Adventures with Yo and Mo

A symposium, lecture and more travel

2010-12-05T22:04:00.011+02:00

For those interested in text, archaeology and ethics, a symposium, Archaeologies of Text: Archaeology, Technology, and Ethics, organized by Mo and a colleague at Brown: http://proteus.brown.edu/archaeologiesoftext/8482

And then later this week, Mo lectures at the Harvard Semitic Museum
http://www.semiticmuseum.fas.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k66717&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup115733

Next on the Schedule....

2010-11-10T17:23:00.004+02:00

Someone is very busy these days!

Looting in the Holy Land

2010-10-25T22:05:00.004+03:00

We have been very poor bloggers, of late, we know. After the excavations at Marj Rabba, Mo began her new position and has been busily preparing new classes, grading and generally going full tilt. Meanwhile, Yo recently finished accompanying an Oriental Institute tour to Israel, and now remains in Jerusalem.

But recently a program concerning the problems of looting was released on al-Jazeera (English) news. This included interviews of colleagues and locals, including Mo, who comes in at about 36:00 (not wearing a hat!).

Note the lovely backdrop of Marj Rabba and students, including some from Brown University, University of Connecticut and more!

You can find the program at: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/2010/10/201010591416403822.html

Mid-way at Marj Rabba 2010

2010-07-27T19:58:00.031+03:00

We have just passed the halfway point for the Marj Rabba excavation season, and our team is making wonderful progress. The architectural preservation is quite good, and the flint, pottery and animal bones are plentiful. We have an amazing team that puts in long days of work, starting at 5 am, six days a week.

Some of our readers know very well what working on an excavation entails (indeed, some might be the very people who introduced us to the routine and different field methods!) But for those who have never worked on an excavation, we thought that we could run down the daily routine.
In order to avoid the hottest part of the day, we start very early; Mo and Yo get up at 4 am, so that we have our own gear together (hats, water, cameras, etc). This year we are staying at a college in Karmi'el called ORT Braude, a small engineering college.

ORT Braude campus

We walk over to where we park the vehicles, which is near the dormitory rooms. After collecting empty buckets, water jugs and gear for the field, we hope everyone arrives by our 5 am departure. A quick 10 minute drive through the winding roads leading to Yodefat takes us to Marj Rabba, where our rented container containing the tools is stationed. At this point the sun is just about to rise, but by the time we get the tools out and walk them up to the site, there is just enough light to begin working.

MP and Mo discussing bucket tags and the day's goals

Pre-dawn excavations.

Like last year, we often have some fog up on our hill, and we can hear the peacocks from Kibbutz Yodefat as we discuss our plans for the day.

Mo in the mist

This year we have opened four new 5 x 5 meter squares, plus two half squares (2.5 x 5). We have some walls that are not doing quite what we expected (rectangular rooms are standard for the Chalcolithic, but these are not so clear - yet!).

We work until 8:30, when we stop for breakfast under the nearby olive trees, which includes a variety of sandwiches, veggies, cookies and beverages prepared at the ORT Braude cafe which we pick up on our way out. A little after 9 we go "back to the salt mines", until 11, when we have a short fruit break. By 12:30 we are wrapping things up - taking elevations, sweeping up the excavation areas, collecting the buckets and bone bags, and moving the equipment back to the container, so that we can finish by 1 pm. The day goes by very quickly, usually, but we are all tired.

Because we are sieving 100% of the current excavation areas, we get quite dirty as the dust is unavoidable. We then head to a restaurant where we have "lunch" - a large hot meal - and can relax. We finally return to ORT Braude by about 3 pm for showers, some quiet time or a nap.

Pottery washing time near the dormitories at ORT Braude.

But wait, there's more! All of the pottery, flint and animal bone needs to be washed, then dried, then returned to the bags. At 5 or 5:30 we reconvene to wash this material culture, to bag up the dry material from the day before, and to make day plans for the next day. By 7 we are done, and have a light meal.

At the end of each week, we have short tours of the different areas so that we all know what is going on each area. Here we see MP discussing their amazing progress in square B1, where they moved unimpeded by walls or other architecture.

And below we see A "C" H discussing the results of their area, where a profusion of architectural remains will prove a challenge to understand!

Some of us are finished (that is, wiped out!) by about 9 pm, while others go out and sample the club life in Karmi'el. Ok, perhaps not so many go out clubbing in Karmi'el. We aren't so sure that there is any clubbing in Karmi'el. A major annual 3 day dance festival just ended here in Karmi'el, but as most events began late at night, our group seemed a bit too tired for this entertainment.

Of course, if we did more clubbing, or at least visited the dance festival, we might have seen our resident celebrity, staying at ORT Braude.

Yes, we were told that Samantha Fox was staying on the ORT Braude campus while we were here. She was in Karmi'el for the dance festival, but we didn't see her. We hope her room had some AC, because rumor has it that spandex can be quite hot in humid weather. We are now in the home stretch and beginning the "big push", where we hope to expose some floor or surface levels corresponding the architecture, to understand the area outside of the architectural complex, and to recover some carbonized remains. Wish us luck as we attempt to pull all of this together in only about 10 days of excavation time!

Al-Jib Heritage Exhibition

2010-07-07T19:39:00.006+03:00

Yesterday Prof P and Mo visited the Al-Jib Heritage Exhibition in the Al-Jib Womanly Centre. Al-Jib is a Palestinian village in the West Bank where the ancient biblical site of Gibeon is thought to be located. During the early Iron Age, a massive wall was constructed around the crown of the hill of Gibeon and a huge pool was cut in the rock just inside the wall. The pool is over 10m deep and has a spiral staircase of 79 steps cut into the walls of the pool, continuing downwards into a tunnel that provides access to a water chamber 24m below the level of the city.
It is thought that this structure is the "pool of Gibeon" mentioned in the Bible (2 Samuel 2:13). Recently the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE) was awarded an Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation (from the US Department of State) grant to establish some small community museums in the Ramallah area. The Al-Jib Heritage Exhibition is one of these museums.
This is the director of PACE with Prof P - explaining some of the highlights of the museum. Last summer Prof P and Mo went to visit the potential museum sites with PACE and this year we did a follow-up.
The exhibit is made up of artifacts from the site, some ethnographic material and some local handicrafts made by the women from the Womanly Center. Some of the artifacts are donated by the local villagers.
Any good visit to the West Bank involves many cups of tea and coffee and usually some sweets.
On this visit we were treated to a strange jelly and chocolate pudding concoction and more coffee!
This image is for our pal JE who is doing a study on museums, groundstone and the work of women in the Middle East.
As many of your know traveling to the West Bank can be long and involved. We leave you with some of the graffiti on the wall near the Ramallah check point. Tomorrow we leave for Marj Rabba in the Karmi'el region - look for more posts on the dig in the coming days/weeks!

Mo's new job!

