Jurash Part 1 July 23-August 18

On the night of Wednesday-Thursday July 22-23 I flew with two other participants in the Jurash excavation project, from Amman to Abha via Jeddah. We arrived in Jeddah on schedule, with a three-hour layover before our flight on to Abha. But it took a very long time to get through passport control. There were a number of counters open, but long lines at each of them. We got in a line with a couple dozen Asians ahead of us who were taking over five minutes each to get through. So after an hour and with nineteen people still ahead of us, we realized that at that rate we were going to miss our flight, so we shifted over to the Saudi citizens line and got through passport control after just a couple of minutes.

The departure area of the Jeddah airport was overcrowded with little to offer. The lack of posting and announcements about flight departures and gates was exceptionally poor. Our flight on to Abha left a half-hour late at 1:30 am and upon our arrival in Abha, we were met by some the Saudi team members from last year, who took us to the school in Khamis Mushayt, where we had stayed last year, arriving at 3:30 am. The rest of the day of Thursday July 23 was a slow day of meeting the other American and Saudi team members, most of whom had taken part in last year’s first season of excavations at the site of Jurash. Friday July 24 was also a slow day, although we did go to the site in the afternoon and had a meeting about recording procedures that evening.

One new participant was Brian Cannon, whom I had not met since we both had taken part in the 1991 excavation season at Humayma, Jordan. Also there was one woman member of the team this year: Gabi Gudrian from Germany, who spent the season at the school processing and registering the finds. One person who did not come was Thomas Leisten, a German citizen on the faculty of Princeton University, who experienced long enough delays in getting a renewed German passport that time ran out for him to come. Another new participant was Colin Shepley, a student of Gary Rollefson’s at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington, who worked with me for most of the season.

The project staff at the site

The excavation project got underway on Saturday July 25 and continued for three weeks, with 18 days of field work, ending on Thursday August 13. We followed the same schedule as last year. We left for the site at 7:00 am and with a break between 9:30 and 10:00 worked until 12:00, when we returned to the school. We returned to the site at 4:00 pm and worked until 6:00.

Our workmen were the same group of Pakistanis who had worked for us last season. They all had cellphones and it was remarkable how many phone calls they kept making

Two of my workmen getting a phone call


Work underway at the site. Note the approaching rain clouds and the overachieving workman with the double-decker wheelbarrow on the right.

The US embassy staff from Riyadh came to visit one day, almost our only visitors.

The staff from the US embassy in Riyadh visiting the site