On my first few days at the Cadir Höyük 2025 project, I was introduced to a tool I had never used before: the dumpy level. At its core, it is a simple instrument for measuring horizontal levels—a tripod, a level head, and a staff marked with precise centimeters. But the challenge wasn’t in the setup; it was in the seeing. When I first looked through the lens, I kept getting lost in the landscape. My eyes drifted toward the mound, the hills, even the horizon, when all I really needed to find was a tiny line on the staff. It was only after practicing that I realized the trick: I had to look beyond the distractions in order to focus on what mattered. The dumpy level trained me to see not just what was directly before me but the exact measurement that would help piece together the excavation.

That realization became a metaphor for both archaeology and life. Archaeology is the art of connecting fragments—small sherds, soil layers, or architectural features—into a larger story of how people once lived. Like the dumpy level, it requires looking beyond what you can immediately see to uncover the bigger picture. Each tiny detail is meaningful, but only when joined with others does the whole emerge.

Both in the field and in faith, the discipline is the same. Whether sighting through a dumpy level or searching Scripture, the task is to look beyond what is immediate or distracting. To focus on the small pieces long enough for them to connect. To trust that fragments—whether centimeters measured in the dirt or words written on an island two thousand years ago—can be assembled into a greater whole.

At Cadir Höyük, every careful measurement helped transform scattered stones into walls, walls into houses, and houses into a once-living community. And in my faith, every act of looking beyond reveals a glimpse of God’s larger design. Both remind me that to find the new in the old, you must learn to see beyond the surface and trust that each fragment, no matter how small, belongs to a greater story.