Carol Bier
Equally at home in Istanbul and New York, K. Aslıhan Yener (known as Aslı to her friends and colleagues) excels in a bicultural cosmopolitanism that has enabled her to succeed where others might not even tread. No obstacle is an impediment, for Aslı always seems able to go over, under, around, or through whatever might otherwise obstruct her passage. Her passionate energy is directed towards cultural understanding but also at uncovering new frontiers of lost knowledge. Encountering and overcoming the great dividing walls we humans have built now for half a millennium to create disciplinary boundaries, or parrying the enmity of generations among the Ottomans and their neighbors, or confronting residual prejudices in the West regarding Turks and Muslims, to say nothing of the 20th-century struggles in the United States over issues of gender, Aslı has persisted in the pursuit of knowledge—by conducting excavations, regional surveys, field documentation, laboratory analyses, and geological borings. Her style is uniquely collaborative; her trajectory of field research has demanded equity among the sciences and humanities.
Through her visionary and magisterial management, she has drawn out an exceptional array of well-trained international specialists from many disciplines who have lent their expertise to the analyses and interpretation of field data and contributed to the preparation of publications. By means of collaborative efforts, she has integrated the frontiers of scientific research and bolstered the cadre of those involved in the contemporary practice of archaeology in Turkey. And she has helped guide the training of an entirely new generation of youth, bright and ready to take on the challenges of an uncertain future that can yet be rooted in our understanding of the past. Grasping the rich potential of scientific analytical techniques to address pressing historical concerns, Aslı has succeeded in bridging the chasms between humanities and sciences in ways that are both admirable and astounding.
At the time of our first meeting, she was a graduate student of Edith Porada’s at Columbia University in art history and archaeology, and I was a graduate student of Donald Hansen’s at nyu’s Institute of Fine Arts. We had both worked on digs in Turkey, and knew of each other’s activities long before we actually met. From a distance, I saw her standing in a registration line. I was reading Arthur Koestler’s Thirteenth Tribe at the time, the controversial thesis of which suggested to me that Aslı and I might actually be relatives. I approached her, arms wide open, and we embraced. Thus began an enduring friendship
In Aslı’s case, it is the very recent (2013) discovery of ancient mines of a tin-arsenic ore in the Kayseri region that places her early insightful scholarship into historical perspective. As an archaeologist, she developed an early interest in archaeometallurgy and excavated a site with many mines at Kestel; she located a production center nearby at Göltepe where tin was extracted from the ore, a discovery that had global implications for trade in the Bronze Age. Her findings at the time, however, ran counter to then current paradigms of scholarship, for there were no known sources of tin in Anatolia. But rather than question the interpretation of the evidence she was finding, she questioned current assumptions and opted for the harder course to follow and proceeded upon the path of greatest resistance that required a reevaluation of accepted wisdom. Her oeuvre evolved to consider new sources of tin in Anatolia and to seek evidence for its production as well as markets in antiquity. Her research took her far across disciplinary boundaries. From the development of hypotheses based on theoretical models to analytical techniques, her art historical lines of inquiry turned more and more to the incorporation of laboratory methods that included lead isotope analysis for characterizing ores from particular regions by measuring accessory and trace elements to create a distinctive fingerprint. She moved from the Smithsonian Institution’s Conservation Analytical Laboratory that served as her institutional base for several years, to the Argonne National Laboratory affiliated with the University of Chicago, where for twenty years she served on the faculty of the Oriental Institute.
Now, with the vantage of hindsight, like Nasreddin Hoca riding on his donkey backwards to have the better view, one can understand that it was indeed a bumpy road, often precarious and at times precipitous. But Aslı never lost her way and stayed the course. Negotiating the bureaucracies of universities and governments, she has met—often under adverse circumstances—with presidents, deans, professors, ministers, governors, mayors, and donors, always with an open heart, open mind, and stunning savvy, to further the cause of the pursuit of knowledge even when the way appeared to be barred.
Forthright, dogged, and fervent are words that spring to mind when describing Aslı. She is a brilliant and thoughtful strategist, as well as a critical thinker,
Her team was a diverse group that included senior scholars and scientific advisors, architects, new PhDs, and rookie archaeologists hailing from Italy, Germany, Holland, England, Canada, the usa, and Turkey. Together they comprised a dynamic bunch, brilliant minds focused on the pursuit of knowledge on the ground, striving to understand trajectories for the future through the present and from the past. To see Aslı in her director mode is to witness an exceptionally capable conductor quietly orchestrating an active team while maintaining intellectual control over every aspect of the archaeological endeavor. She encouraged students to explain what they were doing and finding; she willingly delegated responsibility coupled with authority to two assistant directors: an accomplished field director and a house team manager, each of whom leads their own productive team.
