Khamis Mushayt and Riyadh December 6-10

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

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

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.

Lübeck, Kiel and Hamburg November 12-14

On my final weekend in Germany for this time around, I made a virtue out of having had to move out of my apartment in Bamberg and went on a sight-seeing trip to the north part of the country. With this trip to the states of Schleswig Holstein and Hamburg I have now been in each of the German states, at least briefly.


I took a night train to the city of Lübeck that arrived at 6:00 am on the morning of Friday November 12. I had to kill a few hours before I could check into my hotel. I then walked around the city on the cold and blustery day and went to the natural history museum, the Kunsthalle art museum built in a former Convent of St. Anne and the Burgkloster history and archaeology museum, built in a notorious prison during the Nazi period.

The city gate of Lübeck

The next day, Saturday November 13 I took a train to the city of Kiel, where I spent a drizzly day walking around and visiting the natural history museum, aquarium and Kunsthalle art museum.

Then on Sunday November 14 I took a train to Hamburg. I first took an hour and half bus tour and then went to the Kunst and Gewerbe Museum. I then walked around to the city hall area, where the Christmas tree lights were being installed for the advent market that was soon to open in the city square.

The Hamburg city hall

I also went to the Völkerkunde ethnographic museum, where an international crafts fair was underway. The craft displays covered up the exhibits in much of the museum.

The craft displays at the Völkerkunde Museum

I then rode up and down some of the subway lines, before ending up back at the train station. My evening train leaving Hamburg was overfull, so I had to stand for the first couple of hours. After changing trains in Köln, I arrived at the Frankfurt airport at 2:30 am on Monday November 15 and I hung out until my flight to Chicago left at 8:00 am.

Bamberg October 11-November 11

On Monday morning October 11, I was able to move into the apartment that I had rented for a month. It was a small but expensive single ground floor room about a twenty minute walk from the university.

The front entrance to my apartment

I continued to work principally on my sites and monuments of Islamic Jerusalem project, but also did some work reviewing Nadia Sukhtian’s draft translation of the first volume of Gustaf Dalman’s Arbeit und Sitte volumes about Palestinian customs.

On several evenings I participated in sessions of Irish set dancing and French dancing at the Volkshochschule and I attended two evening natural history lectures about the Steigerwald National Park and landscapes in Oberfranken.

Most weekends I traveled somewhere. On the weekend of October 16-17, I traveled by train to Wismar, one of the UNESCO world heritage cities along the Baltic Sea coast. I took the trip because I was able to book a cheap 20 Euro train ticket due to a special promotion to commemorate 20 years of German unity. It was a long eight and a half hour trip via Berlin, but I still had a couple of hours to walk around the historic buildings in the old city center. Wismar is famous for its interesting architecture using brick.

The town square of Wismar

One of the brick-built churches in Wismar

The next morning I took the train back to Bamberg and stopped at the city of Madgeburg along the way to see the sights there. I went to the cathedral, where the excavations in the interior have been left visible to visitors.

The excavations in the cathedral

I also stopped by a shopping mall in the city center of Madgeburg, where I noticed that a lot of people were heading on a Sunday when stores are normally closed. A flea market was underway.

The flea market

On October 23 I went on the VHS nature hike to the Steigerwald national park to the west of Bamberg, as always lead by the naturalist Hermann Bösche.

Hermann Bösche speaking about one of his beloved black berry species along the trail.

On October 24 I went to Hirschaid, a town to the south of Bamberg, for their autumn street festival with the inevitable band performance.

The band performing in Hirschaid

On Saturday November 6 I went with my colleague Klaus Bieberstein on a day trip to the biannual meeting of the German Palestine Society at Rauschholzhausen, near Marburg. I had attended that conference two years ago.

On Sunday November 7 I went to Nürnberg to attend the performance of Korngold’s opera Die tote Stadt, taking advantage of the special deal that people with tickets for such performances in the Nürnberg area can travel for free by train. I had not heard that opera before and I was struck by the famous aria, Marietta’s Lied, so over the following days I spent a lot of time listening to all of the versions of the aria that have been posted on YouTube.

On Tuesday November 9 I travelled to the University of Mainz to give a public lecture about the Archaeology of Early Christianity: The Jordanian Contribution. I also spoke with Johannes Pahlitzsch, the professor of Byzantine Studies there, about my applying for a grant to do research at the university. I stayed overnight in a hotel and then returned to Bamberg the next day.

On Wednesday November 11, I moved out of my apartment; I would not have minded staying a couple of days more until I left Germany, but the room had already been rented by someone else.