schickrobert

Hyderabad January 1-5

2012-01-08T09:26:00.000-08:00

My flight arrived iin Hyderabad at noon on Sunday January 1 and I took a bus to Abids in the city center. I checked into the Sai Prakash Hotel. When HMI had been located at its office in Abids, I had often had lunch at the hotel restaurant, but I had not stayed in the hotel before.

On Monday January 2, I went to the Andhra Pradesh State Archaeology Museum in the nearby Public Gardens. I had not been to the museum since they opened up their new Buddhism exhibit room. I bought many of the museum’s publications. In the late afternoon I met Vasant Bawa and had a long chat with him about heritage issues. The next day, Tuesday January 3, I did some work in the hotel and walked around the city, doing some shopping.

I spent the next day, Wednesday January 4, at the Henry Martyn Institute. I chatted with people and got caught up with email, having WiFi access there for the first time in almost two weeks. I went to a nearby restaurant for a lunch with Shobha Gosa, the academic program coordinator whose last day of work at HMI was today. Others in the lunch group included Varghese and Vijay, two of my former students.

The lunch group

Shobha and me

Vijay and me

At the end of the work day, I went back to the city with Christy Femila and chatted with her and her husband. That evening I walked around the city some more.

On Thursday January 5 in the morning I met Timothy Marthand, my pianist friend, and then went to HMI in the afternoon, where I chatted with people and browsed the internet. At the end of the work day, I took a bus to the airport, where I hung out until my flight to Mumbai left at 9:45. The flight arrived in Mumbai at 11:15 and I transferred to the international terminal, where I hung out until my flight back to Amman the following morning. I had booked a flight via Mumbai and Riyadh that was exceptionally cheap (150 dollars from Mumbai to Amman), but at the cost of having to spend 10 hours in the Mumbai airport.

Chennai December 31

2012-01-08T08:45:00.000-08:00

The two drivers of the bus kept going all night. I was able to sleep a good deal. We stopped for breakfast at Viluppuram, where we could see evidence of the typhoon that had hit the area the previous day; areas farther south were not affected.

We arrived back in Chennai at 1:30. I stayed with the family as they prepared an elaborate final meal of the year. I helped out with the preparations and learned how to shred a coconut.

The final meal of the year being served

After the meal I said my goodbyes to the family at the end of the highly enjoyable trip. The trip was in all respects a great experience. Things I need to do have been piling up back in Jordan, and as far as work goes, I should have returned as soon as my project in Visakhapatnam was over. But the trip with the family sounded like too unique an opportunity to decline, and such proved to be the case.

I left at 5:45 and checked into my hotel. That evening I walked around, but soon went to sleep at 9:30, not caring about the New Year.

On the morning of Sunday January 1, I took a flight to Hyderabad.

Kanyakumari December 30

2012-01-08T08:30:00.000-08:00

We arrived in Kanyakumari at 12:30 am, but it took a long time until 2:30 to find a suitable hotel to check into. That night I slept in a double bed with the three teen-agers in the family. That was okay until the three of them rolled over to one side of the bed, pinning me against the wall of the room. I have not learned the proper technique of pushing back yet.

I got up at 6:30 and walked around the area. I came across an odd-looking mosque with towers surmounted by square-shaped fleur-de-lis that look an awful lot like crosses.

The mosque

Next to our hotel was a small local museum. On display were a dinosaur that moves and roars when plugged in and a number of panels with aphorisms and others about local history

The dinosaur

The panels with aphorisms

The panels about local history

Kanyakumari forms the southernmost tip of India and attracts a lot of tourists. In the morning we went to the large Hindu temple in the city, but we did not go out to the Vivekananda memorial on an off-shore island.

Then in the afternoon we went to the Basilica of Our Lady of Ransom.

The church

The church interior

The family in front of the church

As elsewhere on the trip, finding bath room facilities was difficult. In this case the problem was solved when a woman who worked at the church invited us all to her home a couple of blocks away.

The couple whose house we took over

At 3:15 we left for Kuttalam, and stopped briefly at a church in Vallioor along the way. We arrived in Kuttalam long after dark and went to the popular waterfalls and bathing area there, which I found much too covered with garbage to be appealing. At 10:30 pm we started on the long overnight trip back to Chennai.

Tuticorin December 29

2012-01-08T03:47:00.000-08:00

In the morning the family went to Our Lady of Snows basilica. The name derives from a miracle in early Christian Rome where a miraculous snowfall in August was a sign from the Virgin Mary.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Snows

The family in the basilica

We left Tuticorin at noon and stopped at a nearby beach.

The beach

We then went to a basilica at Veerapandian Pattinam.

The basilica

The family in the basilica

Later in the afternoon we went to a big Hindu temple of Murugan along the seashore at Tiruchendur. The lane approaching the temple was lined with shops selling a remarkable range of plastic junk.

The temple

The family at the seashore

A shop near the temple

At sunset we arrived at a basilica in Tiruchendur where Jesus had appeared to restore a lost child to its parents. In the center of the church, marking the spot where Jesus had appeared, is an open space filled with sand in the otherwise tiled floor, which the family members all walked across.

The family at the church

The frailest member of the family getting herself across the spot where Jesus had appeared

The family at another chapel there

We continued to visit churches long after night fall. We went to Manapad and visited a church and a nearby cave where St. Francis Xavier had stayed in 1542.

We then continued on to another place where an early church had been destroyed and forgotten under a covering of red sand, only to have been rediscovered later and put back into active use.

The rediscovered old church

We continued on to Uvari, where we visited a Catholic church of Our Lady of Health built on the shore in 1974. The bottom of the church is shaped like a ship and the top like an airplane.

The church at Uvari (photo from Wikipedia)

We then visited the nearby Church of Saint Anthony, the last church of the day, before proceeding on to Kanyakumari at 10:45 pm.

The last church of the day

Velanganni December 28

2012-01-08T02:17:00.000-08:00

We spent most of Wednesday December 28 at Velanganni where there is a big pilgrimage basilica of Our Lady of Good Health, dating from the 16^th century.

The church

The church attracts a huge number of pilgrims.

Crowds milling around near the church entrance

Many boys had shaved heads, along with a few men, but very few women. Other people brought offerings of coconuts or other items. Others attached locks at one particular place.

A boy with a shaved head inside the church

The spot where people attach locks

I also went along the Stations of the Cross, where some people were making their way on their knees, ending at a water tank where the Virgin Mary had appeared some centuries ago to a lame milk vendor.

The Stations of the Cross

After spending the day at Velanganni, we left for Tuticorin at 3:30, arriving at 11:45. That night in Tuticorin I ended having a room by myself.

Thanjavur December 27

2012-01-08T01:40:00.000-08:00

The bus reached Thanjavur at 2:00 am. We arrived at a Carmelite convent and it took a while to rouse someone to let us into the guest accommodations. The 24 of us fit ourselves into the three rooms, and I was one of five people who slept on a bed sheet spread on the floor of one room.

I got up at 6:30 and attended mass with the family. One of the family members, who died twenty years ago, had been a sister here, so the family has visitation privileges and we were able to briefly meet the sisters, who, being cloistered, normally do not meet visitors. One of the sisters who does appear in public is Sister Rose, who has been blessed with a stigmata – marks of the crucifixion.

Sister Rose with the stigmata meeting the family

The Carmelite Convent

The grave of the family member

We left the convent at 10:45 and then visited the famous Brihadisvara Hindu temple in Thanjavur.

Some of the younger members of the family at the temple

We then went to the Our Lady of Lourdes pilgrimage basilica at Poondi, dating from the early 18^th century. We toured the church, where a tiny piece of the True Cross is displayed.

The Poondi Madha church

The church interior

The True Cross on display

We left at sunset and went to another church dedicated to the Virgin Mary at Elakurichi, built in 1711, which we saw after dark. We then proceeded to Velanganni, arriving at 10:45 p.m.

That night, I slept on an uncomfortable, lumpy mattress on the floor in one room, while five others fitted into the double bed.

Chennai December 26

2012-01-08T00:45:00.000-08:00

I had come to Chennai to join the extended family of Florina Benoit on a pilgrimage trip around Tamil Nadu. I had known Florina and her husband Ashok from their involvement with the conflict resolution program at the Henry Martyn Institute. Most every year her family, who are devote Roman Catholics, gets together and goes on a trip to visit various Christian pilgrimage churches in the state. In the end Florina and her husband Ashok, who had visited me in Jordan last January, were not able to join the family on this year’s trip, but the family welcomed me to join them anyway on the six-day trip.

The 24 participants on the trip included Charles, a brother who lives in Texas, and other siblings, along with their spouses and children, the elderly mother and a mother-in-law, another couple who were friends of the family and Megan, an American, who had met Charles’ family in the US.

On Monday December 26, I arrived at the family’s home around 11:00 am. Preparations for the trip were in full swing.I was able to meet Florina and Ashok briefly, before they had to leave.

Florina helping prepare the food for the next day

It took a while for the bus to arrive, so we did not get underway until 5:45 p.m. on a long trip to the city of Thanjavur.

The bus

Chennai December 24-25

2012-01-08T00:19:00.000-08:00

On Saturday December 24 I explored the city of Chennai by riding on the mass transit lines. My hotel was in the Chepauk area in the heart of the city, so I first went to the Chepauk metro stop and took the train to the end of the line at Velacheri and then took the train back to Chennai Beach. I then took a different line as far as the airport stop and back. I then took the train to the Light House station and went to a shopping mall a couple of blocks away. The glitzy shopping mall is located in a slum neighborhood, making for a stark contrast.

People getting photographed at the mall’s Christmas display

The scene a short distance away

That evening I went out again and walked along the main Anna Salai street, and got some books at the Higgenbotham’s bookstore.

On Sunday December 25 I spend some time reading the books I had bought, including Bill Bryson, At Home. I also explored the city some more. I went to the Egmore train station and took the metro line to the airport and took a bus back to the Central train station and walked around further. That afternoon I went to an internet outlet and that evening I watched a DVD of the recent Bollywood movie Muhjese Fraandship Karoge, in which Tara D’Souza stars. She is the daughter of the former director of HMI.

I did not do anything special for Christmas, thinking that I would get more than enough religiosity in the coming days.

Visakhapatnam December 20-23

2012-01-07T23:50:00.000-08:00

Back in Visakhpatnam, on Tuesday December 20, Raman, Rani’s nephew, took me to the early Buddhist site of Rama Thirtham, north of Visakhapatnam. The site was particularly impressive. A lengthy path led up a hill side to the extensively preserved site in a scenic location. A friendly site guard accompanied us.

The path

The site

The site guard and Raman

The solar-powered guard’s house at the foot of the hill

We passed through the city of Vizianagaram on the way. There are some heritage buildings there, but we did not stop.

Meanwhile Rani took Ilse and Anja shopping, and upon my return to Visakhapatnam at noon, I joined them at the Dolphin Hotel for lunch. Afterwards I went to the train station to get a refund for Ilse and Anja’s ticket to Hyderabad; they decided to fly back to Hyderabad instead. That evening Rani took us to an excellent classical Indian dance performance by Ganti Krishna Swetha.

On Wednesday December 21, Ilse and Anja left on their morning flight to Hyderabad, while I stayed on in Visakhapatnam for a couple more days. I walked around the city along the beach road and went to the Maritime and Heritage Museums. That evening Rani took me to another classical Indian dance performance by a local group.

On Thursday December 22, I got caught up with emails and walked along the beach road to the aquarium. Along the beach road I saw the sculpture garden and the row of statues of prominent citizens.

The sculpture garden

One of the sculptures

The row of statues

One statue was of Kodi Ramamurthy, the Indian Hercules who stopped a rail engine with a single hand.

The statue of Kodi Ramamurthy

On Friday December 23, I checked out of the hotel and went to Rani’s house for breakfast and discussion, before I headed to the airport for my flight to Chennai. It was scheduled for 1:05 p.m., but ended up delayed for an hour and a half. The flight arrived in Chennai at 4:15 and I checked into a hotel and walked around that evening.

Raju’s Farm December 19

2012-01-07T10:25:00.000-08:00

On Monday December 19 we began the day with Raju giving us a tour of his farm. His farm is located in an isolate valley surrounded by hills. There are no other buildings in sight. He is investing a great deal in developing the property with advanced agricultural techniques. He recently built a guest house where we stayed. He has a deer there temporarily.

The guest house

The deer

The gazebo for meals

The view from the guest house

Raju was very hospitable, and we had extended conversations over dinner in the evenings.

After saying our goodbyes, we traveled south to Gopalipatnam to see some early Buddhist rock shelters near an active Hindu temple. We were shown around by a local guide.

One of the rock shelters

Our guide standing next to an inscription

We then saw the meager remains of a Dutch fort in the village. Little beyond one wall remains.

The wall of the Dutch fort

We were a major attraction for some school children on a field trip.

The school children

We also went to the nearby beach at Pentakota and Ilse and Anja drew a plan of a British bungalow there.

The British bungalow

At the beach we met up with the school children, who were scared to get too close to the water.

The school children at the water's edge

Also at the beach were many fishermen and their womenfolk waiting for them to land with the day's catch.

The village women

Fishermen hauling their boat ashore

Afterwards we continued to the city of Tuni, just across the border of the East Godavari District to get newspapers with news about yesterday’s event. There would have been a news item about us on the television news broadcasts last night, but we did not have the opportunity to see it.

