Xanagale buildings 4b: from this angle, the near ruins in photograph Xanagale buildings 4a reveals a new feature: on the far right of the photo, at the corner of the foundations, is a small concrete construction, with two fairly large, grey stone in it and concrete or mortar around its near side; it may have been square or rectangular, but the soil deposition and colonising grasses and shrubs have begun to cover and conceal the feature.

This place is not at the bottom of a slope or on a heavily-trafficked route, but it is still being (albeit more slowly) lost. If this village were rebuilt and resettled in 2003, it may be fair to assume that the deposition of significant quantities of soil occurred after this date (that is to say, in the past four years); still, how much was deposited during the process of demolition is unknown.

The already-half-buried feature on the far right, which is only a couple of inches above the soil layer now, may be completely covered in another four years’ time. The concrete foundations will be somewhat visible for many years yet, but, as the soil banks obscuring its edges suggest, it may become unidentifiable without local testimony and that may be unverifiable and deniable without archaeological excavation.

Also worthy of note are the panels of the wall of the building at the back left of the photograph, each of which has (presumably children’s) drawings of homes on them. (They may not be accurate, although that isn’t important; still, the designs of the roofs and even the bolt visible on the far right panel’s homes have been seen locally.)

I believe these drawings were done by the children of the new villagers, in which case, they were done with the ruins of the homes destroyed by the Turkish military directly behind them. If not, they would have been drawn by children subsequently displaced and would have depicted (the child’s-eye vision of) the kind of family home that was destroyed.