In all of these roles, Aslı takes very seriously her own role as mentor. The confidence and trust she places in her field director is especially critical to the success of the operation, but each team leader contributes to effectiveness in documentation, analysis and the production of knowledge, and smooth running of daily activities. The comings and goings of specialists such as epigraphers, historians, and scientists, including paleobotanists and paleozoologists, brought in from distant universities contribute to the buzz. Aslı’s sagacity comes into play while meeting local landholders, farmers, and politicians, representatives from the ministry of culture, and the director of the local archaeological museum. She meets with each of these vested players to take joint strategic decisions, striving for justice while promoting advocacy and awareness of the value of archaeology to create a meaningful presence—whether creating a public archaeological park, preserving Leonard Woolley’s historic dig house, or transforming the local archaeological museum. Each of these endeavors requires effective leadership and a visionary stance that incorporates values of interpretation, historic preservation, and education, and the promotion of public awareness and appreciation of archaeology.
The breadth of her success may be measured in so many ways: her record of publications is extensive, including excavation reports, interpretive articles,
What ingredients contributed to these multi-faceted achievements in the face of so much movement, change, and adversity? Her trajectory began in Istanbul, where she was born, but her parents left for New York shortly after her birth. They settled in Queens, New York, where her sister was born; well, maybe settled is not the right word, for they moved from place to place as her father sought various job opportunities under difficult circumstances. One day, the shrubbery in front of their house was set on fire, which led to a move to the quiet and more stately suburb of New Rochelle, New York. Her parents purchased a decrepit old house, which the neighbors considered haunted. There, Aslı and her sister Jaylan went to high school, but they never fully adapted to a suburban way of life. In Istanbul, their father was a journalist, and he continued to write occasional articles for the Turkish press. His intellectual concerns focused on Turkish nationalism and the ethnic origins of Turks in Central Asia. Eventually, he returned to Istanbul to pursue his interests.
Aslı’s mother, Emire Güntekin, had grown up in the era of Atatürk and earned a degree at Istanbul University in Turkish History and trained at the Istanbul Conservatory in classical opera. Although she came from a long line of strong-willed and rebellious women, in New York she opted to stay home and raise her daughters. The descendant of a physician to the Sultan at the Ottoman court, she was an educated woman steeped in the European culture that was so popular during the late years of the Ottoman Empire and the early Republic. She loved ballet and sent both daughters to Manhattan each week to learn pliés, jètes, and other formalized movements, although she also ensured that an “Ottoman strain” pervaded the family’s sense of identity. From an early age, no doubt, Aslı must have learned to negotiate between her mother’s staunch Republicanism and her father’s activism in the pan-Turkish nationalist movement.
In the 1960s, Aslı attended Adelphi University for a year to study chemistry, but decided to return to Turkey to explore her roots, and enrolled at Robert College. She moved into the grand apartment in Bebek of her mother’s older sister, who was a “queen bee” of the old school and “ancien regime”. It was soon apparent that they did not get along. Nonetheless, Aslı completed her undergraduate education in comparative literature and the humanities and returned to New York where she began to work in the field of publishing. But she found that did not suit her interests, and she enrolled in a doctoral program at Columbia University in archaeology.
As a curator at The Textile Museum, my motto was, “We must maintain constant vigilance against the forces of evil, adversity, and mediocrity”. I think that Aslı also maintained such vigilance. She often received pushback, but she would nonetheless argue for what she thought was right; she is both forthright in her speech and persistent in her actions. Her perseverance is characteristically coupled with a very strong work ethic that gets her up early every morning, and keeps her at her computer throughout the day. By late afternoon, she may settle in to derive inspiration from the view across the Bosporus to the Asian shore and the Princes’ Islands, or relax watching opera or ballet on television in her spacious living room decked out with Ottoman furniture and fabrics. That was the time of day she would take Charlie out for a walk, sharing the constant cheerful companionship of her late black miniature schnauzer, who accompanied her everywhere.
A realist with a vision, Aslı keeps a steady scope on the possible, ever aware of new potential, assessing risks along the way. She has managed to advance human knowledge with respect to antiquity and to promote public understanding. Always striving to maintain the highest academic and scholarly standards, she offers a viable model for those who aspire to be effective leaders in times of change, good managers in the face of adversity. Whether in Istanbul or New York, she is blessed with a capability that allows her to keep abreast of shifting circumstances in the periphery while remaining grounded at the center, maintaining a broad perspective, while at the same time never losing sight of the need for attention to detail, always moving forward.