The two newspaper articles about yesterday’s visit to the Buddhist sites at Kummari Lova.

We then returned to Visakhapatnam. We dropped Venkatesh off at the bus station and checked into the Classic Hotel.

Raju’s Farm December 18

2012-01-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

On Sunday December 18 we went on a trip south to the East Godavari District to see a cluster of newly discovered early Buddhist sites at Kummari Lova. Rani’s sister and nephew came along with K. Suryanarayana, the Andhra University professor, and we were joined by a number of local press reporters. We toured three of the early Buddhist sites that a local school teacher had first noticed a couple of months ago.

The first site

Me being interviewed at the second site (thte school teacher is on my left)

Some bricks at the third site being exposed in a farmer’s field

We then went to the nearby village where we were shown some pottery found at the site.

The pottery

In the afternoon we proceded to the nearby village of Vempadu, where we visited Chitrapur, a retired forestry official, at his home. We were joined there by C. V. Raju and stayed for lunch and a long chat.

The group at Chitrapur’s house

The women servants got all dressed up specially for a photograph.

The ladies in the group

Afterwards we went to the beach nearby. Ilse and Anja briefly went into the water. There is a strong undercurrent, so it is not safe to venture out very far. We had a discussion at the beach about the prospects for a project next year.

The beach

The group at the beach

Ilse and Anja in the water

Then at sunset, while Rani and the others returned to Visakhapatnam, Ilse, Anja, Venkatesh and I returned to Raju’s farm.

Raju’s Farm December 17

2012-01-07T08:29:00.000-08:00

On Saturday December 17 we first went to the nearby train station to pick up Rani who had come from Visakhapatnam to spend the day with us. We went to Peda Uppalam, where we walked around the site in general.

Venkatesh and me exploring the site

The group at the Buddha statue

We finished up what we wanted to do at the site by lunch time.

Lunch

In the afternoon we met Raju who took us to his nearby home village of Gudivada. He took us to a hill in the village where there is an early Buddhist site, apparently undocumented. As with other sites, there was little visible on the surface beyond some scattered brick fragments.

The early Buddhist site

Raju then took us to his family mansion in the village.

Raju with his family mansion in the background

Raju on the roof of his family mansion

In the village are statues of his great grandfather and grandfather, who were feudal landlords.

Raju at the statues of his great grandfather and grandfather

We then went to the sea shore nearby, where a river flows into the sea.

A local showing us his fishing boat

Then while Rani, Ilse and Anja went to C.V. Raju’s toy workshop, I returned with Raju to his farm.

C.V. Raju’s toy workshop

Raju's Farm December 15-16

2012-01-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

On Thursday December 15 we were joined by Venkatesh Rao, who had arrived in the night by train. We spent the day at the Peda Uppalam site.

The team at Peda Uppalam

We walked around and thought through what to do. At the core of the site is a statue of the Buddha that a local farmer had found some decades ago, which he placed in a small structure as a shrine. That structure served as our base as we walked around the agricultural fields of the village.

Some local boys bringing flowers to Anja and Ilse at the Buddha statue

There was little visible above the surface, after the locals had leveled off the fields. The locals said that some years ago they had come across a concentration of brick fragments some 30 m away from the Buddha statue.

The area of concentrated brick fragments.

We collected surface sherds from a few fields. Most of the fields were not currently under cultivation, which made it possible for us to walk around easily. Whether there were any sherds or bricks to collect was heavily dependent on whether the fields had been recently plowed or not.

General view of the area

After lunch we walked around the village and recorded an isolated standing stone and an ancient water reservoir.

Some villagers

The standing stone

Ilse and Venkatesh measuring an ancient water reservoir

In the late afternoon we drove around the area and went to the beach a few kilometers away at Patapolavaram. There were remnants of a brick structure at the top of a hill there.

The remnants of a brick structure at the beach at Patapolavaram

Our vehicle got a flat tire, which took a while to change and get fixed in the neighboring village, so we got back to Raju’s farm well after dark.

On Friday December 16 we returned to Peda Uppalam. Anja spent most of the day processed the pottery we had collected, while Ilse and I walked around the general area, especially a field where the soil had been dug out, producing sections that revealed the layering of soil. There were sherds only in the top layer.

The dug-out field

The soil section at the dug-out field

We also saw an isolated stone carved with feet in the middle of a field.

Anja and the stone carved with feet

In the late afternoon I walked to a nearby hill, where there was only slight trace of any site.

The nearby hill

We returned to Raju’s farm at sunset.

Raju's Farm December 14

2012-01-07T06:43:00.000-08:00

After finishing with Bhimunipatnam, the next stage of our project shifted to investigation of some early Buddhist sites south of Visakhapatnam.

On Wednesday December 14, we checked out of the hotel, and Rani, her sister and her nephew joined us for the several hour trip south. We first stopped in the village of Etikoppaka, where we visited a toy factory run by C.V. Raju. He operates the wooden toy factory as a handicraft cottage industry and uses only natural dyes.

Anja in a palanquin at Raju’s toy factory

We then continued on to the large farm of a second Raju, where we were to stay for the coming days. We got settled into Raju’s guest house on his farm and had lunch. We then proceeded to the village of Peda Uppalam, where the principal early Buddhist site that we will investigate is located, but we spent our time until sunset at a nearby early Buddhist site know as the Devil’s Hill. The site had been excavated some years ago, but little published.

Devil’s Hill

The group at Devil’s Hill (Front Row: Me, Rani and Mr. C.V. Raju; Back Row Anja, Rani’s nephew, Rani’s sister and Ilse)

The landscape near Devil’s Hill

At sunset Rani and the others returned to Visakhapatnam, while Ilse, Anja and I returned to Raju’s farm.

Visakhapatnam December 13

2012-01-07T06:16:00.000-08:00

On the fourth day, Tuesday December 13, we returned to Bhimunipatnam; Anja was not feeling well and stayed at the hotel. We first went to the Dutch cemetery to take some more photographs to use with yesterday's laser measurements to produce an overall plan.

Ilse taking photographs at the Dutch Cemetery

We then went to the Hindu Narasimha Temple.

The Narasimha Temple

We then walked up the hill of Pavuralakonda from the temple to see the excavated early Buddhist site and the Dutch bungalow there. Along the path that Buddhist pilgrims would have taken are occasional footprints cut into the bedrock.

An early Buddhist footprint

Some of the early Buddhist remains at Pavuralakonda

A reconstructed row of Buddhist monastic cells

Ilse drew a plan of the Dutch bungalow, while I walked around.

Ilse with Medina and our driver taking measurements of the Dutch bungalow

On the way back to the Narasimha Temple, we passed by an isolated modern brick tower.

Ilse at the tower

The view to the north of Bhimunipatnam from the hill.

Afterwards we went to the beach for lunch and briefly visited a Mr. Peacock at an old house that we had briefly stopped at yesterday. At the end of the day we went to Mr. Roberts’ house to say goodbye.

We then returned to Visakhapatnam, and that evening Rani invited us to her home for dinner.

Visakhapatnam December 12

2012-01-07T05:29:00.000-08:00

On the third day of field work, Monday December 12, we returned to Bhimunipatnam and went to the Dutch and British Flagstaff Cemetery.

The Flagstaff Cemetery

Ilse and Anja taking a bird’s eye view photograph of the cemetery

The view of the Flagstaff Cemetery that they took

We then walked along the beach.

A water fountain along the beach with the British clock tower in the background

The lighthouse

We then met Mr. S. S. Roberts and Medina at Mr. Robert's home again and copied more documents that he had.

Mr. Roberts and Ilse

The plan of the now demolished Dutch fort

Then after lunch on the beach, we went to a Hindu temple complex and looked at some other old buildings.

The Shivalayam temple compound

An interesting private building

In the late afternoon we returned to the Dutch cemetery, to be there around sunset in order to take some laser measurements.

Checking some details at the Dutch cemetery

Medina and his family who live next to the Dutch cemetery

The neighbors

Back in Visakhapatnam that evening, an INTACH member took Ilse and me to the Waltair Club, itself a heritage building, for dinner.

Visakhapatnam December 11

2012-01-07T04:44:00.000-08:00

On the second day of field work, Sunday December 11, we returned to Bhimunipatnam and first went to see S. S. Roberts again. He had been instrumental in getting the Dutch cemetery cleaned up some years ago, and he showed us some old photographs of the clean-up work in progress.

One of Mr. Robert’s photographs showing the clean-up of the cemetery

We then went to the abandoned lighthouse keeper’s residence, which Ilse and Anja documented, while Medina and I went around the town locating some of the other historic buildings.

The lighthouse keeper’s residence

Ilse and Anja at the lighthouse keeper’s residence

We met with friendly locals wherever we went.

Ilse with the family who lives next to the lighthouse keeper’s residence

We had lunch on the beach; a garbage-disposal cow there instantly ate any organic garbage that we tossed down to it.

The garbage disposal cow

Along the beach are numerous statues.

A scene depicting an incident of local anti-colonial history

Then we investigated an unidentified storage building near the beach, which, like so many other buildings was largely intact, but overgrown with vegetation.

Medina and me in the overgrown storage building

We then walked around the town and looked at some other old buildings.

Anja at a column marking the perimeter of a now demolished old building

In the late afternoon, we dropped Medina off at his home and then went to Bavikonda, a major excavated early Buddhist site along the way back to Visakhapatnam.

The early Buddhist site of Bavikonda

Back in Visakhapatnam that evening we met Rani and her husband for dinner at the Palm Beach hotel.

Visakhapatnam December 9-10

2012-01-07T03:13:00.000-08:00

Our overnight train from Hyderabad arrived in Visakhapatnam in the morning of Friday December 9 and a driver met us at the station to take us to the Classic Hotel, near Andhra University. We met Rani Sarma at the University, who took us to meet the archaeology professor L. Suryanaryna at his office.

Ilse, L. Suryanaryna, another history professor, Rani and me in his office

The courtyard of the History Department

Afterwards we went to Rani’s house, where we talked further about the project. We then went shopping for supplies, before returning to the hotel. That evening I went to the Visakhapatnam book fair nearby; it was not much and mostly had Telugu and Hindi books on offer.

The next day Saturday December 10 was the first day of field work of my two-week project with Ilse and Anja. We began by spending four days at the town of Bhimunipatnam, north of Visakhapatnam, to see the Dutch and British colonial buildings there. Bhimunipatnam was the first settlement in India of the Dutch East India Company in the early 17^th century. The town is named after Bhima, one of the heroes of the Mahabharata epic who wrestled with a demon here.

A statue along the beach showing Bhima wrestling the demon

On the first day Rani came with us to introduce us to Mr. S. S. Roberts, the local historian, and Medina, a local who accompanied us each day.

Mr. Roberts, Rani, Medina, Me, Ilse and Anja at Mr. Robert’s house

Ilse, Anja and I, joined by Medina, went to the Dutch cemetery on the outskirts of the town, which we documented at length. Anja took most of the photographs during the project.

The Dutch cemetery

We then went into the town to the mosque and the adjacent ruined darghah tomb shrine. The local Sunni Muslims showed us a photograph of them commemorating Muharram at the mosque.

The mosque

The local Sunnis commemorating Muharram

Next to the mosque was a British period storehouse, known as the Ripley Godown.

The Ripley Godown

After having lunch on the beach, we walked around the town and interviewed a local old-timer for a while.

Ilse and me interviewing the local old-timer

We then went to the former Municipal Commissioner’s residence and the Municipal Choultry (guesthouse), passing by some unidentified old buildings.

The Municipal Commissioner’s residence

An unidentified old building

The Municipal Choultry

Lastly, we went to the Customs House, which Ilse and Anja drew a floor plan of.

The Customs House

Ilse and Anja at the Customs House

Around sunset we returned to Visakhapatnam. I had rented a car and driver for the duration of the project. Our hotel does not have a restaurant, but brings menu orders from a nearby restaurant, which take a long time to get delivered.

Hyderabad December 6-8

2012-01-07T02:16:00.000-08:00

Tuesday December 6 was the 10th of Muharram, the day of Husayn’s martyrdom and the culmination of the ten-day period of mourning for 12er Shi‘ites, and so I went with Ilse, Anja and Gloria in the late afternoon to the Old City to witness the procession of self-flagellants. Some of the participants cut their heads with knives or beat their chests holding razor blades between their fingers.

Some razor blades left on the street

Anja was repulsed by the bloody self-flagellants and soon went back to HMI, while I stayed on with the others at the house where we had attended the majlis session on December 2. That private house is near the end of the procession route and is one of the places where the elephant bearing the main processional standard stops.

The elephant in the house courtyard

A few over-achievers whip their backs with especially nasty sets of blades, while a larger number of particpants beat themselves less rigorously.

The over-achievers

The next day Wednesday December 7 I went into the city and met Ashok, a photographer who writes coffee table photo books about India. That evening Shobha, the HMI academic program coordinator, invited me for dinner at her apartment near HMI. Varghese, a staff member and former student of mine who recently left HMI, was also there and we talked at length about developments at HMI.

The next day Thursday December 8 I spent at HMI. That evening Ilse, Anja and I took an overnight train to Visakhapatnam to start our archaeological survey project.

