Cappadocia

(image source: http://www.wernercollection.com/ColorMyWorld.htm)

Tuesday's class reminded me of a show I watched on the History channel, as part of their series entitled 'Cities of the Underworld'. The show documented the city of Cappadocia, Turkey, which houses a large system of underground cities, first carved out over 3,000 years ago. I was reading in Lippard's text, the section Homes and Graves and Gardens, where she talks about an artist, Alice Aycock, who did a piece commonly called the Williamstown mound. This mound is like a cave, with passages underground - many with 'dead ends', to signify frustration or claustrophobia. This is reminiscent of Cappadocia, carved out of softer tufa rock from past volcanic eruptions. The pagan Hittite nation needed to save themselves from war with other powerful empires (like the Mongols, Persians and Romans) because Cappadocia sat in the center of the major trade routes, making the area a very appealing prize.

(image source: http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/1237/53/)

Cappadocia is riddled with 'booby-trapped' passages, much like Aycock's mound being riddled with dead-end passages, to ward off invaders. Some passages had holes in the ceiling, where spears could kill the enemy by the head. Millstones were rolled into place to block off passages to keep the invaders from accessing parts of the city. This primitive defense system (creating 'dead-ends' like in Aycock's work) helped to save the pagan nation from destruction. You can see one of the millstones in the upper-right hand portion of the above picture.

I don't want to get into too much detail, but I did find the History channel show I watched on Youtube. I'll post the links here, if you'd like to check it out. It's really amazing what people thousands of years ago managed to achieve.

Cappadocia - Part I

Cappadocia - Part II

Cappadocia - Part III

Cappadocia - Part IV

Cappadocia - Part V

I'm in the process of tweaking my final project. I'm not entirely satisfied with it. But since I have finals (two on Monday, in fact), I can't get around to it until Tuesday. So, it will be posted on Tuesday, promise. Just a crazy busy weekend!