2010-07-04T07:33:00.006+03:00

Wow - two blog posts in two days, what is the world coming to?? On July 1 Mo finished her postdoc at the Joukowsky Institute at Brown University (sad)
and started her new job as an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at DePaul University (happy). There is no small amount of irony in the fact that Mo is ending up in an anthropology department while Yo works at the Oriental Institute with its near eastern archaeological emphasis.
With over 25,000 students, DePaul is one of the largest private universities where the focus is on teaching.
They have a nationally ranked service-learning program, which integrates the service concept into the curriculum. This means lots of work with the Chicago community. This is similar to the program that Mo completed at UGeorgia where much of the time was spent out and about in the Georgia countryside in small towns and cities working with local communities.

DePaul is on the quarter system, so the academic school year is broken up into 4 sections, rather than 3 like the semester/term system. In the Fall Mo will be teaching two sections of Intro to Archaeology and a Museum Anthropology class. In the Winter she'll be back in Jordan doing the Follow the Pots project and then she'll teach again in the Spring.

When Mo got the job - crazy niece LL told people "Did you know that my Aunt is going to be a real live professor?" Unlike previous jobs where Mo was a fake. It's good to be a real live professor, with a real live job and a condo in an excellent city.

The few, the hardcore, the insane - extreme archaeologists in the Badia

2010-07-03T21:02:00.008+03:00

Come for a holiday at Maitland's Mesa:
See camels, who are just passing through the area on their way to who knows where??
Live in comfortable tents amid the ruins.
Cook out in the open using the back of a truck as a food prep area. Drink warm yucky beer. And give up showering for 20+ days!

Eat unidentifiable meat from cans.

Experience sandstorms, and flies (1000s of flies) - desert living is brutal.
Usually the sky is blue - not sand coloured.

The archaeology was great!

50+ Cairns - the tail of a tower tomb

We recorded 300+ structures associated with a "landscape of the dead". We still don't really know the dates for this site but we are working on that angle of investigation. Prof G. found a bunch of PPN (pre-pottery neolithic) lithic scatters and manufacturing sites and we actually found some pottery (less than 10 pieces) that may or may not be Chalcolithic (4500-3600 BCE).

Yo spent a lot of time as the stick monkey (the guy standing around deciding where to put the prism for the total station to read) and Mo spent a lot of time drawing rocks.
Looks kind of like a pile of rocks . . .

Student L spent most of her days pushing the button on the total station - we are pretty sure that she has decided that archaeology is not her calling. In the end we were defeated by two days of sandstorms, which collapsed our shade. We returned to ACOR in Amman - to showers, to cold beer, to fresh food and to a nice bed courtesy of our very good friend BAP.

After a brief visit to Petra we crossed over to the other side and are now prepping for our next adventure.

Back on the Blog

2010-06-05T19:04:00.009+03:00

Day one - packing the truck!

We are off to Maitland's Mesa tomorrow. That means packing up a truck with all the provisions 4 people will need for 4 weeks. Here are two images of our intrepid crew - Prof. G, student L and Yo. In these pictures everyone looks pretty clean and happy, we'll see how they look a month from now. We will be eating all things from cans for the next month, not showering and swatting a lot of flies.
We will also be mapping a very interesting mortuary landscape out in the panhandle of Jordan (the eastern desert near the Iraq/Saudi border). This is the site - Maitland's Mesa, which is a basalt capped mesa in the middle of nowhere. But of course at some point in time people were living there.
You can see here the outlines of what we think are animal (think sheep/goat) pens that surround the base of the mesa; some are probably mortuary structures as well. Part of our job will be to record these features and draw them and look for artifacts, which will help date them.
This is what an enclosure (perhaps a burial chamber or some other structure) looks like up close. So we'll be off of the grid for the next month and then we'll update our adventures in the eastern desert! At the end of the month, and after a brief foray into the wonderful world of Petra, we are off to Israel for another season at Marj Rabba. Stay tuned for future updates.

Reviving the blog

2010-03-24T00:08:00.003+02:00

We've had one very busy year, and we'll tell you about some of this over time. As far as our blog is concerned, we've been sad gits, its true! We'll try to do better.

In the meantime, here's the announcement about something interesting taking place soon!

Seein' it All Small

2009-11-06T05:36:00.054+02:00

After the field season this summer and before returning stateside, the Mo and Yo sho made pilgrimage to a local theme park. We had visited this place before, back in 2004, when it first opened. We were curious to see what has changed at Mini Israel, an outdoor theme park with scale (mostly 1:25) models where you can "See It All Small".

The park is set just at the foothills before the ascending road to Jerusalem, near the Latrun Monastery, and just across from the IDF "Tank Museum", which is also represented in miniature form at Mini Israel.

After paying a not-insignificant entrance fee, the visitor enters through turnstiles opening onto an outdoor plaza; to the right, one can pick up maps, an umbrella (to shelter one from the boiling heat of the coastal plain), or rent a covered golf cart.

To the right is a cafeteria and the gift shop.

Miniature models are the primary attraction -- representations of archaeological, historical and industrial places in Israel (actually, two places are in the Palestine autonomous territory). The models are meticulously made with great attention to detail, then set in miniature mountains, next to lakes, along streams according to their geographic situation in reality. Miniature plants are reputed to be local, indigenous species.

Visitors follow black topped paths snaking their way through this open area, leading first along the shore of the Mediterranean, where models of ships and docks

are just meters from imitation Caesarea.

Although the facsimiles of these buildings and sites appear to be careful copies, their relationship to each other is not; there is a general north-south and east-orientation, but the relative distance and proximity between sites is not represented. In fact, the site is in the shape of the Star of David (well, sort of - that's the intent anyway).

Since we visited years ago, some things have changed. Most of the sites we saw before are still there. Tel Dan, Haram esh-Sherif, Western Wall, the Egged bus museum (which doesn't actually exist!).

Some things haven't changed - miniature lakes and seas are generally dry or in some state of disrepair. The planes at the airport continue to jerkily cruise around on the ground.

The same archaeological sites are represented, including the Middle Bronze gate at Tel Dan....

...what we believe is a generic archaeological excavation near the Mediterranean shore....

... the Dome of the Rock...

and the western wall.

The bedouin camp is still represented, with everyone in traditional garb, including the women with water containers circulating around the camp tirelessly on their track.

And the Palestine Archaeological Museum, known as the Rockefeller, exists, still decontextualized from the East Jerusalem surroundings.
But other things are new. Most striking are various representations of industry giants of Israel: Sonol (gas), Prigat (juice), Tnuva (milk products), Arkia and El Al (airlines), as well as international conglomerates such as Yoplait and Coca-Cola.

The gift shop has changed rather dramatically. When it first opened, there was only one way out of the park - through the gift shop. Sale items in the old gift shop were a very eclectic array of kitsch, similar to what is available in many shops in the Old City. The new gift shop, which is no longer the exit from the park, is 'nicer', in that there is less kitsch, but sort of boring, in that it consists primarily of Ahava products (it seems Ahava probably bought the shop, or is a major owner) -- you know, salves, emollients, balms, unguents, lubricants, mud, salts and moisturizers. It looks more like the part of the department store you (well, Mo & Yo anyway) try to zip through quickly before someone spritzs you with something stinky.