Hyderabad November 29-December 8

2012-01-06T23:40:00.000-08:00

My overnight train from Visakhapatnam arrived in Secunderabad on the morning of Tuesday November 29 and I went directly to the Henry Martyn Institute (HMI) in the south of the city. I got settled in the hostel and chatted with people. In the late afternoon I went into the city to meet Ilse Sturkenboom, my colleague from Germany, at the Salar Jung Museum. She had come to India a month ago to look at Persian illustrated manuscripts in various library collections and she had been in Hyderabad for a few days to work in the Salar Jung Museum library.

Ilse and I walked around the Old City and then the Public Gardens and the Husain Sagar Lake in the middle of the city with the modern statue of Buddha and and attended the laser show in Lumbini Park there.

The next day Wednesday November 30, I spent at HMI. In the evening I went with Ilse to the Old City to meet Fatimah Alikhan, a professor at the University of Hyderabad and a member of the HMI board, who took us to a majlis session, when 12er Shi‘ites mourn the martyrdom of the Imam Husayn in 680 A.D., today being the fourth of the ten days of Muharram. Fatimah took us to a majlis session at a private residence, where she had taken the HMI group last year.

The next day Thursday December 1 I spent at HMI, while on Friday December 2, I went with Ilse in the morning to the Old City, where I showed her some of the palaces and historic buildings in the area, including ones that Rani Sarma had written about in her Deodhis of Hyderabad book that I had helped her with.

A derelict palace in the Old City

We then went to meet Fatimah Ali Khan and her husband at her home in Banjara Hills.

The next day Saturday December 3 I spent at HMI. In the evening I went with the HMI group to a Christmas concert at the Ravindra Bharati auditorium; a number of HMI people were in the choir. Afterwards I met Shashi Singha, the former HMI administrator, her husband and Thelma, the former HMI hostel warden, at Shashi’s place for dinner.

Shashi's husband, Thelma and Shashi

The next day Sunday December 4 I spent at HMI. In the afternoon Anja Heidenreich, my second colleague from Germany, arrived on her flight.

The next day Monday December 5, I went into the city in the morning to meet Vasant Bawa, a retired government official, scholar and heritage activist whom I had much to do with during my years in Hyderabad. After our short meeting, I went shopping. That evening I took Ilse, Anja and Gloria, another HMI resident, to a majlis session; today being the 9^th of Muharram. The sessions start out slow with chanting of hymns, but once the preacher arrives to deliver a lengthy sermon the audience fills up, and when the narration of the story of the day’s events gets underway, the audience weeps and wails, slapping their heads.

The start of the majlis

The climax of the majlis

Visakhapatnam November 26-28

2012-01-06T22:49:00.000-08:00

My flight from Hong Kong arrived in Chennai at 2:00 am on Saturday November 26. I had a lengthy wait until my flight to Visakhapatnam left at 9:30. Curiously that 1 hour 50 minute flight arrived half an hour early, so I had to wait around for the driver to come to take me to the house of my friend and colleague Rani Sarma.

I came to Visakhapatnam to make arrangements for my two-week archaeology survey project to investigate some early Buddhist sites in the district and some Dutch and British colonial buildings in the town of Bhimunipatnam to the north of Visakhapatnam.

That day, I spoke with Rani at length about the project, and a nephew helped me with such tasks as getting an Indian SIM card for my cell phone, something that within the last two years has become a hassle for foreigners to get.

The next day, Sunday November 27, I joined a nature walk in the morning organized by INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) – Rani is the head of the Visakhapatnam chapter – at some scenic sand dunes north of the city that are threatened with destruction for a housing colony. A local geologist spoke about the dunes to the group.

The dunes

The group walking among the dunes

Rani and the geologist

A recently installed property line marker for the housing colony

After the walk, a nearby school hosted the group for breakfast. Curiously, the school uses a Canadian curriculum.

The breakfast buffet at the local Presidential School

Then Rani and I picked up Venkatesh Rao, a local amateur archaeologist, back in Visakhapatnam, and we proceeded south of the city to Peda Uppalam, a small village where the principal Buddhist site that we want to investigate is located. After walking around the site for a few hours we returned to Visakhapatnam.

The site of Peda Uppalam is located in the middle of recently flattened agricultural fields, so there is little beyond scattered sherds and brick fragments on the surface to point to any archaeological site. But along with a few boulders with cut markings, one major indication that there was once an early Buddhist site here is a statue of the Buddha that a local farmer found some decades ago. He built a small structure for the stature as a modern shrine.

Venkatesh Rao had visited the site over the years, but there has not yet been any formal description of the site or publication of the Buddha statue.

Venkatesh Rao and Rani at a boulder with some cut marks

The modern shrine for the Buddha statue

The next day, Monday November 28, Rani introduced me to various INTACH people, and we went to visit L. Suryanaranya, a professor at Andhra University who is interested in the early Buddhist presence. That night I took an overnight train to Hyderabad.

Hong Kong November 20-25

2012-01-06T22:28:00.000-08:00

My flight at 12:15 am on November 20 from San Francisco to Hong Kong crossed the International Date Line, so the flight arrived at 6:45 in the morning of Monday November 21. The flight was long and uneventful; I spent the bulk of the flight watching movies.

This flight was the first time that I had traveled across the Pacific. From San Francisco it is one time zone shorter to India than flying eastward. I had not been in East Asia before, so I took the opportunity to spend several days in Hong Kong as a stopover.

At the Hong Kong airport I got a three-day mass transit pass, so I spent the first morning riding around on the mass transit lines, before checking into my hotel around noon. I was very impressed by the modern mass transit lines. I rarely had to wait more than a few minutes for a train.

The Jordan Metro stop

My hotel was on a side street on Hong Kong island. As is usual in Hong Kong, my hotel room was miniscule; a couple more inches of space between the bed and the closet would have been nice. One day as I was walking along the street nearby, a dead pigeon dropped out of the sky with a thud onto the street a few meters away from me.

The dead pigeon in the lower left in the street near my hotel

In the afternoon and evening of my first day I walked around further. Among other things I came across a fashion model photo shoot.

A fashion model photography session

I was surprised by how prevalent the Christmas season was in Hong Kong. The first thing I heard upon arrival at the airport terminal was O Tannenbaum playing as the airport muzak. A lot of stores in the city also played Christmas muzak; the muzak at one chain supermarket was especially irritating. Even one of the gift shops at the Ngung Ping Buddhist pilgrimage site played Christmas muzak.

A Christmas display

My second day in Hong Kong, Tuesday November 22, I explored the city further and rode the subway lines a lot, going on all of the lines at least once. Among other things I went to the Che Kung Temple, rebuilt in 1993 for a deified Sung Dynasty general.

The entrance to the Che Kung Temple

My third day, Wednesday November 23, I went to the Ngung Ping Buddhist pilgrimage site outside of the city. I took a bus up the mountain side to where a huge modern statue of Buddha is located. After walking around, I took the cable car back, a distance of some 5 kilometers.

That evening I went to a big computer store shopping arcade in the Sham Shul Po neighborhood, where I bought a portable hand scanner. The streets were full of people late into the evening, with lots of street performers.

A street artist

My fourth day, Thursday November 24, I went to the Zoological and Botanical Park in the middle of a densely-built up part of Hong Kong island.

The Botanical Gardens

I then took the Peak cable car up the mountain side for the dramatic view of Hong Kong. I was surprised by how many tall buildings there are throughout Hong Kong, both office buildings in the city center as well as apartment buildings in the residential areas.

The view from the top of the cable car

That afternoon I shifted to a cheaper hotel in the Kowloon district, with an only slightly less miniscule room, and then went to the evening laser show among the skyscrapers along Victoria Harbor. The view of the harbor skyline is spectacular, but the ten-minute laser show was nothing much.

Victoria Harbor

My fifth day, Friday November 25, I went to the Hong Kong Museum of Art and the Space Museum. I was surprised by stickers there indicating how frequently handles and railings are disinfected.

A handle disinfection sticker near the Museum

I then walked around Kowloon and Hong Kong Island for the rest of the day. One bit of shopping I did was to get an iPad, without having to pay any sales tax in Hong Kong. That evening I headed for the airport for my 10:45 flight to Chennai.

San Francisco November 16-19

2012-01-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

My flight from Amman arrived in San Francisco in the afternoon of Wednesday November 16, and I got to the conference hotel in the city center in plenty of time for the opening reception of the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

The next morning, Thursday November 17, I attended the meeting of the editorial board of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology and then the Jordan Dig Directors’ meeting, before attending academic sessions for the rest of the day. On Friday, November 18, I attended further academic sessions and gave a presentation about the Madaba Archaeological Park excavations that I am writing the final report for. I also went to the reception of the Madaba Plains Project; in the distant future I may work on the publication of the Byzantine period volume of the Hesban excavations. In the afternoon I shifted to a less expensive hotel, ASOR having paid for the first two nights because I was on the editorial board of Near Eastern Archaeology.

I had not ever been in San Francisco before, so in the afternoon of Saturday November 19 I walked around and went to the Asian Art Museum, after attending conference sessions in the morning. In recent weeks I have been watching a number of video podcasts of public lectures about art and architecture in India posted by the Museum, so I was especially interested in seeing the exhibits there. That evening I had dinner in Chinatown with the other Humayma project members in attendance at the ASOR meetings, including John Oleson, the project director during my involvement in the 1990s, and his wife Martha, along with Barbara Reeves and Sherry Hardin.

After dinner I headed to the airport for my midnight flight to Hong Kong. I was very impressed by the San Francisco airport, not least because of the free wireless internet. Free wireless access is fairly common at airports in the Middle East, but not in the USA or Europe.

Amman November 4-15

2012-01-06T21:36:00.000-08:00

I arrived back in Amman at 12:30 am on Friday November 4 on my flight from Chicago that had stretched over three calendar days and I got back to ACOR at 2:00 am.

In the following days I worked on my marble chapter for the Humayma excavation report and the Dalman translation.

But the main reason for my return to Jordan was because John, Renee, Linda and Dennis had booked a cruise from Barcelona to Dubai that was to dock at Aqaba and Eilat on November 10 to 12. John had been to Jordan back in 1974 and again in 1995, but not Renee, while Linda and Dennis had never been outside of the USA before. So I returned to Jordan to show them around southern Jordan for the three days.

I rented a car and drove from Amman to Aqaba during the night of November 9-10, arriving early in the morning. Their disembarking from the cruise ship was delayed for several hours, so we did not meet up until 1:30 in the afternoon. That cut short what we could do before sunset, but I briefly showed them the possible third-century church in Aqaba, before we drove north to Humayma, where I showed them around my excavation areas from the 1990s. I noticed that there has been a lot of illicit digging recently in the lower church.

A recent robber's pit in the lower church at Humayma

We then continued on the road to Petra, stopping at the scenic view point over the Araba Valley at Rajaf. We arrived in Petra after sunset and checked into the Petra Moon Hotel.

The next day, Friday November 11, we went sightseeing in Petra. We walked through the Siq and stopped at the Petra Church, where I had worked in 1992-1993. We proceeded to the restaurant for lunch. Linda, who was having difficulty walking, then stayed behind, while we others went to the Monastery and back. Linda then rode a donkey up the back entrance to Umm Sayhun as I followed, while the others walked back via the Siq. We all eventually reached the hotel. We then went to a restaurant in the town of Wadi Musa for dinner, after which I drove them out to Beidha to the north to see the landscape by moonlight.

A rock-cut Nabataean cave at Petra being used as a parking space

The third day, Saturday November 12, I took them to the Crusader castle of Wueria and then the Siq al-Barid antiquities in Beidha in the morning. I then drove them down the new road to the Araba highway near Feinan and then as far north as Ghor al-Safi, at the south end of the Dead Sea. We stopped at Lot’s Cave, and then briefly at the robbed-out cemetery and sugar mill at Naq‘, where I had most recently worked in 2004.

Me in the apse of the church at Lot’s Cave

We then proceeded to Aqaba, arriving at 2:00 p.m. That left enough time to see the archaeology museum and Ottoman fort quickly, before I dropped them off at the border crossing to Eilat at 3:00 for them to reboard the cruise ship.

I then drove the four hours back to Amman, arriving none the worse for wear, given how many hours I had driven in the course of the day.

Back in Amman, on Monday November 14 I attended a lecture at the British Institute by Martin O’Kane on Depictions of Islam in European Biblical Art, followed by a reception. Later that evening I met Muhammad Ghosheh and we talked about his forthcoming book about the Dome of the Rock.

On the evening of Tuesday November 15 I went to the airport for my flight to San Francisco to attend the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

Dubuque October 24-November 3

2011-12-06T07:24:00.000-08:00

I next traveled to Dubuque, Iowa for a family visit; I had last been in Dubuque a year ago. I took the 6:10 am Burlington Trailways bus from Chicago that arrived in Dubuque at 11:00. On this trip I stayed with my parents in the Luther Manor retirement home. I slept on the fold-out couch in the living room, which made things a bit crowded, but it was cheaper than a hotel room. I had most meals with the other Luther Manor residents.

One task during my stay was to sort through my stuff that I have stored in my parents’ garage. I managed to reduce the amount by two large cardboard boxes, by donating some books to the public library, throwing some papers away and taking an additional suitcase full of stuff back to Jordan, but there is still a lot of stuff from my years up through grad school that I have no use for, but cannot yet just discard. I also had dental appointments and a physical exam scheduled during my stay.

I went to Luther Seminary a couple of times to do some work on my Humayma reports in the library there.

