Photograph: The market at Köyceğiz · Köyceğiz · Maria Jonker, CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What a museum loses most easily is what cannot be put in a case: tales and stories, children's games, folk dances, mani verses, recipes; the visit to a newborn, the send-off for a conscript, the house of mourning — everything whose method is known only while it is being done. UNESCO calls this intangible cultural heritage. Even the lake's island carries an example: locals also tell of Hapishane Island as Aşık — Lovers' — Island, where two young people whose families refused them took refuge and died of a snakebite. The source itself ties this to the widespread Anatolian "island and snake" tale type; it is not history, but exactly the kind of account this case exists to hold.11 In Köyceğiz all of it is held in memory, and memory thins with every generation. This case is filled by a recording, not an object.