Anyway, the question is this: Why does this appeal? If these places are nearby, why see the 'fake' miniature version rather than the original? Why represent a gas plant, but not the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Megiddo, or Bet Shean?

A Weekend in Maine

2009-10-02T01:57:00.006+03:00

Yo and Mo rejoined forces for a long weekend last week; Yo visited Mo in her fancy digs at the JIAAW, and then they traveled up the coast toward Maine. We had never been to New Hampshire or Maine before, and the weather couldn't have been more inviting. With beautiful weather, a red rental car and lobsters waiting, we left for Maine on Friday.

Coastal New Hampshire was beautiful, and I think neither of us realized that NH had such beautiful beaches. Here we stopped to enjoy the sun and surf.

We had to turn around at one point, deciding that we should have stopped at Petey's Lobster Shack when we had the chance. We were not disappointed. Here's Mo with her double soft shell lobster platter (which Yo ate half of, along with his own lunch!).

Not quite sure what to do with TWO huge lobsters. Mo was fine with eating the lobster until it came to the green stuff and then she gave up.

After we did our part in contributing to the depletion of oceanic protein, we continued up the coast to southern Maine. After a pleasant evening with our hosts C and C, and a fine sleep, we all went for a long walk on the beach the next morning, collecting sand dollars, sea glass and chasing H. around. Here we all are on the beach.

We spent part of Saturday exploring Portland, but Mo left the camera in the car so there are no images of that adventure. Nor are there any images of Yo's adventure with some bad scallops, but you wouldn't want any images of that . . .

Sadly, we did have to leave on Sunday, but since it started raining then anyway, it was time.

Travel Advisory . . .

2009-08-21T20:00:00.003+03:00

Usually we don't have great excuses for our long silences in the blogosphere, but this week we actually do. In the next week we will move 4 times, in 3 different countries, so we won't be posting. After packing up our excavation and ourselves after three months away we leave Tel Aviv tomorrow morning at 5:30am. We arrive back in Toronto around 1:00pm and will hopefully be picked up by our amazingly kind family (LL, MRK and BDL) where we will be whisked off to the anthropology department at U Toronto, so we can pack up Mo's office. On Monday we'll pack up our car (assuming it still works. . .) and drive from Ingersoll to Chicago, where we will begin packing up our apartment. Our landlady, after sprucing the place up, sold it in July and we have to be out by September 1. On Wednesday we'll pick up the Uhaul and move across Hyde Park to another condo. Thursday and Friday will be unpacking and shipping boxes to Providence in advance of Mo's move to Brown the following Tuesday. Then we will collapse, oh sorry start teaching a class and get back into the work a day world in the lives of archaeologists. The entire time we are sure to be wishing that we were in the field, except maybe Jordan where the memory of no running water, electricity, cellphone reception and the flies still looms large. We'll be back in touch in September.

And just in case you were wondering, the monkey is still with us and has been a great help in Turkey, Jordan, the PA and Israel. More monkey tales to come . . .

Marj Rabba: End of Season Highlights

2009-08-16T08:45:00.020+03:00

After five weeks of living in double-wide trailers, the small team working at Marj Rabba dispersed, some to continue work on the excavated material back in Jerusalem, some back to North America, some back to their homes in Sakhnin. Only a small area was exposed, but we consider it a very successful season. Although we are very excited about the walls, architectural features and finds, we will try to rein in our enthusiasm over dirt and rocks and stick to the highlights.

Marj Rabba in December, 2008

First, we were confronted with a field that looked very different from the lush green grass when we visited the site back in December. That was then. When we returned in July, we were confronted with thistles and weeds, taller than Yo or Mo in places. Bad conditions for laying out squares. The solution? Cows and goats! They did an admirable job, those hungry quadrapeds, but they don't exactly rush, so we also resorted to a weedeater. That, however, lasted only a little more than an hour before it was kaput.

With our squares laid out in two areas (west is the large rock pile, east is the field), we discovered walls and other architecture in all three squares of the east section (where the tall grass was). The remains of the stone walls indicate well-built walls, and the other stone features were inside, presumably inside a room. In the photo below, you can make out the wall running acroos the top of the picture; on the right side is a curvilinear structure that presumably continues into the unexcavated area on the right (east). We aren't sure what the curving structure is, but its intriguing and we're looking forward to complete excavations in that area next year.

In the square to the west, still inside of the room, this intriguing structure initially looked like this:

But once we finished excavating the interior, it turned out to be a well built stone pit, perhaps a silo. Here, it is in the top of the picture below, built up against the bedrock, just below the wall (and near the corner of the two walls).

Here's a close-up view.

Sometimes when you need shadow for photography, you can just line up some archaeologists to get the job done.

Other times, you might have to bribe them with suckers!

Of course it isn't all architecture. We found buckets of pottery, flint debris and tools, and well-preserved animal bone. Here is a photo of some possible "Hula ware" pottery, with the tell-tale wave incisions; whether or not this pottery really comes from the Hula valley, or merely is a style, is something we must determine. We even found things we didn't expect! No, those aren't Mentos.

SNAKE EGGS! Yumm. (Okay, maybe lizard eggs.....)

Over in the west area, things were much more difficult. We wanted to try to understand why these piles of rocks were left there, and when. We started by placing a trench across the wall that was visible on top of the pile of rocks.

Mo and students SS and BJ debating how to tackle the west rock pile. The trench was about 2 meters by 10 meters, cutting across the rock pile east-west, and thus both sides of the wall.

This was hard work, digging through rocks. About 5% was sediment, the rest was small to medium sized limestone rocks, placed there by people for reasons we hoped to determine. However, there were very few artifacts: some Chalcolithic sherds and flints, and a few late Roman or Byzantine sherds. Either could easily work there way down between the rocks over millennia. In the end, our beautiful trench exposed bedrock below the well built wall, but remain unsure what to make of the wall, or the pile of rocks. Visiting archaeologists ranged in opinion; one was sure in his gut that its Chalcolithic (we liked to hear this!), but others believed that it must be much later. Yet there is almost nothing later to date the structures.

Below, this is Trench one, looking to the west; the wall is at the top, and bedrock is what the scale and north arrow are resting on.

The other side of the trench looked similar - mostly rock, and not many clues as to how it came to be there or why.

Finally, at the end of the season, we needed to try to protect both the site as well as any visitors (cow, person or goat). We sandbagged most exposed features.

Then, we covered the excavate areas with plastic, sediment and rocks.

Finally, we bought fencing to keep animals and people out, primarily so that they wouldn't hurt themselves if they didn't notice the excavated squares.

We even bought a sign for our fencing. We fully expect that only the sign will remain by next year....

Then we had to find someone to move the container back to Jerusalem. Look at this strong guy, almost independently putting the two ton container on the back of the truck -- and in white pants too!

Thanks to the "because we're professionals" of Marj Rabba for so much hard work, early mornings and boiled eggs.

Finishing the season

2009-08-12T07:07:00.002+03:00

Typically, closing down excavations at the end of season can be terribly hectic and even chaotic. The end of our season went was not nearly so frenetic as some, but then, we are a small excavation with great students and volunteers. Still, we have been very busy chasing after a truck with our shipping container, closing the excavation areas, and re-organizing ourselves in Jerusalem.