Luther in a Halloween costume

I also started to watch a series of lectures about India, and especially early Buddhism, that were posted on the internet as video podcasts by the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Rani Sarma, my colleague in India, sent me the latest draft chapter of her book about early Buddhism in India, which I edited for her.

Sunday October 30 was family reunion day. My sister Linda and her friend Dennis came up from Iowa City and they as well as my brother John and his wife Renee joined Mom and Dad and me for church at St. Peters. Then we went to the restaurant at the Julien Inn downtown. Dad had invited Roger Bentley and his wife Marilyn to join us. Roger is a recently retired teacher and coach at Dubuque Senior High School, although I have no clear memory of him from high school days. Marilyn had worked with Mom on a number of volunteer activities over the years.

Roger Bentley, Renee, John, me and Linda on the left, Marilyn Bentley, Mom, Dad and Dennis on the right.

The Schick family

On Wednesday afternoon November 2 I traveled to Chicago for a night flight back to Jordan. I decided to take the Burlington Trailways bus to Rockford and then to take the Van Gelder bus from Rockford directly to O’Hare. That worked for my 10:00 pm flight back to Jordan with stopovers in Heathrow and Frankfurt on November 3.

Chicago October 20-23

2011-12-06T00:38:00.000-08:00

I traveled to the USA on Thursday October 20 in order to attend the annual Byzantine Studies Conference, held this year in Chicago. The flight left Ben Gurion airport early in the morning and after a few hours layover in Warsaw arrived at O’Hare at 3:45 in the afternoon. Unfortunately there was an hour and a half long line to get through passport control. Thus it took me a while to get to the Art Institute in downtown Chicago, but still in time for the opening reception of the conference. During the days of the conference I stayed in Hyde Park with Yorke Rowan and Morag Kersel, two archaeologist friends of mine who work in Jordan.

I spent the next day, Friday October 21, attending the sessions of the Byzantine Studies Conference held at De Paul University. That evening I attended the conference lecture and reception at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago; I otherwise did not spend any time at the University of Chicago on this trip. On Saturday October 22, I attended the conference sessions and gave my presentation on The Archaeology of Early Christianity: the Jordanian Contribution that morning. I attended the conference business lunch and the conference reception at the De Paul University campus that evening. The conference continued through noon on Sunday October 23. The conference was especially useful for meeting people I had not seen for years; I had last attended the Byzantine Studies Conference in 1993.

After the conference ended, I stopped at the De Paul University Art Museum and then, on a beautiful fall day, I walked around to Lincoln Park, where I went to the Nature Museum and the Zoo; I was last at the zoo in 1985.

Butterflies in the Nature Museum

Meerkats at the Lincoln Park Zoo

Jerusalem October 2-19

2011-12-05T23:19:00.000-08:00

I spent the first half of October in Jerusalem. My crossing over the Allenby bridge on the morning of Sunday October 2 was routine, but long. In Jerusalem I stayed at the Albright Institute, sharing the Annual Professor’s apartment with another research fellow. The group of current Albright fellows was particularly friendly, and included three researchers from China, part of a new fellowship program for Chinese scholars. One evening we all walked around the Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods to see the preparations for Sukkot. Sy Gitin, the director of the Albright Institute, also held a reception one afternoon for the Albright community.

My reason for coming to Jerusalem was to resume work with Khader Salameh on the catalogue of Arabic inscriptions in the Islamic Museum. With some difficulty, Khader had obtained a permit for me to enter the Masjid al-Aqsa compound freely, which was a help. Khader has now retired as the director of the museum, but continues as director of the library. I spend most days with him in the library working through our draft text of the catalogue.

During these weeks I also worked on my article about the Masjid al-Aqsa compound and did some further work on the Dalman translation project.

On the afternoon of Monday October 17 I went to Bethlehem to visit Iman Saca, who is now on sabbatical from Saint Xavier College in Chicago. I met her at the Palestinian Heritage Center that her mother runs.

Iman, her mother and brother and me with some tapestries in the background at the Palestinian Heritage Center in Bethlehem

Back in Jerusalem that evening, I met Tawfiq Deadle, an archaeologist at Hebrew University, whom I had first met at the American Schools of Oriental Research annual meeting in Atlanta last November.

On October 19 I gave a public lecture at the Swedish Studies Center on Muslim Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period; in past years I have given other public lectures there. That evening I packed up for my trip to the USA.

Amman September 18-October 1

2011-10-02T12:39:00.000-07:00

During the second half of September I continued to stay at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, with my main goal being to finish the Humayma excavation reports. John Oleson, the director of the Humayma project arrived on the evening of September 17 for a two-week stay, and so I shifted to high gear on my chapters during his stay; Yvonne Gerber, the ceramicist for the project, was also around at ACOR. By the end of my stay, I had finalized the reports of my excavations of three of the Byzantine period churches at the site, but still needed some more days to finish the chapter on the marble pieces found during the excavation seasons and write some concluding remarks about early Christianity at Humayma.

John Oleson and I discussing the Humayma report.

I mostly put aside any further work on the Gustaf Dalman volumes, but continued to work some evenings on the captions for Humberto da Silveira’s Masjid al-Aqsa book. I also proofread the latest issue of Near Eastern Archaeology, and finished proofreading the Lot’s Cave excavation report, so these days were particularly productive. I can tell whether I am having an especially productive day, if I can motivate myself to work the full morning long until lunch at 2:00 without stopping to take a nap.

Muhammad Ghosheh was also around in Amman once again and he came by ACOR a few times to discuss his Dome of the Rock book that he is preparing. One evening he, Ali Bawwab, a Jordanian scholar interested in Jerusalem, and I went out for dinner.

Muhammad Ghosheh and Ali Bawwab

Among other social activities, on September 21 John Oleson gave a public lecture at ACOR about Roman architectural disasters, which was followed by a reception. The German Institute also hosted a reception on September 28. Also on Friday September I joined the Friends of Archaeology trip to sites on the south side of Amman, some of which I had not been to before. This was the first time I had been on a Friends’ trip for some years. We went to see an Iron Age site at Mabraq, another Iron Age site at Qasr Irmidan, then the Roman necropolis at the Cave of the Sleepers site, important in the Islamic tradition, a Roman temple converted into a church at Khuraybat al-Suq, a Roman mausoleum at Qasr al-Radinah and finally the Umayyad palace at Mshatta.

Owen Chesnut and Christoph Eger, two scholars at ACOR these days, at one of the Roman rock-cut tombs at the Cave of the Sleepers site.

The Friends of Archaeology group at Mshatta, in front of the recently reconstructed arches.

Amman August 17-September 17

2011-10-02T10:39:00.000-07:00

I arrived back in Amman on August 17 and spent the following weeks staying once again at the American Center of Oriental Research. I stayed put, without going on any trips.

Me in the ACOR library

I worked on a number of different projects. I spent a few days working on the Jerusalem sites and monuments project. My Palestinian colleague, Muhammad Ghosheh, was in Jordan and he came by ACOR a few times. I got to see his most recent publication – five volumes of historical photographs of Jerusalem. He is now working on a spectacular book about the Dome of the Rock. But I soon put the Jerusalem project mostly aside until I will return to Bamberg in the summer of 2012.

I also resumed work on the Gustaf Dalman translation project. I continued to work through the draft translation that Nadia Sukhtian had prepared of volume 1, part 2 of his series of volumes about Palestinian customs.

I also did some further planning for my project to survey some early Buddhist sites in India in December, involving emails and a Skype call with my colleague Rani Sarma in Visakhapatnam. The pieces have now fallen into place for that project.

I also got started on a new project – a book about the Masjid al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem. Humberto da Silveira, a Brazilian photographer who lives in Riyadh, contacted me concerning a picture book about the Masjid al-Aqsa that he has been working on. He wants me to write a chapter to accompany his couple hundred photographs and write the captions. He will pay me so well that I could not refuse.

Dino Politis, the director of the excavation at Deir ‘Ayn ‘Abata (Lot’s Cave), in which I had participated in the 1990s, was also around for a few days. I did some further proofreading of his final excavation report.

One afternoon I met the photographer Bill Lyons, who is taking the photographs for the upcoming Metropolitan Museum exhibit on Byzantine and early Islamic art, for which I have written some of the catalogue entries. I joined him during his session photographing a metal vessel from the Umayyad period that I have written the entry for. I went with Dino to meet him at the Spanish archaeological mission in Amman, headed by Ignacio Arce.

Bill taking his photographs

Dino showing the Lot’s Cave volume to Ignacio

But the main objective of my being back at ACOR this time around was to work on the final report of my excavations at the site of Humayma from the 1990s. The reports have been mostly done for a while, so this stay is to be the final push to get them completely done. For some days I had a good work rhythm. I would work on the Humayma reports in the morning until lunch at 2:00, then after a nap work on the Dalman translation for a couple of hours in the late afternoon, and then work on the Masjid al-Aqsa chapter in the late evening until around midnight.

One unusual event of the month was when an absentee ballot unexpectedly arrived in the mail for the upcoming school board elections in Dubuque, Iowa. So I spent a few hours browsing the internet, trying to get some information about who to vote for. Some of the candidates had a couple minute long video posted on the Dubuque Telegraph Herald newspaper website, and if articulateness is a virtue for members of a school board, several candidates were failures.

Bamberg August 1-16

2011-10-02T09:14:00.000-07:00

In the first half of August I continued to live in Bamberg. I continued to work mostly on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project, concentrating on accounts of western pilgrims and travelers to the city and their descriptions of the Masjid al-Aqsa compound.

Teaching at the university ended at the end of July, but exam period lasted for the following two weeks. Beginning about halfway through the semester, the university libraries have been heavily used during the day time to the point that virtually all the available desks have been in use, so I shifted my schedule to work in the libraries mostly in the evenings up to the extended closing hour of midnight.

The theology library filled to capacity. That’s my computer on the desk at the far right end of the row.

One trip I made out of the city was on August 2, when I went to Nürnberg to meet Ute Verstegen, a professor of Christian archaeology at the University of Erlangen/Nürnberg, and Sebastian, a student of hers, for lunch. I had most recently met Ute at the conference last month in Heidelberg.

Ute, Sebastian and me in Nürnberg

That day was the first really sunny day in quite some time. July had been remarkably cold, cloudy and rainy, which continued in August as well. With daily highs mostly in the 60s or at best low 70s, I had to wear a jacket around half of the days.

After meeting Ute and Sebastian, the day was too sunny to return directly to Bamberg, so I stopped off in Erlangen, half way to Bamberg, to go to the park around the university and the botanical gardens.

A flower bed in the Erlangen park

The Botanical Gardens in Erlangen

Bamberg has many attractive features, among them the fresh produce market along the main pedestrian street in the center of the old city.

Some of the fresh produce vendors in Bamberg

Bamberg also has an active city-wide recycling program. Every two weeks is yellow sack day for plastic and metal, which need to be put in yellow sacks for collection. Blue bins are for paper.

Yellow sack day in Bamberg. My apartment is the one with the green shutters in the center of the photograph.

My current stay in Germany came to an end, when on the morning of Tuesday August 16 I took a train to Frankfurt for a flight back to Amman, Jordan. The least expensive ticket was with Baltic Air, which entailed a first leg to Riga and then a quick transfer to the flight on to Amman. That was a few hours longer than a direct flight, but significantly cheaper.

Bamberg July 1-31

2011-08-08T14:04:00.000-07:00

In July I continued to live in Bamberg. I continued to work on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project, concentrating this month on accounts of western pilgrims and travelers to the city. I also continued to teach my history and archaeology of Jerusalem seminar until the end of the summer semester at the end of July. On July 19 I gave a public lecture at the university on Muslim Pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Ottoman Period.

On July 28, the Oriental Studies Faculty held their end-of-semester party. Some belly dancers performed.

The belly-dancers

Among other academic activities, on Friday July 1 I attended the annual conference of the Ernst Herzfeld Society for Islamic Art, held this year in Berlin. This year I decided to attend just the first day of the two-day conference as a day trip from Bamberg: it is about a 4 ½ hour train ride each way.

Also from July 10 to 12 I attended a conference at the University of Heidelberg on the theme of relations between Constantinople and Jerusalem in the Byzantine Period. I gave a presentation about the Iconoclastic Period in the 8^th and 9^th centuries. The conference was held at the Internationales Wissenschaftsforum building, a lovely facility, where there are rooms for the participants to stay.

The view from my room with the Heidelberg castle in the background

I also spent some time in July making arrangements for a small survey project in India for December. I exchanged numerous emails with my Indian colleague Rani Sarma in Visakhapatnam, who is writing a book about early Buddhism along the east coast of central India, about ideas for a survey of some little documented early Buddhist sites in the Visakhapatnam district. It took a while, but the pieces have fallen into place for that project.

In Bamberg there are always a lot of cultural activities going on, especially during the summer. The event in July that attracted the greatest number of visitors was a week-end of performances by street magicians on July 16-17. I did not enjoy it much because the crowds were so large that it was difficult to actually see the performers.

A crowd watching a street magician

Also often on the main streets there are people who dress up in outlandish costumes and then stand motionless for hours, expecting to get donations for their performances.

A King Tut performer

Among other activities, on Saturday July 9 I went on the Volkshochschule nature hike led by naturalist Hermann Bösche to the South Thüringen National Park. Among other places, we stopped at the Itz spring, said to have curative properties.

