Mike Collins' "Shocking Film" on Alleged Archaeological Malpractice at Gobekli Tepe (IV): Mike Collins Decries Lack of Altruism and Excavation

Apart from being a YouTuber, Mike Collins organizes archaeological tours, so it is really odd to hear him denigrating the Turks for having done a lot of work to make this site accessible to the Turkish public and tourists. In the first part he describes indeed describes exposing) sponsorship in a way that makes it sound almost as if they don't have such things where he comes from. That is rather an odd idea to somebody that has ever had any contact with European post-War and particularly development-led archaeology. Really? Corporate sponsorship is a foreign idea to these guys?

In 2016, the Dogus Group entered a 20-year sponsorship agreement with the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in Turkey, announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, pledging $15 million to support excavations, build visitor facilities like the 2018 Visitor Center, and promote the site globally. [...]

This place, just on initial impression, is just hugely already set up for tourism. I mean, it’s like already developed to the point of other major sites around the world, and they’re building more. When we drove in, there was a huge development going on there, so it’s a whole thing, but I’m excited to get here, see this deal effectively hands them significant control over tourism revenue—think ticket sales, guided tours, and merchandising—since they funded and managed the modern infrastructure. The Dogus Group, with its vast portfolio across automotive, tourism, and media, with 250-plus companies and billions in revenue, treats Göbekli Tepe as a prestige project and a cash cow, with plans for greatly increasing tourism. Their CEO, Farret Sahin, a WEF regular, likely sees this as both a business opportunity and a cultural flex. 

Archaeological efforts led by the German Archaeological Institute and the Sanliurfa Museum don’t directly generate profits; they’re funded by grants and the Dogus sponsorship. Any profits from their work, like academic prestige or artifact discoveries, are supposed to stay within the scientific and governmental sphere, not private hands. So, who gets the money? The Dois Group likely takes the lion’s share of tourism profits given their investment and management role, while the Turkish government collects a cut via taxes, oversight fees, or direct revenue splits. Exact terms of the deal aren’t public; the split depends on their agreement, but Dogus’s deep pockets and tourism expertise suggest they’re the bigger winners financially. What’s happening in Turkey is just the latest and currently the most covert issue at an ancient site, but it certainly isn’t unique. I’m not sure what the blowback will be from documenting and sharing all of this, but it needs to be brought to light. 

All right, so just getting up here, I mean, everything is just completely already moving into this entire focus on tourism, you can tell. I mean, there’s gift shops up here at the top, you’ve got to take a shuttle up to the top, they’re already building gift shops and all sorts of stuff up here. The actual area is that big, let’s see. There’s sheep and goats all over, so we’re walking up to here, it’ll be interesting to see what we come upon here at the top of the ladder of importance. The highest rungs seemingly belong to profitability of each site, and I find this to be greatly disturbing.  

I find this whole section extremely puzzling and wonder what world Mr Collins lives in. Over here in Europe, the concept of ancient sites as places to visit goes way back to the Enlightenment (think Grand Tour) and Romanticism... or indeed earlier back still. In a later age, Cooks Tours to Egyptian sites, and coach trips to Edwardian castles in Wales for the less affluent... a trip to the Marabar Caves has a central place in E.M. Forster's 'A Passage to India' and so on. I really do not see that developing a tourist attraction is anything in any way reprehensible. Cultural tourism creates revenue and jobs, it promotes interest in history and provides an incentive to preserve sites. Many archaeological sites were dug and restored/conserved to become attractions, Knossos, Verulamium, various temples in Egypt, Biskupin, Adamclisi, the Forum of Rome etc etc. What is the problem? In British surveys of the profession, the value of archaeology in promoting tourism (and therefore revenue generation, job creation and renewal of regions) is almost always near the top of the list of benefits it can bring. In the USA, the Parks Services have archaeologists and again one of their functions is to help visitors to a park explore and appreciate the panorama of its past. So the point being made by this lengthy criticism escapes me. 

Further on Collins continues moaning about commercialisation, but now with a different motif:

10:10: "It sucks to see how up the side is in terms of Tourism and how like it's not developed in a way that it's like around. It, it's developed in a way that it's like in the site, the poles (sic) here that provide all the roof cover and everything like that I mean they they go directly into the site and plug into to the ground in the site the only reason for that is for tourism and so that we can be right here when we're experiencing this that's the only reason for it because the hill, hillside goes up further you could still see this from a distance without putting the walkway directly into the site"  

and further on: 

"Like I was mentioning before the site is like it feels like it's built for tourism now yeah because this walkway is built into the archaeological site and you have these giant massive poles (sic) going straight down into the middle of site piercing right through the archaeological dig itself yeah, and you could create a walkway around the outside up here of course it would be further away. But what's the main focus here is is it archaeology and excavation? The key focus is not excavation, no it looks like they're that's not what this is, this is this is about this is tourism focused, 100%, "make that money" [gestures] [...]  it feels like if the main focus here was excavation and archaeology not tourism where I'm walking right now would be where they would have built this but this is literally going directly into the site which is just wild to me [Music]

 It seems, reading between the lines that what this boils down to is a fear that with teh walkway where it is, teh area underneath it will not get excavated - and for these three judgemental wannabe-discoverers-of-the-past THAT MEANS THE PICTURES ON THE PILLARS  WILL CONTINUE TO BE INACCESSIBLE. That's all. I suspect these blokes have a very vague idea of what other archaeological research aims might be in the project design. Research questions to which sufficient data are perhaps already obtained, meaning there is no pressing reason to continue searching for that information. Maybe enough information has been gathered to write a full report on the site based on what has already been found and avoiding collecting a lot of excess and duplicate information by further digging that will have to be processed, checked and archived. Perhaps the team do not want to be still faffing around with seeds and samey blade tool and stone vessel fragments in 150 years time. I wouldn't. And let us say (speculations aside), the pictures on the pillars have rather limited information content and its not worth trashing the whole hilltop to get dozens more without much of a concept of what to do withy them. 

Then we come to Collin's notion that "they" were somehow too stupid to put the walkway somewhere else, "because the hill, hillside goes up further you could still see this from a distance without putting the walkway directly into the site"  , "you could create a walkway around the outside up here of course it would be further away". I wonder whether it crossed his mind what the walkway (and its temporary predecessors during the excavation) was for... If the function of the walkway was to provide a route for a wheelchair or parents with a pushchair, or bored nine-yea olds to run along without wetting their feet on the grass, then it could be wherever. But if it is to raise the visitor up and over the excavated ruins below it so you can see them close to... forgive me, but placing them half a hilltop away is not going to facilitate that. Duh. 

What Mr Collins has not realised that the "hill" that he proposes putting "poles" in instead of where the anchor posts are is what we call a "tell"... it is an archaeological site and deeply stratified - part of the same one as the excavated bits. The difference being that the higher parts of the tell have not been excavated so any "poles" put in there would be being inserted blind. Putting them where they are means the area they were sited in was excavated previously. Again, it is difficult to see what there is here that is so difficult for three adults to understand.  

To access the introduction to this series and the links to the other posts in it please go here (for other posts on this blog about Gobekli Tepe see here)