We will return with more photos and stories soon!

Where to Dig??

2009-07-17T18:12:00.006+03:00

We pick a place to dig based on survey, landscape and any information we have been given by local landowners, shepherds and archaeologists. In this area our colleague DS (Northern Chalcolithic expert) had identified the site as part of a survey in this region. Once we have the field cleared (by goats or modern machine - see previous post) we lay a grid and then start to dig. This is the early stage of square L1:
In addition to the students we have three workmen from the nearby village of Sahknin. They have been working in L1 and so has Mo. We speak a mixture of Arabic, Hebrew and English in the square and usually we can come to an understanding, although Mo is not always sure what it is. Last week had a conversation about one of the guys getting married: either he was getting married or meeting with a Russian prostitute, turns out he did actually get married.
During the course of day we collect up all of the pottery (broken pieces of pots) and flint and basalt and take it back to where we are living to "process" - that means we wash, record and sort all of the finds. Below is a bucket of pottery ready to go back to the lab.
In order to entice people to pottery wash, which actually isn't that much fun, we put out coffee and tea. Not that the coffee is that great - Elite - a famous Israeli brand that I think only our pals J and M enjoy.
Here we are bagging up the dry pottery from the pervious day. Sometimes there are some interesting nuggets in the very dirty pottery - painted decoration, incisions and appliques. At times it is a bit like a treasure hunt, but mostly it is just a tedious part of the life of an archaeologist. Pottery washing is a good time to sit around and talk about the days events, or how we are going to proceed the next day and how we could improve on aspects of the recording system or excavating methodology. We try to be as inclusive as possible and ask for and encourage input from the students (both positive and negative). Sometimes we just argue about the merits of Harry Potter - preparing one of the students (AB) for her year in Cambridge. Or we just discuss the differences between Americans and Canadians, apparently there are many.
We have had a great couple of weeks. Everyone cheerfully carries out their assigned tasks. Last night we had movie night with popcorn and everyone crowded around Yo's laptop. We watched Star Wars (movie #4) but it was missing the final crucial Death Star scene - not sure it mattered since we had been playing a Star Wars drinking game . . . More adventures soon.

Marj Rabba Weeks 1 and 2

2009-07-17T17:20:00.005+03:00

We have been remiss in reporting on the results of the first two weeks of our field season at Marj Rabba. We know there are 100s of diligent readers who are longing for an update, we apologize. We have had a great beginning of the season, finding walls, pottery, flint and basalt (which makes Yo very happy!). In case you need a reminder of what we are doing and why here's the low down.

By launching excavations in the Galilee, at large and small settlement sites (including Marj Rabba), specialized sites and caves, we hope to answer a variety of questions concerning the Chalcolithic period in northern Israel:

· What is the nature of Chalcolithic material culture in the Galilee? What are its hallmarks? How similar is it to the material culture in the Golan and in Lebanon, or the sites in the Negev and Jordan? Is it unique?

· What connection does the Galilean Chalcolithic share with tangent regions (Golan, coastal plain, Jordan Valley) and with places farther afield (Sinai, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon or Turkey)?

· What were the foundations of Galilean Chalcolithic subsistence and economy?

We are a small team of 8 people - Yo and Mo, 2 students from the University of Chicago, 2 from the University of Toronto (yeah! there is a big US vs. Canada rivalry at the moment), a PhD student from the University of Connecticut and one student from the University of Washington at St. Louis (she and Mo worked together in Turkey at the beginning of the summer, more on that later).

So before we could start we needed some help with weed/thistle clearance. We hired a local kibbutznik (young guy who had just returned from "finding himself" in Spain), with a weed whacker. But he was defeated by the stones, weeds and thistles. So we asked the local shepherd to bring his goats and cows through the site, which worked wonders. Of course they also left a lot of "special" presents.

We also needed to comply with some of the landowner requirements, so we rented a port-o-potty for the season. Here is Yo and the delivery guy setting up the site bathroom!

We also needed somewhere to store our tools and finds on site that we could then transport to Jerusalem for the post-excavation analysis. Here is our container being delivered to the site.

Goat herd eating weeds, you can just see Ali, the shepherd off to the far left.

Cows passing through the site, as we discuss where to place the container. Okay Mo is having some issues with uploading images, so more in a minute.

Michael Homan was right!

2009-07-08T20:23:00.003+03:00

Our good friend Michael Homan after seeing our post about Yo's new position at the OI stated "Mo and Yo in the same city, let alone the same state and/or country was too good to be true". He was right. Last month Mo was offered a one year post doctoral fellowship at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology in the Ancient World at Brown University

(http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Joukowsky_Institute/). For many of our non-American readers Brown University is in Providence, which is in the state of Rhode island - about an hour drive from Boston.

This is an image of the new home of the Joukowsky Institute

Mo will be teaching a class on museums and policy in the fall and a class on Middle East Prehistory in the spring - good thing Yo is an an expert in the prehistory of the Middle East and Mo has at least studied prehistory and works in the Middle East! We have checked into flight schedules and Southwest flies direct from Chicago to Providence, so once again we will be a commuter marriage. Come visit either Chicago or Providence!!

One more reason not to sleep on the ground....

2009-06-27T15:07:00.006+03:00

In mid-June, Mo arrived in Amman from her fieldwork in Turkey; Yo, cleaned up after 11 days living in a tent at Wisad Pools without bathing, met her at the airport. The next day, after a quick visit to ACOR to re-fill water cans and shopping to replenish supplies, we headed out to Wisad to rejoin the other two team members.

We will blog more on that in the near future, and hopefully Mo will upload some images from Turkey and talk about the survey there.

But while you wait, we thought we'd post this short video clip of an unexpected visitor in our camp at Wisad. If you can identify the species, we'd appreciate it. We are guessing perhaps a horned desert viper, although it doesn't seem to have the horns; a sand viper seems unlikely as this one was out in the heat of the day (twice).

Me and my monkey

2009-06-02T08:46:00.005+03:00

Over a week ago, Yo and Mo worked on lodgings for the upcoming dig season. After a nice visit to Shorashim, we then drove towards the Sheikh Hussein bridge at Bet Shan, where Mo would be crossing for her flight from Amman to Istanbul. On the way, we stopped to visit Nazareth, a place neither of us had been before. We didn't really know where to go, but finding some of the major churches wasn't that difficult. We visited the Basilica of the Annunciation, a modern Catholic church built on the remains of Crusader and Byzantine churches. The interior is unusual, but its coolness was welcome. The little tyrant with a badge literally yelling at tourists and clapping his hands as if shooing swine flu ridden pigeons was not so welcome. (making more noise than the tourists!).

Of course, Yo is just bitter because he was just starting to drowse after not sleeping one wink the previous night!

The monkey generously given to Uncle Yo by niece L, was thirsty so we had a Coke, and a coffee. Then we took Mo to the border for her adventure, getting to the Amman airport and onward to Turkey.