The hikers

Hermann Bösche with an old boundary marker

Me at the Itz spring

I rarely go to movies, but on Sunday July 17 I went to see Willkommen in Cedar Rapids, a German-dubbed version of the Hollywood movie that had been released in the USA earlier in the year. It turns out that the movie was filmed in Ann Arbor, Michigan, rather than Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

In Bamberg, my apartment in the city center is only a few minutes’ walk away from a large wooded park and nature preserve known as the Hain.

The botanical gardens in the Hain

Within the park are a number of pavilions and monuments.

A theatrical performance at one of the park monuments

In May I started jogging in the park, the first sustained jogging I have done in over twenty years. A circuit through the park is about three miles long; I was in such bad shape that it took a while before I could run more than a portion of the full distance. I went jogging about every other day until in early July my left ankle began telling me to not run so much.

One of the paths I jog along in the park

Bamberg June 1-30

2011-07-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

For my currrent three-month stay in Bamberg I have rented an apartment in the city center, a five minute walk away from the university campus. My apartment is on the ground floor of a historic building in a heritage preservation zone, so the landlord cannot significantly alter the building fabric, such as the too-low door lintel in one room, built for people of smaller stature than today.

My apartment

What the landowners think of the restrictions that heritage preservation places on them can be seen on an inscription placed on a neighboring building. It reads: “God protect me from dust and dirt, from fire, war and monument protection”.

The inscription

On the building across the street is a plaque with an elephant sculpture, one of a number of such sculptures in the city.

The elephant sculpture

During the summer semester at the University of Bamberg I am teaching a seminar one-day a week on the history and archaeology of Jerusalem from the Roman through Ottoman periods. One student is taking the course for credit, while three others audit.

But the main reason for my being in Bamberg is to continue work on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project that I have been involved in for some years now. I am focusing my attention on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, with the hope of getting a volume done about that portion of the city by around the end of the year. I have been taking advantage of the extensive rare book holdings of the Bamberg State library to look at some old books about Jerusalem that I would not find easily anywhere else. I also needed to spend some time finishing up my catalogue entries for the Metropolitan Museum upcoming exhibition about Byzantine art and responding to the queries of the copy editor.

In June I mostly stayed put in Bamberg, but on Saturday June 13 I visited two friends who were students of mine in Hyderabad. Armin is the pastor in the small village of Rohr in southern Thüringen, a two-hour train ride from Bamberg. Terini, from the state of Mizoram in India, has been living there since their marriage in October 2008. Viktor is their six-month old son.

Terini, Armin and Viktor

At the end of my visit, they dropped me off at the English Gardens in the nearby city of Meiningen, where I attended an open-air performance of Wagner’s opera Rienzi; the weather was ideal. I had not heard Rienzi before. On May 13 I had attended the live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Wagner’s opera Die Walküre, shown at a movie theater in Bamberg.

The performance of Wagner’s Rienzi

But the big event of the month in heavily Catholic Bamberg was Fronleichnam, Corpus Christi Day, on Thursday, June 23, marked by a big procession. (I was corrected when I once called it an ‘Umzug’ ‘parade’, rather than a ‘Prozession’. In the procession a number of statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary are carried from the cathedral through the streets of the old city and back. The procession takes a couple of hours and because it happens during a warm time of year, it is the largest popular church event of the year in Bamberg, although Protestants do not take part.

A statue in the procession

Another statue in the procession

I find it amusing to watch the tables being carried behind the statues to rest them on at stopping points.

A statue with a table being carried behind

Bamberg May 1-31

2011-07-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

After my stay in Krakow, I took an overnight train to Vienna and then an intercity express train on to Bamberg, arriving in the early afternoon of Sunday May 1. I returned to Bamberg for the summer semester at the University of Bamberg until mid-August to continue work on the sites and monuments of Jerusalem project. That project has brought me to Bamberg for repeated earlier stays.

Bamberg is a city of some 70,000 population with a well preserved old city that is on the UNESCO list of world heritage sites and pulls way above its weight in terms of culture and cultural events. The big event in May was the bi-annual World Heritage Run on Sunday May 8, with over ten thousand participants with separate runs over varying distances through the historic old city for children up to a half-marathon for adults.

The race for the youngest children

The race for older elementary school children

The adult runners getting refreshed

(The theology library where I spend a lot of my time is in the background)

The runners crossing a bridge in the old city

There are also numerous musical events all the time, such as one evening of performances by church choirs, as well as frequent street musicians.

A church choir performance

Ann outdoor band performance

There are also frequent events for various charitable causes, such as a ‘People in Need’ fundraising event on May 22, at which some nursery school children performed.

The performance of the nursery school children

There are also around one or two lectures each week at the University that I attend in lecture series about medieval studies, archaeology and oriental studies. I also joined again the Irish Set-Dancing group on Wednesday evenings; I participate whenever I am in Bamberg.

Sunday May 15 was museum day and I went to the Natural History museum on the university campus; the renovation of the main historic exhibit hall had been recently completed.

The Natural History Museum

In April I had done a lot of travel, so in May I mostly stayed in Bamberg. One trip I did make was a day-trip on Saturday May 28 sponsored by the Volkshochschule (community college) to a historic monastery at Plankstetten, about an hour’s travel away. As part of the tour, we rode a tow-boat along a short stretch of a 19th-century canal. That canal has been replaced by the modern Main-Donau canal, which runs through the city of Bamberg.

The tow boat

The modern canal in Bamberg

At the Plankstetten monastery, we got a tour of the main church and underground burial crypt painted with Byzantine-style icons by a wise-cracking 90 year old monk.

The wise-cracking monk

Auschwitz April 27

2011-07-04T03:40:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday April 27, I went on a day-trip guided bus tour to Auschwitz. It is a bit over an hour’s travel from Krakow. We spent a somewhat rushed couple of hours at the central Auschwitz concentration camp, which was not enough to see everything. During the peak months, the site is overrun with tourists, so tours have to be tightly managed to keep everyone moving.

The entrance to the inner compound with the Arbeit Macht Frei sign

The electrified fence around the inner compound

We then went to the nearby Birkenau extermination camp for another hour. The Birkenau camp is much larger in size, so the tourist groups there can be spread out more. Also it seems that many tour groups do not come to Birkenau, but just go to the central Auschwitz site, which is a pity. I found the Birkenau site more impressive.

A barracks building at Birkenau

A building with latrines at Birkenau

A railroad car at the unloading siding at Birkenau

One of the gas chambers at Birkenau

Krakow April 25-30

2011-07-04T02:59:00.000-07:00

On Monday April 25 I ended my stay in Warsaw and took a train to Krakow, where I spent six days sightseeing. I stayed in a hotel near the train station in the city center. My first walking around was cut short by a torrential downpour, but most other days were sunny and warm. My days in Krakow were the run-up to the beatification of John Paul II on Sunday May 1; he was archbishop of Krakow before becoming pope.

The displays in the central square for the beatification of John Paul II

On my second day Tuesday April 26 I went to the Oskar Schindler factory, of Schindler's List fame, which has been turned into an excellent museum about Krakow during the Second World War.

The Oskar Schindler factory

On my way back, I bumped into Elzbieta Dubis, an archaeological colleague, with whom I had last crossed paths some years ago in Jordan. I vaguely knew she was from Poland, but I had made no effort to track her down. She recognized me immediately as I walked by; I would not have recognized her. It turns out she is a native of Krakow and has been working as an archaeologist in the city for years.

Along the way, I noticed lots of people have put locks on one of the bridges as mementos

The locks on the bridge

On my third day, Wednesday April 27, I went on a day-trip to Auschwitz. Back in Krakow that evening, I met Elzbieta for dinner, after which we walked around the Jewish quarter.

On my fourth day, Thursday April 28, I went to the botanical gardens.

The botanical gardens

A glamour wedding shoot at the botanical gardens

That evening I went to the Krakow Opera House for a modern-choreographed ballet performance of Cinderella, set to music by Rossini. The delightfully humorous performance was targeted at children, who made up over half of the audience.

On my fifth day, Friday April 29, I went to the historic Wawel Castle.

The archaeological remains in the Wawel Castle courtyard

I toured the ‘Lost Wawel’ archaeological museum, which had an interesting way of placing the display cases above the archaeological remains.

The displays in the Lost Wawel museum

Afterwards I walked around the Jewish ghetto area.

A surviving portion of the ghetto wall

That evening I had dinner with Elzbieta again.

On my sixth day, Saturday April 30, Elzbieta showed me around the Jagiellonian University campus. She has conducted extensive excavations in the area.

Elzbieta Dubis showing on a scale model of the old city of Krakow where she has excavated

I also took a tour of the historic Collegium Maius building at Jagiellonian University, led by a wise-cracking tour guide, and that afternoon I took a tour bus to the Wieliczka salt mines on the outskirts of the city. Back in Krakow that evening, I hung out until my train left at 10:00 pm to take me on to Bamberg. During my days in Krakow, I also put in a few hours working on my catalogue entries for the Metropolitan Museum exhibition.

Warsaw April 20-24

2011-07-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

After my two public lectures, I stayed on in Warsaw for a few more days to do some site-seeing, since this was my first trip to Poland. On Wednesday, April 20 I went to the Wilanowski (Villa Nova) Palace to the south of the city in the morning.

The Wilanowski Palace

In the afternoon I walked around the University area in the north and rode around on public transportation to some areas outside the city center. I was very impressed by the public transportation in Warsaw, with its buses, trams and subway. I almost never had to wait more than ten minutes for a bus.

The next day Thursday April 21, I walked around the Lazienkowski Park in the city center with its various palaces and pavilions. The trees were in full bloom, making the extensive public parks of the city especially attractive.

A tree in the Lazienkowski Park

The Egyptian Pavilion in the Lazienkowski Park

A statue of Chopin in the Lazienkowski Park

In the evening I went to the National Opera for a performance of Puccini’s Turandot. At first I was hesitant to attend, since I had just seen Turandot in Riga a few days earlier, but the staging of this performance could not have been more different. The performance was given a sparse modernist touch that was so bizarre as to be off-putting. For example, when Chalaf strikes the gong at the end of Act I, there was no gong on the empty stage for him to strike, and Turandot’s posing of her three riddles was staged as a private interview with no witnesses! I greatly preferred the performance in Riga with its normal staging.

The next day, Friday April 22, was Good Friday, so many public places were closed for the Easter weekend. I made travel arrangements in the morning and walked around the city center some more, especially the area to the north of the University and royal castle and the area of the Jewish ghetto. The course of the ghetto wall from the Second World War is marked by inscribed bricks in a few stretches, although it is difficult to follow the complete circuit of the wall.

The course of the ghetto wall

Also monuments and plaques commemorating the Warsaw Uprising are all over the place in the city center.

A plaque commemorating the Warsaw Uprising

On Saturday April 23, I went to the Botanical Gardens in the morning, although here it was too early in the spring for the gardens to be in their prime. During the day, I repeatedly noticed people carrying baskets of food or other items to be blessed at church services, a special Polish Easter custom.

Sunday April 24 was Easter, but I did not do anything special beyond walking around some more. Most everywhere was closed for the Easter weekend, so on Saturday and Sunday I mostly stayed in my hotel room and got started on the revisions to Gustaf Dalman’s second volume about Palestinian customs.

The weather during my stay in Warsaw was remarkably warm and sunny with clear blue skies, until the last couple of days. In general I had a delightful time. I had had ideas of Poland being significantly less economically well-off than western Europe, but at least in central Warsaw that was not in evidence.

Warsaw April 16-19

2011-07-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

After my three day stay in Riga, in the morning of Saturday April 16 I went to the airport for my 11:30 flight to Warsaw, which arrived at 12:15. Tomasz Walisewski and his wife Ewa met me. Tomasz had arranged for me to come to give some lectures about archaeology at the University of Warsaw. They had been at ACOR in Amman in the fall of 2010.

That first afternoon, they drove me around the city, before dropping me off at a university-run hotel. The hotel was fine, except the building did not have internet available. Finding an internet place was to prove a challenge during my stay in Warsaw. That evening I walked around the city center.

The next day Sunday April 17 I walked around some more. I went to a sequence of shopping malls with the mission of finding a new pair of shoes. The glitzy Zlote Tarasy mall near the train station and the Arkadia mall to the north, and the others, were indistinguishable from shopping malls anywhere else in the world.

On Monday April 18 Tomasz took me to the historic royal castle where Anna, an archaeology student gave us a great tour. Tomasz and I then walked around, before going to the university.

The area around the royal palace and the university is especially attractive. It is an extended pedestrian area flanked by lovely buildings, so well rebuilt since the destruction of the Second World War that it is now a UNESCO world heritage site.

The Royal Castle

At the University I gave the first of my two public lectures at the Institute of Archaeology about The Christians in Palestine after the Muslim Conquest. Afterwards I had dinner with the head of the Near Eastern Archaeology program at the Institute, Jolanta Mlynarczyk, who has been working at the Byzantine site of Susita in Israel, Tomasz and other guests.

In Poland I several times had the drink known as Kvas, made from bread, which I had first come across in Latvia. The menu of the restaurant we went to translated Kvas as ‘bread acid’.

The restaurant menu offering Bread Acid

The next day, Tuesday April 19, I went to the university, where a university archaeology student showed me around the campus.

