Amman July 1-31

I spent the month of July at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan, continuing to work on the report of the excavations of the Burnt Palace in Madaba. Among my other academic activities, on July 7 and 8 I attended a conference at Yarmouk University about Priorities of Archaeological Research in Jordan. I gave a presentation about excavations of early Christian churches in Jordan.

I received my honorarium from the University of Jordan for the translation of my Palestinian customs book this month. I was pleasantly surprised to have received about 2000 US dollars, or about 2.5 cents per word. With the University having determined the amount of my honorarium, they were able to fix the sale price of my book at six and a half dinars (9 US dollars). So at last my book has now been released for the general public. I also met my Palestinian colleague Muhammad Ghosheh to discuss progress on our book about the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, which has been in the works for a very long time.

On the afternoon of July 17 I went with Chris Tuttle, the ACOR associate director, down to Petra to visit his ongoing excavations at the medieval village of Beidha. The next day I went with the dig team to the site and I played excavator for a couple of hours, before walking around the Beidha area north of the main site of Petra, where I had not been for many years. That afternoon I took a bus back to Amman. One innovative feature of their excavation is the erection of shade over the excavation squares. That has been standard practice in Israel for years, but has not yet spread to Jordan.

The dig team discussing the nature of locus 13

Micaela Sinibaldi and her workman in the shade

I attended the usual round of public lectures, including presentations at the Friends of Archaeology by Jacques Seigne about new discoveries in Jerash and Anna Paulini about the UNESCO word heritage sites in Jordan. I also went to a talk at the Columbia University Center by the Palestinian historian Basem Raad about his new book Hidden Histories; during the reception afterwards I had an interesting conversation with Nadia Sukhtian, who has prepared a draft translation of the first two volumes of Gustav Dalman’s eight volumes from the early 20th century about Palestinian customs. I also attended a presentation at the Darat al-Funun by Hussein al-Adhami about Iraqi maqam music. One evening I went to the downtown Roman theater for a program of cultural diversity sponsored by UNESCO, which consisted mostly of Caucasian folk dance groups.

A Caucasian dance troupe

On July 30 I went on a day trip to the Umayyad desert castles with Dorina, a newly arrived Romanian who is in graduate school in New Zealand and interested in tourism, and Alex, a graduate student in Islamic art and architecture, who was around for a few days. We went first to Mshatta, where I had not been for years, and then the standard itinerary of Kharana, Qusayr Amra, and the Azraq castle. We also went to ‘Ayn al-Sil and the Azraq nature reserve, followed by Hammam al-Sarah and Qasr Hallabat. I have been to most of those sites numerous times over the years.

Alex in the mihrab at Mshatta

Dorina at Qasr Kharana