Prehistory in Jordan, the Paleolithic, and the Biggly Wiggly

2009-05-30T23:44:00.022+03:00

A recent conference organized by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, the Council for British Research in the Levant, the American Schools of Oriental Research and the German Protestant Institute recently ended. The conference included one day of site visits, and two days of research presentations, many presented by the leading specialists of Jordanian prehistory, and their students.

A contingent of prehistoric archaeologists who work in the environs of Azraq had thought that with all of these archaeologists in one place at the same time, site visits would be a good idea so that different projects could compare the results of excavation, both current and older. This was an auspicious year, as there are several active projects in the field near Azraq, as well as some senior archaeologists who had worked in the Azraq wetlands before it was drained. (Until the mid-1980s, the Azraq wetlands was an extensive oasis with ample fish, animals and birdlife, including migratory species. In the mid-1980s, the growing population of Jordan needed additional water, and water from Azraq was pumped until virtually the entire swamp was dry, wiping out species). Traveling in convoy, we left Amman via the airport highway, stopping to get gas on the way out. In this particular strip mall is a Biggly Wiggly, playing on the Piggly Wiggly markets of the American South, which typically features a smiling pig. For those unfamiliar with pronunciation in this part of the world, the sound of "P" is very difficult for Arabic speakers, and is typically pronounced as a "B". The person who made this sign is well aware of this and clearly has a good sense of humor about it...

After filling our tanks, we head out to Wadi Jilat, where Andrew Garrard and a number of his students worked on Eplipaleolithic to Neolithic sites. As he joined us for this expedition, he lead the way out to find the Jilat sites, which only a few of the senior prehistorians among us had visited in the past. On the way out, our lead car went on ahead looking for a quarry for "Dabba marble", a greenish rock type popular during the Epipaleolithic for the creation of beads. In the picture below, you can barely see the vehicle searching for the Dabba marble area (which it seems we had already passed by this point).

We were following the soccer mom vehicle, an "SUV" type that really wasn't made for this type of travel; this was apparent when we had to stop and change the flat.

Finally we arrived to Wadi Jilat, where a series of sites were investigated and documented by Prof. Garrard and his team. The wadi is very nice, with some dramatic incising in places, with small canyons such as the one below.

These sites ranged from Epipaleolithic to early Neolithic, some very well preserved.

At one Epipaleolithic site (I've forgotten the number of this one), someone spotted an interesting shape in the wall of a looter's trench. And amazingly it turned out to be a beautiful example of a small Natufian footed basalt vessel, finely ground and with a carefully incised line around the rim exterior.

Dr. M. (Director of excavations at Kharaneh, showing off Epipaleolithic basalt 'chalice')

Unfortunately, even in such a remote area, where there are few antiquities worth much to a looter, bulldozers have done incredibly damage to some of the sites, such as this one. The damage to such fragile early sites is stunning when mechanical equipment is used.

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day with a number of great sites and a fascinating tour. In addition to the prehistoric sites, there is a much later (Ottoman?) dam up the wadi with water, although murky and muddy.

Can you spot the toads? (I didn't realize I was taking the picture of two of them, until I downloaded the images later). We won't talk about what they are so happily floating in.....

DR. T, Associate Director of ACOR, the freshly minted PhD. Doesn't he look fresh and minty?

After these visits, we drove from Wadi Jilat to Kharaneh. There we had a quick lunch (much of it provided by Dr. B, via tasty leftovers from an ACOR reception a few days before!).

The "castle" is well known to tourists and archaeologists alike, but the incredibly rich Epipaleolithic site about one kilometer to the south of the Umayyad structure is not as well known. We were updated on the progress of the excavations (where we visited on this blog last year, see ......). The site is so rich that they on longer attempt to separate the cultural, botanical and faunal remains in the field, but back in their lab in Azraq. This is a massive undertaking, to separate all of the material caught in 4 mm and 2 mm screens!

The directors of excavations of Khareneh, DR. T. Richter and Dr. L. Maher, giving a site tour (Richter is second from left, Maher in blue next to him).

After we visited their excavations, we returned to Azraq, where we were treated to amazing hospitality by the dig team; an amazing array of grilled meat, hummus, salads, and most importantly, beer and EVEN mojitos by some very inspired dig team members. Karaoke of the Eagles and Meatloaf notwithstanding, it was a delightful evening.

The next day we visited on-going excavations at Druze Marsh, where the compaction and concretion is so hard that the excavators are using CROWBARS to break the matrix into hard lumps for "sieving" -- which is largely impossible. Below are their excavations of this Middle Paleolithic site, with a small team of experts led by Michael Bisson, April Nowell and Carlos Cordoba.

Above: C. Cordoba and A. Nowell give a detailed stratigraphic description of their excavations at Druze Marsh in "downtown" Azraq.

Finally, we visited additional excavations in the Azraq area, many of them conducted many years ago by senior leaders of prehistory. Unfortunately these are difficult to describe (by such mentally challenged later prehistorians such as Yo) and are not so photogenic. However, Prof. G. did point out this early ancestral spider exeskeleton near the excavations.

Our blog may be quiet for the next few weeks, as Yo heads out to Wisad Pools, and Mo has little internet access. Wish us luck in our endeavours, and we hope to return with new photos of ancestral species, stuffed monkey visitors and exciting sites of the Middle East.

On the road again

2009-05-22T00:27:00.007+03:00

We'll apologize now to our fair readers -- near and far, devoted and not-so-very-ardent -- because we have started our field seasons, which will turn our occassional blogs into rare items. We hope to keep posting where Internet access allows, but that will be intermittent and, especially during much of June, probably non-existent. Hopefully, the new pictures and tales will compensate for the lack of frequency; at any rate they will certainly be more interesting than Yo's occassional whining about the winter weather and difficulty of finding good Thai food in Hyde Park.

Oh, we didn't blog on that yet? See? You should count yourself lucky already!

Mo is currently in Turkey working with the survey team of the Central Lydia Archaeological Survey http://people.bu.edu/chr/CLAS/Home.html, a new country for her. Yo is in Israel preparing for the excavations at Marj Rabba, and hopefully will find some time to prepare his paper for a prehistory conference in Amman, Jordan. After that he will join Prof. G back out at Wissad for a few weeks of sun, sand and basalt. Mo will join them in mid-June. In late June, Mo and Yo return to the Galilee to launch the new Chalcolithic excavations.

So, we hope to post more soon. In the meantime, here is another image from the Shiqmim Subterranean world:

20 years ago in a subterranean chamber.....

2009-05-11T21:25:00.006+03:00

While working on the publication of Shiqmim, a Chalcolithic site in the northern Negev desert, Yo is virtually rifling through old photographs. Here is one of Mo working in an underground chamber at the site 20 years ago when Yo met Mo, wearing her signature blue bandana*.

*later transferred to the hallmark Tilley hat.