The University of Warsaw campus

Then Anna, the student from yesterday, took me to the National Museum, where Jolanta’s husband, who works in the Museum, showed me around the galleries devoted to the Polish excavations of the medieval Christian site of Faras in Sudan. Then I gave my second public lecture at the National Museum about The Archaeology of Early Christianity, The Jordanian Contribution. As a friendly gesture, the people in attendance signed a copy of my lecture announcement. I find Polish handwriting difficult to read, so I am unable to decipher many of the names.

The names of the people who attended my public lecture

Riga April 13-15

2011-07-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

I took a 1:30 am flight from Amman to Riga, Latvia. It turns out that Air Baltic recently started flights twice a week between Riga and Amman, at a price substantially lower than any other flights to Europe. I was on my way to Warsaw, and having never been in the Baltic region before, I decided to spend three days in Riga, before my onward flight.

The flight was less than half full, so I was able to get some sleep stretched over three seats, before the flight arrived in Riga at 6:00 am.

I took a cheap minivan bus to the city center, a travel option that I have not seen mentioned on any Riga tourism website; curiously I was the only man among the several dozens of women passengers who got on and off the bus on their way to their early morning work.

I checked into a nice hotel in the center of the historic district and then walked around the city center. I went to an interesting Central Market for produce housed in a row of huge halls, originally built as hangers for zeppelins.

One of the market halls

Also in the city center there is an amusement park sacrilegiously close to the main Orthodox cathedral of the city.

The amusement park and cathedral

That evening I went to the Latvian National Opera for a performance of Lady of the Camellias, a new ballet by Tiit Harm, set to music by Franz Liszt.

The next day, April 14, I did further sight-seeing in Riga and went to the rather small National Museum of Art. The city center has a historic core with lovely buildings and there are a few blocks of Art Nouveau style buildings to the north.

Some Art Nouveau buildings

One building that served as the former US embassy has a plaque commemorating future president John Kennedy’s stay there on a student summer trip in 1939.

The former US embassy with the JFK plaque to the center right

But outside of the city center the architecture turns run-down pretty fast. One particularly grim neighborhood is the former Jewish part of town, whose population was killed off quickly at the start of the Second World War.

Riga’s holocaust memorial

That second evening I attended a performance at the Latvian National Opera of the ballet A Mid Summer Nights Dream by Felix Mendelssohn.

The next day April 15 I spent part of the day doing more sight-seeing in Riga, but while there were still plenty of other things to see, I was not in the mood for such museums as the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia (World War Two and the Soviet Period). I instead spent the bulk of the day doing some final revisions to Gustav Dalman’s Palestinian Customs volume. It was mostly sunny during my stay, but spring was just starting, and overnight lows were still dropping to around freezing.

One puzzle in the city was the obscure markers for the men’s and women’s public restrooms.

The markers for the men’s and women’s restrooms

That evening I attended a performance at the Latvian National Opera of the opera Turandot by Puccini. So I got my fill of high culture, with three consecutive evening performances of top notch quality.

The Latvian National Opera building

Amman and Aqaba March 31-April 12

2011-06-27T14:32:00.000-07:00

On the afternoon of March 31, I moved out of ACOR because the building was going to fill up beyond capacity the next day with a large group of graduate students from Belgium for a couple-week study program. I went to stay with Isabelle Rubin, an old friend and fellow participant in a number of excavation projects over the years, including my short season at Humayma in the summer of 2009.

Most days I went to ACOR to work in the library. I wound up work on the Madaba Archaeological Park, putting the records back in storage until I return in the fall. One day I met Ghazi Bisheh, the excavator of the Madaba Archaeological Park in 1992-1993, to look at his slides of the excavation, which he only recently mentioned that he had.

I also helped proofread Dino Politis’s report of his Deir ‘Ayn ‘Abata (Lot’s Cave) excavation report; Isabelle has been doing the page layout. I also finished my revisions of Gustaf Dalman’s first volume of Palestinian Customs. I also mostly finished up my entries for the Metropolitan Museum exhibit. Unfortunately, my permission to look at some of the objects did not come through, so that loose end will have to wait until I return in August.

I also did some work on my Humayma reports. I needed to check a few details for some pieces of marble from the excavations in storage in the Department of Antiquities office in Aqaba, so on April 9 I took an evening bus to Aqaba, arriving in a most unusual heavy rainstorm. The next day, April 10, I spent a couple of hours working in the museum in Aqaba. Unfortunately the person in charge of the storerooms was on vacation that week, so I could not see all of the marble pieces I needed to check, but my tight schedule did not permit me to go to Aqaba any other time. Finishing up that task will also have to wait until I return to Jordan in August.

One of the marble pieces from my excavations at Humayma

That afternoon I walked around and saw the archaeological sites in Aqaba once again, including the possible earliest known church building. The excavator, Tom Parker, has asked me to write a chapter about the identification of the building as a church.

The possible earliest known church in Aqaba

The next morning, April 11, I took a bus to Ghor al-Safi, to met Dino Politis at the Lot’s Cave museum, which he has been spending years getting set up. The museum is close to opening; it will be officially called the Museum at the Lowest Place on Earth. Also at the museum that day was Yiannis Meimaris, who was looking at some of the Greek tombstone inscriptions from Dino’s excavations that he has been publishing.

Yiannis Meimaris in the Lot’s Cave museum storeroom

That afternoon I returned to Amman and stayed once again at Isabelle’s place.

The next day, April 12, was a major event at the new National Museum in Amman, sponsored by the Department of Antiquities to formally launch their Mega Jordan data base of archaeological sites. The database is better than anything else anywhere in the world, so Jordan is a world-leader in this field.

That day was the end of my current stay in Jordan, and that evening I went to the airport for my flight. I had overstayed my three-month tourist visa by a couple of weeks, but paying the fine at the airport was an easy solution to the problem.

Amman March 8-March 30

2011-06-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

After finishing the intensive work on the plan of the Madaba Archaeological Park in the first part of March, I continued at ACOR for the rest of the month. I did some further work on the Madaba Archaeological Park reports and worked with two American volunteers who had been helping out with sorting through the Madaba pottery for a few hours each week since mid-February. I also did some work on my Humayma excavation reports and continued to revise Nadia Sukhtian’s translation of Gustaf Dalman’s first volume about Palestinian customs. I also proofread a forthcoming issue of the Jordan Journal for History and Archaeology.

But my main work for the second half of March was to write a number of entries for an upcoming exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York on Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7th-9th Centuries). I was assigned to write two essays about mosaics and inscribed objects along with entries for a number of mosaic inscriptions, lamps and other objects; I had a total of 4000 words to write. Most of the objects that I was assigned come from Jordan, so I was already familiar with them. Several of the objects are on display in the archaeological museum in the Amman Citadel, so one day I went to look at them there. As it turned out, there was more involved with some of the objects than I had thought and so I needed to see the objects outside of their museum display cases. But to do that I needed to apply for formal permission from the director of the Department of Antiquities, which unfortunately was delayed.

The inadequate view of one of the pots I am writing an entry for on display in the Amman Citadel Museum

Among social events, on March 16 I attended a public lecture at ACOR by Dino Politis on his excavations in Ghor al-Safi, in which I have participated over the years. His lecture was followed by a reception at the British Institute. Also attending was Isabelle Rubin, another long-term participant in Dino’s excavation projects.

Isabelle Rubin, Dino Politis and me at the British Institute reception

On March 26 I attended an event in Jerash sponsored by the Department of Antiquities about new techniques in 3D mapping in which some Italians presented their work to 3D map the south theater in Jerash. After a lunch we saw their equipment in operation in the south theater. I took advantage of the opportunity to look at one of the lamps I am writing an entry for that is in the Jerash archaeology museum.

The 3D surveying gizmo in the Jerash south theater

Amman February 16-March 7

2011-03-11T13:21:00.000-08:00

During the second half of February and into early March, I worked single-mindedly with Qutaiba Dasouqi, a surveyor from the Department of Antiquities, to produce an overall plan of the western part of the Madaba Archaeological Park. During the original excavations in 1992 and 1993 carefully stone by stone plans had been produced of the area that was excavated, but no plan was produced that showed either the further excavation areas of the Department of Antiquities in 1995 and 1996 or of the full extent of the park.

We spent six days at the site in Madaba. Qutaiba worked with an electronic distance measurer / total station to take accurate measurements of the park, with the assistance of Musa, a workman from the Madaba office of the Department of Antiquities.

Qutaiba surveying the site

While Qutaiba was surveying the site, I took lots of photographs of the site and produced an inventory of the architectural pieces scattered around the site.

A stone with two crosses

One day Qutaiba used a boom to take aerial shots of the site. He had a camera that was set to take a shot every few seconds as he and Musa moved the boom around the site. It was very interesting to see how Qutaiba managed that work.

Qutaiba and Musa holding the boom

The view from the top of the boom

After we returned to ACOR each day, Qutaiba stayed on late into the evening processing each day’s data, and after we were done with our days at the site, I continued to work on the plan with Qutaiba in the ACOR library for a further two weeks, including weekends. Amazingly Qutaiba even stayed up all night twice to work on the plan. The twenty consecutive days of full time work that we spent on the plan marks the most intensive period of non-stop work on a single project since one especially productive phase of my PhD dissertation writing back in 1987.

Qutaiba and I in the ACOR library working on the plan

The plan

Amman January 22-February 15

2011-03-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

Back in Jordan, I spent the following weeks at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, working on my various research projects. In particular I worked on finalizing my reports for my excavations at the site of Humayma and continued to revise Nadia Sukhtian’s draft English translation of Gustaf Dalman’s first volume about Palestinian customs. I also worked on a draft of a major grant application that would bring me to the University of Mainz in Germany in 2012-2014 to study early Christianity in Jordan. For the month of February I switched over to doing further work on the final report of the Madaba Archaeological Park that I had worked on for six months in 2010.

Among the special events during the month was a public lecture at ACOR on February 1 by Balazs Major, a research fellow at ACOR from Hungary who spoke about his excavations at the Crusader fortress of Marqab in Syria. During the reception that followed, I joined in a long discussion about the results of Donald Whitcomb’s recently-concluded excavations in at Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho; he and the other American staff members had arrived at ACOR earlier in the day.

The group of Islamic period archaeologists discussing the Khirbat al-Mafjar excavations. Back row: Donald Whitcomb and his son John. Front row from left: Zakariya Ben Badhann, Michael Jennings, Ignacio Arce and myself.

On Monday February 7 I joined a group from ACOR for a day trip to visit the ongoing Australian excavations at the site of Pella in the north Jordan Valley. The tour of the site was cut short by a downpour, but there was plenty of time for conversation over lunch afterwards.

The tour of Pella just before the downpour.

Tiberias January 20-21

2011-02-06T00:49:00.000-08:00

The last stage of my trip was a visit to Tiberias to see the excavations there. I left the hotel in Jerusalem early in the morning of Thursday January 20 and went to the West Jerusalem bus station for the 6:30 am bus to Tiberias, which arrived at 9:00. Katia Cytryn-Silverman, a professor of archaeology at Hebrew University, met me and took me to see her excavations at the early Islamic site in the south part of Tiberias with the impressive remains of the Friday mosque. Later in the day Nimrod Luz, a professor of cultural geography at Western Galilee College, joined us.

Katia

Katia and Nimrod Luz

In the afternoon Katia dropped me off at the church at Mount Berenice, which overlooks Tiberias.

The church at Mount Berenice and the view of Tiberias

Luckily, a couple of tourists there at the time with a car offered me a lift back to Tiberias, saving me a very long walk. I checked into a hotel on the north side of the city and that evening I walked around a bit.

The following morning, Friday January 21 I returned to Jordan. I went to the bus station for a 10:00 bus to Beth Shean, which arrived at 10:45. Rather than pay for a taxi, I then walked to the Jordan River crossing, which took an hour and fifteen minutes; I had walked that distance a couple of times previously in the late 1990s. The border crossing was routine. On the Jordanian side the only transportation option is a taxi, so I took a taxi to the bus station in Irbid and from there a bus to Amman. I arrived at ACOR in the mid-afternoon, after about five hours of total travel time.

Jerusalem January 14-19

2011-02-05T23:58:00.001-08:00

I arrived in Jerusalem at 2:30 on Friday January 14 and checked into the Capitol Hotel on Salah al-Din Street, just down the street from the Albright Institute; there was no room available at the Albright. I went over to the Albright for the 4:00 tea, where I chatted with some of the current resident fellows. I also met Donald Whitcomb and later that evening I went with Donald, his son John, and Michael Jennings, a graduate student at the University of Chicago to a nearby restaurant. We talked about their on-going excavations at the early Islamic palace at Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho.

The next day, Saturday January 15, I took it easier. First thing I got a SIM card for Israel and made calls to arrange appointments for the next days. In the afternoon I met Benjamin Dolinka, a former Albright fellow, who has just started working for the Israeli Antiquities Authority. I also met Muhammad Ghosheh, my Palestinian colleague.

The next day, Sunday January 16 I went to the church service at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City. The current pastor is Fred Strikert, formerly at Wartburg College in Waverly. There was an overflow crowd of mostly Americans at the service, including the brother of James Sauer, a former director of ACOR.

Fred Strikert, James Sauer’s brother and me

In the afternoon I went to see Fahmi al-Ansari, who still operates his library in the basement of a building down the street from the Albright. His hopes to move to a better location remain unrealized. I thumbed through recent publications about Jerusalem there. That evening I met Muhammad Ghosheh at the Ambassador Hotel for dinner and discussed our Jerusalem projects. He told me about a recently published album of historic photographs of Jerusalem published in Instabul by an Islamic research foundation (IRCICA) that they sell for the grotesque rip-off price of 1200 $US! Muhammad had a copy that he lent me to take a look at.

