with Jim. He needed the whole before he could understand the component parts. He pursued the idea and in turn it ensnared him.
    In the bazaars of Istanbul the Stewarts searched for antiquities and antiques. Jim joked that the dealers must read The Times 40 because they knew exactly what the Wilkins Fellowship was worth and adjusted their prices accordingly. In nearby villages they visited popular cafes where locals brought objects to them. They bought some but were careful not to be fooled by forgeries, although Jim was equally fascinated by the skills of ancient metalworkers and modern forgers. Most of all Jim and Eleanor wanted information about where the objects came from, a time-honoured method of ‘finding’ sites. Although some villagers were forthcoming, others were not. A site with saleable objects was valuable, a bank to be drawn from, and there was little incentive to give it away. Jim had to win their trust.
    Jim’s research plans would not prove easy to realise because he hoped to conduct his own excavations in Turkey, to investigate new sites. Yet he seemed blithely unaware of the necessary formalities. On arrival in Istanbul Jim had met the foreign archaeological community and they were not optimistic. He called on Dr Schede and Kurt Bittel at the German Archaeological Institute. Schede was frankly discouraging, and in his very courteous manner hinted that their mission was foolish. It was quite easy to see sites which were known, but otherwise permits were difficult to get and it had taken Bittel three months to get one! It was impossible to explore without a commissioner, for which the Turkish Government would charge £4 sterling a week plus food and travelling expenses. Bittel suggested that, as they needed to pay for a commissioner in any case, why not make for a known site and dig test pits, or sondages, for a month? They decided to try for a newly looted site at, or near Balekeşir. 41 From this distance it seems remarkably naïve that a student could arrive unannounced and expect to conduct excavations in a country he knew nothing about. It is equally mystifying that Cambridge would sponsor such an enterprise.
    For much of their time