New Iraqi training initiative

2009-05-06T04:20:00.005+03:00

A press conference was held today to draw attention to a new State Department initiative providing funding for Iraqi archaeologists and conservators. Restricted by the former regime and the war, Iraqi archaeologists and conservators have been isolated from professional contact and developments in the field for nearly 20 years, while looting and destruction of archaeological sites has grown exponentially. 18 Iraqi professionals will each spend 6 months in Chicago learning new conservation and cultural heritage management techniques. They will also be attending a Chicago Cubs game and visiting Cahokia. The Field Museum and our colleague Jim Phillips is administering this two year program, which also involves professionals from the Oriental Institute. A short ABC clip features Jim and OI director Gil Stein, and yes, thats Mo in the background at one point.
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6795606

New York, New Yorke

2009-04-29T05:35:00.008+03:00

After Mo's recent visit to DU, Mo & Yo re-grouped at LGA to visit NYC (how's that for a lot of abbreviations!?). After H. and B. bailed at the last minute, we luckily found room in a Manhattan hotel near the theater district. Mo was there for work this week; Yo was there to distract her and make a weekend of it.

Luckily the weather was perfect, if a bit warm by Sunday, and so we wandered all over the place. Although we wanted to get tickets for a play, we were too impatient to stand in long lines when there was so much to explore on such a nice day. We wandered through the Flatiron district, stopped at Washington Park, through the NYU campus and down to Tribeca; on the way we visited a farmer's market and enjoyed visiting various parks with trees in full blossom.

Mo at the Flatiron building.

Although there was a jazz band playing in one park, there was a much larger crowd on the other side. Wandering over, it seems there was a dachsund convention -- there were hundreds of them, long hairs, short hairs, miniatures (?) and ones with fat bellies dragging on the ground.

Many hot dachsunds

We stopped in Chinatown for lunch, and later we met JoGo and Pri in a coffee shop. On the way back up town, we stopped in a SoHo restaurant for martinis, a wonderful meal and ignored our blistering feet.

The next day, after buying new flip flops for Mo so that she wouldn't have to spend another day walking around in tall winter leather boots, we headed out to Brooklyn to visit S, B, and their two boys. Yet another beautiful sunny (and increasing hot!) day was spent catching up.

Mo is still in Manhattan, talking to new contacts and friends. She might post separately on that. Last night was the gala event at the Archaeological Institute of America, a pricey affair that Mo wangled an invite to...honoring Harrison Ford. This was to include a "Greco-Roman cocktail reception and silent auction"...followed by a "traditional Maya feast" with awards presentation and live auction, closing with live music, dancing, with "international desserts and drinks". (Watch out for those dates!).

Unfortunately, Harrison was a no-show. Perhaps he was worried that Mo would want to discuss portrayals of ethical archaeologists in his next I. J. movie. Apparently a good time was had by all anyway, and Harrison sent a video to accept his award.

Archaeology, Politics and the Media

2009-04-23T02:42:00.007+03:00

Many an archaeologist would like to claim, and may even believe, that archaeology has little to do with politics. But you don't have to look far to find archaeology that serves, or is used by, those with an agenda, whether it is for profit, land claims, nationalism or even to support (or disprove) religious beliefs - to name a few possibilities.

Mo is on her way to a symposium planned by Professor Eric Meyers at Duke University entitled Archaeology, Politics and the Media, http://jewishstudies.aas.duke.edu/center/announcements.php for Thursday and Friday to address the ways in which archaeology is promoted, used, or misrepresented; it is free and open to the public. Her paper will be on "The Power of the Press Release and Popular Magazines on the Antiquities Trade".

Other interesting stuff includes discussions by other luminaries such as Eric Cline “Fabulous Finds and Fantastic Forgeries: The Distortion of Archaeology by the Media (Pseudoarchaeology)", Jodi Magness "Confessions of an Archaeologist: Lessons I Learned from the Talpiyot Tomb Fiasco and Other Media Encounters” and Eric Meyers “The Quest for the Temple Mount: the Settler Movement and National Parks in Israel”, to name but a few.

You can follow along on the blogosphere through Prof. Mark Goodacre (Duke), who will be posting on twitter at: http://twitter.com/goodacre

Yeah for Yo!

2009-04-15T00:26:00.006+03:00

Coming soon to a library near you - the latest issue of the Journal of World Prehistory, with the feature article - The Chalcolithic Period of the Southern Levant: A Synthetic Review by Y.M. Rowan and J. Golden. Yeah! This article has been a long time coming and it is great that it is finally out. At the moment it is only available online, but the hard copy will be out soon. Contact Yo for a pdf if you want to learn all there is know about the Chalcolithic of the Southern Levant!

Big Brother Finn

2009-03-29T19:28:00.005+03:00

Big brother Finn (he's 3) was desperate to hold the new baby. You can see how excited he is to hold Seamus, not sure that the baby is as excited.

Aunt and Uncle Again!! and an assignment

2009-03-27T01:09:00.006+03:00

SEAMUS BRENDAN THOMAS

We are an aunt and uncle again- yeah! CPR and SBR have a new baby at home - Seamus Brendan Thomas Rowan. Born March 18th the new baby, pictured here with big sister Regina and big brother Colman, was welcomed by his various siblings (4 brothers and 2 sisters), a tired mom and dad, Rowan and Bohan grandparents and us. Yeah for Seamus!

In the midst of meeting Seamus we were given an assignment by our nephew Colman (age 7, grade two - see above). We received "Flat Stanley" in the mail and were asked to take him on an adventure, take some photos and then send him back to the Grade Two class in McLean VA. Yesterday we took Flat Stanley to visit the Mummy Meresamun - the new exhibit at the Oriental Institute http://oi.uchicago.edu/museum/special/meresamun

Flat Stanley hanging with Mummy Meresamun

It looks like Stanley is having fun doesn't it??

Settling in and keeping warm

2009-01-23T18:00:00.008+02:00

Little niece F commented that Aunt Mogie should update her blog, so here ya go - here she is in her natural habitat, trying out her new sofa!

Seriously though, we wanted to give you an update of our neighborhood. Now that the President has moved to an even roomier house in DC, E. Hyde Park (E. 51st) is open to general traffice again. Our building is on the corner of that road, so its a relief that this is no longer closed off.

On our way to campus, we pass some very nice buildings. Probably the nicest is the Frank Lloyd Wright two doors down. Mo wants to move in.

Its a pleasant walk, even though it never seems to be above freezing (not in three weeks at least!). Many of the buildings look like the one below.

The snow is very pretty, even if a pain to walk in on a daily basis.

Our local little store, Hyde Park Produce, is in this strip mall, along with the liquor store, drugstore and a few small restaurants.

Below, you can see the caterpillar lady in her new, very warm coat! Thanks B!

The walk ends with another Frank Lloyd Wright house, this one the much better known Robie House (http://www.wrightplus.org/robiehouse/robiehouse.html), which is

right across the street from the University of Chicago's business school.

We will post more pictures soon!

Santa Claus is coming to town

2008-12-11T23:57:00.005+02:00

Last month Mo went home to Ingersoll to attend the annual Santa Claus parade. In true Canadian style, rather than snow there was a lot of rain. Here are some of the members of our little group, umbrellas and chairs waiting for the "big man".