The next day, Monday January 17, I went to the Islamic Museum on the al-Aqsa Mosque compound to meet Khader Salameh, the museum director. We spoke about our Arabic inscriptions project. In the afternoon I went to the Albright for 4:00 tea and made arrangements to join tomorrow’s Albright field trip.

On Tuesday January 18 I joined the Albright fellows on their trip to Qumran and then Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho. I do not think that I had been to Qumran since 1971. This trip was the most convenient way for me to get to Khirbat al-Mafjar to see the impressive excavation results. Unfortunately, none of the Palestinian participants were at the site that day. It was the same day that the Russian president Medvedev came to Jericho. There were a few banners and flags along the streets, but otherwise his visit did not impinge on ours.

Steven Pfann telling the Albright group about Qumran

Donald Whitcomb showing the Albright group the excavations at Khirbat al-Mafjar

On Wednesday morning January 19 I attended a conference about the Islamization of Palestine held at the Yad Izhak Ben Zvi Institute in West Jerusalem. Unfortunately all of the presentations were in Hebrew so I got very little out of it, although it was a good opportunity to meet people, including ‘Umar ‘Abd Rabbu, one of my former students who gave a presentation about Fatimid Jerusalem. I left at the noon break and walked around the Mamilla cemetery to see what was going on with the construction of the Museum of Tolerance that has destroyed part of the cemetery.

The Mamilla Cemetery with the perimeter fence of the Museum of Tolerance in the right background

I then walked up to the Mount of Olives to look around, and on my way back to the hotel I stopped at the Sahirah Muslim cemetery near Herod’s Gate in order to photograph the grave of ‘Abd Allah Mukhlis, a Palestinian historian of Islamic Jerusalem who died in 1948.

The grave of ‘Abd Allah Mukhlis in the Sahirah cemetery.

Negev January 12-14

2011-02-05T23:00:00.000-08:00

I left on a nine-day trip to Israel on Wednesday January 12. I got to the Tabarbour bus station just before a bus to the Allenby Bridge left at 7:30. The bus cost one dinar, much less than the shared taxi that I would normally take. There was a long wait on the Jordanian side until the shuttle bus across the bridge came and then another long wait on the Israeli side, followed by a long line for passport control and a long wait for the minibus to Jerusalem to fill up. So the trip took a total of five hours, longer than the average of around four hours.

Upon arrival at Damascus Gate in Jerusalem at 12:00, I went to the West Jerusalem central bus station to catch the 2:30 bus to Beer Sheva, which arrived at 4:00. Tali Gini-Erickson met me there. She had invited me to spend a couple of days with her and visit archaeological sites in the Negev. She is the archaeology inspector for the southern Negev region for the Israeli Antiquities Authority with a special interest in the Nabatean period and in recent years she has been coming to Jordan to work on excavation projects in Petra. Tali took me to her home in a moshav next to the Nessana border crossing with Egypt.

The next day Thursday January 13, Tali and I got an early start at 7:30 for a full day of visiting archaeological sites, mostly Nabatean through early Islamic. We first went to Mitzpe Shivta and then Shivta with its remarkably well preserved churches.

Tali in the north church at Shivta

We then traveled north, stopping briefly at the Qariot site and then Horvat Enim. We then went to Susiyah where we saw the major synagogue and its mosaics currently under restoration.

Doret Shalom restoring the mosaics at Susiyah

We then returned south and visited Mampsis. I have spent very little time in the Negev over the years, and I had not been to any of those sites before.

The next day Friday January 14 Tali and I visited more archaeological sites. We started off at Nessana. I had been there before in 1971 at the start of a family trip to Sinai with the Al Glock family.

Our VW camping buses at Nessana in 1971

The same view today

It was Friday, a weekend day, so we were able to go into the extensive Israeli military training grounds to visit the major archaeological sites of Rehovot and Saadon and the remarkably poorly visible site of Elusa.

The excavated church at Rehovot

We also went to Sde Boker.

The early open-air mosque at Sde Boker

After that busy morning, Tali dropped me off at the Beer Sheva bus station in time for a 1:00 pm bus back to Jerusalem.

Amman December 26-January 11

2011-02-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

Back in Amman, I stayed at the American Center of Oriental Research once again. I worked on my various projects, especially the revisions to Nadia Sukhtian’s translation of volume 1 of Gustaf Dalman’s study of Palestinian customs; on Sunday January 9 Nadia and I met with Dr. Bakhit at the University of Jordan to discuss options about the Dalman translation project.

Among other academic activities I finished corrections to my article about Christian Identifications of Muslim Buildings in Medieval Jerusalem and finished my long overdue article about Muslim pilgrims to Jerusalem in the Ottoman period. I also wrote a letter of recommendation for a former student of mine from HMI who wants to enroll in a Ph.D. program at McGill University, only to be caught off guard, when they rejected the letter because at the moment I am without an academic affiliation.

I also did some investigating on the internet about the Dutch East India company in India, as I thought through the options for my little project next December. My two colleagues from Bamberg, Anja and Ilse who were with me in Humayma in 2009, expressed an interest in joining my Bhimunipatnam project. As it happens they will be in India anyway at the time.

On Monday December 27 I was surprised when a first cousin of mine, Gretchen Morgenson, walked into the front door of ACOR. She knew that I have been around in Jordan over the years, but she did not get in contact with me before her vacation trip to Jordan with her husband and son. Gretchen is the daughter of my mother’s sister and works as a financial reporter for the New York Times; she won a Pulitzer Prize in 2002. I have no clear memory when we last met, perhaps it was in the late 1960s. That evening we went out to dinner and the next day I went with them to Mount Nebo and then Madaba, and I showed them around the Madaba Archaeological Park. After lunch in Madaba, I returned to Amman, while they headed on to Petra.

Gretchen and me at the Madaba Archaeological Park

On Tuesday January 2 I had other visitors: Florina and Ashok from India. Florina had been the associate director for praxis at the Henry Martyn Institute in Hyderabad during my last year there; both she and her husband have doctorates in conflict resolution from Eastern Mennonite University. They had been at a conflict resolution workshop in Israel and had a day to spend in Jordan before their return to Chennai. I met them at the airport and took them to Madaba to see the Madaba Archaeological Park and other sites. We arrived at ACOR in time for lunch; we had a lively conversation with a number of business students from the Thunderbird School of Management who are staying at ACOR for a three-week January internship. After lunch a friend of theirs, Raghda who is also involved in peace work, came by and we chatted further until it was time for them to go to the airport for their flight.

Florina, Ashok and me in the Church of the Apostles in Madaba

ACOR was filled to capacity with the Thunderbird students and other residents, so I decided to schedule a trip to Israel for a few days. That trip required me to go to the US Embassy to get extra pages for my passport, for which the embassy now charges 85 dollars; up to just a few months ago that service was free.

Dubai December 24-25

2011-02-05T08:58:00.000-08:00

For my travels from India back to Jordan, I decided to stop over in Dubai. Oddly, by traveling on December 23 I got a sharply reduced price for an airline ticket. The airline ticket with the stop over plus the hotel bill for two nights came out less than the cost of an airline ticket for a direct flight on December 22 or earlier. I had not been out of the airport in Dubai or any of the other Persian Gulf states before, so the decision to stop over was easy to make.

I stayed at a hotel near the Union metro station. On Friday December 24, I walked around and stopped at a local supermarket at the time of the Friday noon prayers, when the supermarket was overrun by house maids from the Philippines and Sri Lanka doing their shopping on their day off. The supermarket had a sizable selection of pork on offer, in a separate room.

Later in the afternoon I rode around on the metro lines. The sleek metro opened about a year ago. I got off at the Burj Dubai. About half of the people who got out at that station took a picture of the Burj Dubai, as did I. The building is too tall to fit within one shot on my iPhone camera.

The Burj Dubai

I then walked around the Dubai Mall for a couple of hours. During my two days I did not see all that many people who were obviously local Emiratis; Pakistanis seemed to be the largest expatriate group. In December the temperature was ideal.

The next day, Saturday December 25, I hung out at the hotel, before leaving for the airport for my afternoon flight to Amman. That was the most un-Christmasy Christmas Day I have ever spent. At the airport I noticed a drinks stand with a wonderful misprint selling non-carbonated sweat.

The sign for non-carbonated sweat

Hyderabad December 21-23

2011-02-05T08:10:00.000-08:00

Back in Hyderabad, I stayed at the HMI campus again. On Tuesday December 21, I went into the city to meet my friend Timothy Marthand, the world-class pianist. He will be performing in his first concert tour in a few months. He, a German piano student who is taking lessons with him and I went to a local restaurant, one of a number of fancy places that have sprung up in recent years in the Banjara Hills neighborhood.

The next morning, Wednesday December 22, I went to the Andhra Pradesh State Department of Archaeology to meet a staff archaeologist there, P. Subramanyam, to discuss the idea of my documenting the 17th century Dutch East India Company settlement at Bhimunipatnam. After that positive meeting, I went again to visit Timothy Marthand and Shanely, the singer with whom he has been performing lieder by Robert Schumann (his favorite is Dein Angesicht, opus 127, no. 2, text by Heinrich Heine).

While in Banjara Hills, I took my iPhone to a local cell phone place to get it unlocked; which was quickly done. I had bought the iPhone as an unlocked phone second hand a couple of years ago from Timothy in India, but it had started to malfunction recently and in an attempt to fix it, I ended up locking it. After visiting Timothy, I went to the Hyderabad book fair, where I ended up buying a lot of books.

The next morning Thursday December 23, I went into the city to do some shopping at Big Bazaar in Abids and in the afternoon I left for the airport for my flight to Dubai that left at 6:40 and arrived at 9:15 and I checked into my hotel at 11:15.

Visakhapatnam December 18-20

2011-02-05T08:05:00.000-08:00

On the morning of Saturday December 18 I flew from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam on the east coast of India to visit my friend Rani Sarma for a couple days. I have visited her and her husband in Visakhaptnam several times before in previous trips to India. She is currently working on the draft of a book about the early Buddhist presence in Andhra Pradesh and during this stay I read through her current draft.

For Sunday December 19, Rani had arranged a tour of the major early Buddhist site of Sankaram, south of Visakhapatnam, for the officers of the Indian naval base at Visakhapatnam. The tour was sponsored by the local chapter of INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Culutural Heritage); Rani is the current president. After the tour of the site, the navy provided lunch for the group.

The naval officers listening to Rani, with the Buddhist caves of Sankaram in the background.

The members of the Visakhapatnam chapter of INTACH at Sankaram.

After the site of Sankaram, Rani and I met a local archaeologist who wanted to show us two other undocumented early Buddhist sites in the vicinity. One proved to be on a hill that was too remote, so we turned back, while at the second site only a few fired bricks and a wall line hinted at the presence of something substantial.

Rani, the local archaeologist and the hill too far

The group looking at traces of a wall line at the second Buddhist site

The next day I spoke at length with Rani about the possibility of us undertaking a small project to document some of the archaeological sites in the Visakhapatnam district when I come again to India next December. The idea to document a Dutch East India company settlement in the town of Bhimunipatnam, north of Visakhapatnam, seemed most promising. That evening I flew back to Hyderabad.

Hyderabad December 14-17

2011-02-05T03:25:00.000-08:00

My overnight bus from Shirdi arrived in Hyderabad at 6:15 in the morning on Wednesday December 14 and I walked around a bit, passing by the old office building of the Henry Martyn Institute, before going to the new Henry Martyn Institute campus on the south side of the city.

The old HMI building

This time around I had arranged to stay at the HMI hostel during my days in Hyderabad. I spent much of the day chatting with various HMI faculty and staff members. In the afternoon I went to the Old City, where I walked around the 12er Shi‘ite areas, seeing what was going on for Muharram, the ten-day commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in 680 A.D.

A mural in the Old City showing the major 12er Shi‘ite shrines.

The next day, Thursday December 15 was the eighth day of Muharram. I spent the day at HMI and spent some time inquiring about arrangements for the HMI students to attend a Shi‘ite majlis session of mourning for Husayn that evening. Things worked out and at 5:45 I went with Christy Femila, one of my former students who is now a faculty member at HMI, and several of the students in the Islamic studies program to the Old City. We walked around the 12er Shi‘ite areas, before meeting Fatimah Ali Khan, a member of HMI’s academic committee and professor of sociology at the University of Hyderabad, at the Badshahi Ashurkhana (shrine for Husayn). She spoke to us about Muharram customs before taking us to a majlis session nearby that went on for a couple of hours. She then took us to the prominent Aza Zahra Ashurkhana and the Dar al-Shifa compound in the heart of the 12er Shi‘ite area of the Old City.

The next day Friday December 16 I stayed at HMI and lay low, suffering from a sore throat and head congestion. Preparations at HMI were underway for the Christmas program that evening and at 2:30 I joined a group for carol singing. The Christmas program was followed by a dinner.

HMI staff and students making the rounds of the campus singing carols

The HMI staff and family members

The HMI students singing at the Christmas program. From left students from
Germany, UK, Tanzania, South Korea and India, including two from Nagaland.