FMK and LL sitting in the rain. Still smiling half an hour in.

Mo, RMK and MRK also still smiling an hour in, of course the beer in RMK's hand might have a lot to do with the smiles . . .

Finally the man in the red suit arrives

And even he has an umbrella. Ah the Canadian fall you can never second guess the weather.

On the Road Again

2008-12-07T17:34:00.006+02:00

On another adventure in the Middle East, this time Israel. It's been 4 years since Mo was here and a mere two months since Yo's last visit. We are here mapping a potential dig site (next summer). Here's the overview:

Yo and our friend surveyor extraordinaire JR setting up for mapping.
The field that might be an amazing Chalcolithic site...
Rock pile - pile of rocks or interesting archaeological site??
If you look closely you can see a wall...

Mo is also here to check out the antiquities shops in the Old City. She and MSC are on the trail of Early Bronze Age pots from Jordan on sale in Israel. Here are a couple of potentials:

A pillar based figurine from the Iron II period. These figurines started the whole adventure in looted antiquities.

Yo checking out a shop.

Pots for sale

The Stolen Past

2008-11-17T20:32:00.004+02:00

A short article appears in the National Geographic December issue, quoting Mo, concerning the problem of rampant archaeological site looting in the West Bank. The article can be found at:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/12/palestine-antiquities/lange-text

Tall and lean?

2008-11-12T18:59:00.005+02:00

Mo and Yo hope to revive the blog soon, and apologies for the long hiatus! But those of you who subscribe to Archaeology, the semi-popular magazine published by the Archaeological Institute of America, may have noticed an article by Nina Burleigh in the Nov/Dec issue entitled "Collecting Pieces of God". For those of you haven't read it from cover to cover, or haven't received your issue yet, the article considers the problem of collectors who buy ancient artifacts looted from archaeological sites. As many of you know, this was the topic of Mo's dissertation and is an issue of concern to archaeologists, collectors, museum professionals, law enforcement, customs officials and local citizens in many parts of the world.

At any rate, Dr. Mo - "tall and lean" is interviewed and quoted rather extensively in the article, which is not available online. But you can see the picture of a major collector in the first page of the article above.

Movin' on up

2008-09-21T22:12:00.008+03:00

Or so we thought. After all, for Yo and Mo, a single long-term residence, with our stuff unpacked, would be a step up. For the first time in five years, all of our stuff was pulled out from the damp enormous garage that our long-suffering and generous in-laws (Mo's sister and husband) have allowed us to store. Dispensing with some of the worst stuff, we piled the rest of our moldy and smelly books onto our large moving truck and away we went. With Yo steering the monster truck and Mo following behind in the 'hippie car' (as the SIL refers to our Subaru), the drive, border crossing and arrival in Chicago all went without a hitch.

On the way down the so-called "landlady" (she later admitted this was her first rental arrangement) called Mo and said that the granite counter top guy had stood her up and "would we mind if the kitchen wasn't finished for a few days?" From that Mo took it that everything else was done all that was missing were the granite counters. Okay, we are easy going and we were both heading off (Mo back to TO and Yo to Greece/Israel) a few days later so there was a little grace period.

Our landlady met us at the appointed hour, and we were led to our newly rehabbed apartment, for which we had paid the equivalent of THREE months rent. Imagine our dismay when we discovered that it wasn't quite ready! Indeed, the back door approach looked like this:

The picture was no better after crawling over the piles of rubbish and equipment. The back door enters the kitchen, where there was no running water (or counters, or cupboards):

The kitchen, however, at least had a finished floor. Below, under the piles of materials, tools and unconnected radiators, you can make out how the dining room still has an unfinished floor.

The front rooms were a bit better, although the bathroom too had a gaping hole where the mirror should be, broken tiles and missing grout, etc. This room, the living room with a sun room, was better.

And of course random stuff crammed in closets....

We had to decide whether we would stick it out with this apartment, or demand all of our money refunded and begin looking for a new place. Although there were plenty of places with "To Rent" signs, this was Labor Day, and our movers would be arriving later that day. So we had to decide what to, and ultimately decide to meet our moving helpers and pile all of our moldy stuff in two rooms.

Yo went to open the back of the moving truck to discover a Canadian stowaway, known back on the farm as Black Handsome. Apparently BH decided to have a nap and became captive in the back of the truck for about 24 hours. As nothing heavy fell on him during the drive, BH merely seemed thirsty but otherwise perky and curious. Luckily BH is a pretty easy going, farm guy, so he was placed in the room that actually had a door, fed him some food donated by very friendly neighbors, and some kitty litter was purchased. (He seemed to know what to do with kitty litter, so perhaps he's not a 'real' barn cat, but merely an abandoned cat?)

While our housing situation was less than ideal, we did like Chicago and we had one of the best experiences at the DMV getting new license plates for the car (our Indiana plates were expired). When we arrived at the DMV there were probably 200 people and Yo (Mr. Doom and Gloom) said we'd be there for hours. Less than 1/2 hour later we were out with new plates, which Dan at Uncle Bubba's shop helped Mo put on the car.

On Wednesday we are both meeting up in Chicago for "take two". Yo is flying in from Greece and Mo is driving the hippie car (sans cat) back to Chicago. Our landlady "assures" us that it will be good to go, but this is the same woman who thought that we could move in last time... Stay tuned for the adventures on Wednesday.

The Dark Side??

2008-09-05T00:45:00.002+03:00

Today Mo bought a MAC, need we say more . . .

In the coming days we will posting about our adventures in moving - which involve an unfinished apartment and a stowaway Canadian cat. Stay tuned.

My Kind of Town

2008-08-03T13:11:00.006+03:00

Chicago is . . .

We are moving to Chicago (well Yo is moving first and then Mo will join him when her fellowship at Toronto finishes). The other day Yo officially accepted a position with the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago - YEAH!!! "The Oriental Institute is a research organization and museum devoted to the study of the ancient Near East. Founded in 1919 by James Henry Breasted, the Institute, a part of the University of Chicago, is an internationally recognized pioneer in the archaeology, philology, and history of early Near Eastern civilizations."

The hallowed halls of the University of Chicago

The OI

The library at the OI

His new position will be as Research Associate in the Archaeology of the Southern Levant, which just happens to be exactly what he does. This is the link to the OI website http://oi.uchicago.edu/ for further information on their programs etc... And here's a map so you can all come and visit.

At the moment Yo is still in Jerusalem, but he'll be back stateside in late August. We will be heading to Chicago to find a place. If anyone has any suggestions or advice on neighborhoods, or Chicago in general send them along. July was a good month for Yo - new book, new job!!

New Approaches to Old Stones

2008-07-27T09:19:00.005+03:00

Yes, dear readers, there is a new book out, soon to be climbing the NY Times best seller list and already ranked at 6,914,586 book sales at Amazon!

Dedicated to research concerning ancient stone artifacts from around the world and spanning thousands of years, the book came out last month after about 4 years in the making. Studies include the discovery of quarries for steatite vessels in Egypt during the Islamic period, production of ritually pure chalk vessels for the Jewish population living around Jerusalem during Roman times, fancy luxury bowls in the Maya world (such as the one used for the book cover), the identification of seed grinding in Australia dating to about 27,000 years ago and so much more. And lots of pictures. There is something for everyone.