Saturday December 17 was the tenth of Muharram, the culmination of the mourning period for Husayn, marked by a procession of self-flagellants in the Old City. In the afternoon I went with the HMI group to the Old City to see the procession. We got onto the balcony of a building overlooking the procession route, so we had a good view. The procession with several thousand participants took about two hours to pass by. I had witnessed the procession three other times during my years in Hyderabad, but it is always interesting to see again.

A group of self-flagellants cutting their scalps with knives

A video of a group of self-flagellants. Note the person spraying the participants with water.

Nasik and Shirdi December 11-13

2011-02-05T02:12:00.000-08:00

My overnight flight from Riyadh arrived in Mumbai early in the morning of Saturday December 11 and I headed on to Nasik, a major Hindu pilgrimage city s few hours north of the city. I had not gone there during my years in India, but chose to go there on this trip, because Jodi Magness, an archaeological colleague of mine, her husband Jim happened to be touring India with another couple and were scheduled to be in Nasik now. Jodi had sent me their itinerary some months ago, and so when the pieces fell into place for my trip to Saudi Arabia and India, I realized that we could meet up, at least for a day or two in Nasik.

Rather than undergo the hassle of trying to get to Nasik by bus or train, I hired a private car that took about three hours. I had booked a room over the internet at the Emerald Park Hotel, but it took a very long time to find the hotel. It turns out that the hotel is located a couple of kilometers away from where the map on Expedia.com shows it. Even worse, there is a second Emerald Park hotel in the same general area, where my driver dropped me off. But I eventually got to the hotel.

I then walked around for a while, before taking an autoricksaw to the Gateway Hotel where Jodi’s group was staying. Unfortunately, that also took a very long time to find, because the Gateway Hotel had only recently adopted that name, and auto drivers only knew of it by its former Taj Residency name. Also it turns out that the hotel is located several kilometers away from where the Expedia.com map shows it.

I had chosen my Emerald Park Hotel because it was ostensibly located a short walking distance from the more expensive Gateway Hotel, but my best intentions failed miserably when both hotels proved to be located kilometers away from where they were supposed to be.

Anyway, I met Jodi and made arrangements for the next day. As I had walked around earlier that day, I had seen a Big Bazaar shopping center not so far from my hotel, so I asked my auto driver to take me there, but instead he took me to a different Big Bazaar farther away. I eventually got back to my hotel.

The next morning of Sunday December 12, Jodi and her group picked me up at my hotel and we went to the Pandavleni early Buddhist caves south of the city. It turns out that Jodi’s travel companions were Karen Britt and her husband Daniel. Karen is a professor of Byzantine Art at the University of Louisville, whom I knew of but had not met before.

Karen Britt and me at the Pandavleni caves

The group at the Pandavleni caves: from right: Jodi, Karen, me, Jim, and Dan

We then went to the historic Sundarnarayan Temple in the city center and then to the colorful Rakmund tank and market area, the center of attraction for Hindu pilgrims.

The Rakmund tank and market area

A misshapen carrot offered at a shrine at the Rakmund tank

We then went to a nearby restaurant for lunch, before they dropped me off back at my hotel. Later that evening I went to the Big Bazaar – City Mall near my hotel and inquired at a travel agent about how to get to Hyderabad the next day, but it was too late on a Sunday to get a ticket.

The next morning Monday December 13 I went back to the travel agent and made arrangements to get to Hyderabad. The best option was to take a bus to Shirdi and then an overnight bus from Shirdi to Hyderabad. So I went to the bus station, where I took a local bus for the two and a half hour trip to Shirdi, arriving at 2:15 pm. I then hung out in Shirdi, before my overnight bus to Hyderabad left at 7:30.

I had been to Shirdi before on one of my annual trips with my students. Shirdi is a small village that has turned into a major pilgrimage center because of Sai Baba, a saint who lived there until he died in 1918. Sai Baba of Shirdi is a very interesting figure. He was an identifiably Muslim sufi mystic who espoused a form of non-denominational piety, but after his death, he has been turned into a leading Hindu saint, who attracts hoards of Hindu pilgrims from far and wide.

Khamis Mushayt and Riyadh December 6-10

2011-01-08T04:56:00.000-08:00

I arrived at the Abha airport in the evening of December 5 and I was met by Hadi Alfifi, the local antiquities official, who took me to check into the Mercure Hotel in Khamis Mushayt.

Fortunately the hotel had free wireless internet, so I could conveniently exchange several emails a day with David Graf, the project director in the US, and people in the US embassy in Riyadh.

The next morning, Monday December 6, Hadi took me to the Jurash site on the outskirts of the city, where I spent the day sorting through the boxes of finds in the site store room to find all the bags of bones from the 2008 and 2009 seasons and I started to take photographs of the contents of each of the bone bags.

Arrangments also fell into place for me to travel to Riyadh on Friday, so that evening I went to a travel agent near the hotel to get an airline ticket. That is tricky because flights to Abha are in high demand and often sold-out long in advance, but I lucked out and got a ticket for the flight I wanted. The plans for my trip to India also fell into place, although having had to make arrangements for this Saudi Arabia and India trip on short notice was a hassle.

The next two days Tuesday and Wednesday December 7 and 8 I continued to take photographs of the bone bags at the site storeroom. There were close to three hundred bone bags, each of which took four minutes on average to photograph. In the evenings I processed the photographs back at the hotel. On Thursday December 9 Hadi and I packed up the bone bags for shipment, and I passed on to him a list of all the bags and a set of the photographs.

A typical bag of bones

Since the second excavation season at the Jurash site in July-August 2009, a Saudi team had done further work, so I walked around the site to see what had been found and to take photographs.

My 2009 excavation square

During the evenings I walked around the market area in the vicinity of the hotel. During the excavation seasons we had always had police escorts wherever we went for security, but this time I could walk around on my own and I somehow managed to survive the experience. However, there is not much of anything to see in Khamis Mushayt. The one claim to fame of the city is the world’s tallest shopping cart, a three-storey tall model placed at the entrance to a HyperPanda shopping mall, the Saudi equivalent of Walmart.

The world’s tallest shopping cart in Khamis Mushayt

On Friday morning December 10 I flew from Abha to Riyadh. I was met at the airport by Ahmed al-Masri, from the US embassy, who has been very helpful for the project over the years. He took me to a restaurant near King Sa‘ud University, where we met Salem Tairan and Abdulkareem al-Ghamedi, two of the Saudi colleagues in the 2008 and 2009 seasons and we chatted about the Jurash project.

Ahmad then had the embassy driver take me around the city for a while, before dropping me off in the diplomatic quarter to meet Bonnie Gutman, the Counselor for Public Affairs at the US Embassy. It turned out that her husband Frank had lived in Hyderabad for some years. We spoke about the Jurash project and archaeology and early Islamic origins more generally until the embassy driver came to take me to the airport for my night flight to Mumbai.

The check-in procedures at the Riyadh airport were as chaotic as ever. The check-in area is vastly too small for the large number of nearly simultaneous flights that all use the same ten or so check-in counters in turn, and there is no information posted about when and where one needs to go to check in for a specific flight. The Riyadh airport rates as the worst major airport I have ever been in, although once you get through check-in and the long chaotic lines for passport control and security, it becomes okay.

On the flight to Mumbai I was the only non-Indian in evidence; I noticed three women on the flight as well.

Amman November 30-December 5

2011-01-08T03:04:00.000-08:00

I arrived back at ACOR in Amman on the evening of Tuesday November 30. I spent the next days making arrangements for my trip to Saudi Arabia. Getting the visa at the Saudi Embassy was straightforward; I have done it twice before, so I knew what to do. But making arrangements on short notice as to what specific day I should travel and getting the airline ticket required a flurry of emails. The situation was made more complicated by my intention to travel on to India after my time in Saudi Arabia, and those plans also remained in flux.

In the end I traveled from Amman on the afternoon of Sunday December 5 to Abha via Jeddah, within a week of first getting news of the visa. My reason for traveling to Saudi Arabia was connected with the Jurash excavation project, directed by David Graf, that I had taken part in during the summers of 2008 and 2009. We had found a large amount of animal bones, which were left at the store room on site. In the meantime a bone specialist in Cyprus had agreed to analyze the bones, so they needed to be shipped to him. That involved having someone travel to the site to prepare a list of the bones and make arrangements for shipping. The Saudi authorities gave their approval, and as it turned out I did not need to travel to Riyadh to take care of any bureaucratic matters, but rather could travel direct to the site.

During these few days at ACOR, I did some further editing of the first Gustaf Dalman volume about Palestinian customs and I translated a review about a museum exhibit currently in Germany on God Feminine that Olaf Rölver, a professor at the University of Bamberg, had written for Near Eastern Archaeology.

Chicago, Atlanta and Dubuque November 15-29

2011-01-08T02:25:00.000-08:00

I traveled to the Unites States in order to attend the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research in Atlanta and spend Thanksgiving with my family in Dubuque, Iowa.

But first I traveled to Chicago, where I arrived on Monday, November 15. I went immediately to the University of Chicago campus, where I met Fred Donner, my PhD advisor, in time to sit in on his 1:30 to 3:00 course on Islamic Origins and say a few words about Christians in the early Islamic period. That evening I attended a lecture by Gilbert Achcar about the Arabs and the Holocaust. The lecture was held at the International House, which provided a sizable refreshments buffet; it seems that it has recently become standard for university events to provide substantial refreshments, which was not the case when I was a student.

After the lecture I went with Fred to a dinner reception for the speaker at the home of Orit Baskhim, a new faculty member in the Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Department whom I had not met before.

I stayed with Fred that night and the next day I had another full day meeting people on campus. I first met Walter Kaegi, the Byzantine historian who was another of my PhD advisors. I then met Donald Whitcomb and his graduate student Michael Jennings at the Oriental Institute to talk about my participation in Donald’s upcoming excavation project at the early Islamic palace of Khirbat al-Mafjar in Jericho. I then spoke with Natalie May, an OI research associate who is organizing a conference on iconoclasm. That evening I had dinner with Iman Saca, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, whom I have known since my years in the 1990s in Jerusalem. I stayed a second night at Fred Donner’s place; workmen were installing new windows during the days I was there.

Fred Donner below the workmen replacing his window

The next day, Wednesday November 17 I flew from Midway airport to Atlanta and I checked into the Sheraton Hotel near the Peachtree Center for the ASOR annual meeting. On Thursday morning November 18 I attended the meeting of the editorial board of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology and then attended various academic sessions and networked with people. In the afternoon I gave a presentation about Christianity at Humayma in Steven Werlin’s session on Christianity and Judaism in Late Antiquity.

On Friday November 19 I attended the early morning meeting of dig directors in Jordan and then attended other academic sessions. I checked out of the Sheraton hotel and checked into the cheaper nearby Days Inn; the more expensive hotel bill for the first two nights was paid for by ASOR. That evening I met the Israeli archaeologists Katia Cytryn-Silvermann and Tawfiq Deadle. We went to the High Art Museum to see the Salvador Dali and Titian exhibits and then had dinner. On Saturday November 20, the final day of the conference, I attended various academic sessions and spoke at length with Tawfiq Deadle, whom I had not met before, especially about his work at the Mamilla Cemetery.

On Sunday November 21 I met Hamida, my former student and colleague from my years in India who now lives in Atlanta, and we went to the Botanical Gardens.

Me at the Botanical Gardens

ater in the afternoon I walked around the Olympic Park area, before heading to the airport for my flight to Chicago. After a delay, the plane left the terminal at 10:00, getting only as far as the runway before turning back due to a mechanical problem. The flight was eventually cancelled, and I got put up at the airport Sheraton, checking in at 1:00 am. I took a flight the next morning Monday November 22 to Chicago O’Hare, arriving at 11:30 am.

Traveling between Chicago and Dubuque is a problem. Airline tickets are very expensive and there is only one bus a day that leaves Chicago early in the morning. This time around I took the Van Galder airport bus to Rockford, where I checked into a Motel 6 for the night. In the afternoon I walked around the nearby shopping malls. The next morning, Tuesday November 23 I took the 8:15 am Trailways bus to Dubuque; other times I have rented a car in Rockford and driven to Dubuque.

For this visit to Dubuque, my parents arranged to have me stay in a newly established guest room at the Luther Manor retirement home where they stay. That was more convenient for me than staying in a hotel like my most recent trips. I was in Dubuque for a week and spent time going through old mail – mostly alumi magazines – that had accumulated since my last visit in August 2009 and sorting through my stuff stored in their garage. I also made several shopping trips, but did not buy much of anything.

This year Thursday November 25 was both Thanksgiving and my mother’s birthday. We went for Thanksgiving dinner to the house of my brother John and his wife Renee in Dubuque; my sister Linda and her friend Dennis came from Coralville, a suburb of Iowa City. On Saturday November 27, Mom and Dad and I drove to Coralville to visit Linda and Dennis. I had not seen the apartment where Linda lives before.

Back in Dubuque that evening I went to a presentation at Loras College by Louie Psihoyas about his career as a photographer – for many years with National Geographic – and the documentary movie, The Cove, that he directed and for which he won an Academy Award for best documentary this year. Louie was in my Dubuque Senior High School class of 1975, although I have not had any contact with him since then.

On Sunday November 28, I got the news that my visa to travel to Saudi Arabia had been approved, so I started to make arrangements for the trip there that I will soon make.

On Monday November 29 my parents drove me to Rockford, where I took the bus to O’Hare for my evening flight to Amman, via Heathrow.