Keros to Naxos

2008-07-07T19:32:00.026+03:00

Once again we know we have been rather lame bloggers, not entirely with good excuse. Yo joined Mo on the Aegean Island of Koufonisi where the excavation team working on the nearby island of Keros lives. Mo arrived on Koufonisi on April 29th, and the Internet access is intermittent – not to mention that Mo is in desperate need of a new computer, as her current 7 year old model takes about ½ hour to start, and doesn’t find Wi-Fi signals very well (Mac or PC, that is the question!). Yo arrived much later, on June 9th, to join the excavations (it had been 6 months since Yo and Mo had their last adventure together in Jordan so it was a pretty happy reunion). Although Mo has worked with Professor Renfrew on his Keros project since its inception in 2006 (see her blog during the second season, June 2007), this was Yo’s first visit.

Above: The view from the project rooms -- the larger island of Keros is visible, with the smaller island of Dhaskalio just barely visible, to the right.

Of course excavating on small islands in the Aegean, more specifically the Lesser Cyclades where Keros and Koufonisi are located, sounds idyllic. And indeed Yo has rarely missed the opportunity to mock the claimed hardships of excavation on charming Greek islands with beautiful beaches, fresh Mediterranean breezes and Greek food. Sure, there were those images of the crew in winter gear, attesting to the rather chilly days in early May. But by the time Yo arrived, the cold weather had disappeared, reinforcing his entirely biased and unsympathetic perception that Mo and her compatriots were really just spoiled whiners. His first visit to the site changed that idea quickly.

The boat ride out to the sites from Koufonisi where the excavation team lives takes about half an hour and is pleasant enough, as long as its warm and not too windy.

Above: the team with Professor Renfrew heading out in the morning.

Below: Mo and two of her buddies (affectionately, 2/3 of the nits) hoarding the prime seats.

People were generally pretty tired by the time Yo arrived, an understandable fatigue considering most had been working for six weeks straight (perhaps exacerbated by some late night tendencies of some members!). There are two sites under investigation as part of the project: Kavos (on the uninhabited island of Keros) and Dhaskalio (on the right), 180 meters across water from Kavos on an islet (remember the blog about whether they were connected in antiquity or not – well the geologists all agree now that they were probably one land mass during the Early Bronze Age and then rising sea levels and tectonic movement created the divide).

Dhaskalio on the right; to the left is the edge of Keros, the much larger but uninhabited island.

Arriving at the sites, everyone gathers knapsacks, water containers, equipment, coolers with lunch, etc and must get that from the rocking boat on to the jutting rocks.

On Dhaskalio, the excavation area is directly up a steep ascent of loose rock, with all of this gear; Professor Renfrew, who is in his 70s, makes this climb every day; Yo admits that it was gratifying to hear people more than 20 years younger huffing and puffing their way up.

A nice calm day on the boat, with Dhaskalio in the background.

MB and A. surveying on the steep slopes of Dhaskalio.

The lunch spot on the steep slope of Dhaskalio. Those working on other site of Kavos (on the other island of Keros) claimed that they had a much nicer lunch place.

At the summit, excavations have exposed impressive dry masonry walls stretching across the entire site.

The first day Yo was visiting Dhaskalio, that nice Med breeze was whipping off the sea and up the side of the sheer rocks at about 7-8. Sand, dust and rock particles were flying and whipping about like a small xhamsin. Students excavating were wrapped up like Tuareg nomads, only their eyes visible, and those covered by sunglasses. (Apparently suggestions that the dermabrasion should be viewed as a free perk were met with steely stares). But not every day was so harsh, and Yo soon got his opportunity to excavate. At the end of the season manpower was in short supply, and overhearing a need for people to excavate, Yo volunteered and was quickly dropped in an excavation area with the very capable supervisor/graduate student C. Duckworth, who has such a cool name we're temporarily dispensing with that whole blog anonymity thing. Although only able to excavate a few days before the end of the season, Yo exposed one of the coolest finds he has ever personally excavated. Three copper axes placed in a small cache or hoard is a very unusual find for the Early Cycladic period, particularly because these were found in archaeological context rather than as a chance find or by a looter. (As excavation directors can sometimes be sensitive about photos of such artifacts published without approval, we are not including the picture).

Eventually, however, Yo had to return to looking at stone artifacts. Mo, as director of the field school, had her hands full when she was recruited to draw final plans for the site before the backfilling could take place. Days after the excavation was to close down, a few people, including Mo, were continuing to go out to the site to draw sections, plans, photograph and supervise the backfilling.

Almost 2 weeks after the formal excavations officially ended, we finally escaped to the nearby larger, touristic island of Naxos, where we have been now for a week. Our next blogs will be about our adventures on Naxos. The entries will be mostly about food, as Yo is obsessed with food and he has been eating a lot of “white bait” and octopus.

Adventures on Naxos

We left Koufonisi on the Blue Star which goes on to Athens (Pireaus) bright and early – 6:55am. We were traveling with our pal AB who in true Geek tradition had been out dancing all night so she had not even been to bed. We left the dancing party at 2:00am, which is WAAAaaay past Mo’s bedtime, so we arrived on Naxos pretty tired (well Mo was definitely exhausted after 2 months in the field). Naxos is a lazy beach type of place where you can basically “do nothing” for days. The first day we made it to the Apollo Temple on the port of Naxos and then had some yummy Tex-Mex food (a place recommended by our good friends RM and WM). True, it may not have been Austin standard Tex-Mex but it was pretty tasty for a place in the middle of the Cyclades, and Mo was happy that it wasn’t Greek food.

Day two we lazed about, ate some chocolate croissants and then hiked up to the Monastery and small cave chapel in the hills behind the harbor of Naxos.

Theologaki near the Convent of St. John Chrysostomos

Red starfish for the collection box in the Theologaki cave chapel?

We both agreed that most people here do not walk anywhere; most people seem to rent mopeds, ATVs or cars to get around, but we were looking for the Early Bronze Age Cycladic cemetery of Aplomata on the way so we were definitely walking off of the beaten track. Earlier in the day we visited the museum in the Venetian Castro area which is filled with Cycladic material similar to the stuff we were finding at Keros. Some of the material in the museum is from Keros but the signs and labels leave a lot to be desired so we had no clues as to where the artifacts actually came from when there was one sign for an entire case of figurines. That evening we went to see Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Crystal Skulls at the outdoor theatre, definitely the best way to view an Indy movie – outside with a beer – FUN! On Wednesday we felt that we should join the beach world and actually go swimming. Of course we had an adventure as we hiked about 6kms to get to the beach on the other side of the harbor where we “thought” it would be less crowded. Ha ha ha. Everyone has wheels so the beach was packed, but after walking all that way we bit the bullet and rented beach chairs for the day. As you can imagine Mo (who definitely suffers from ants in her pants) was not long for the beach world so one day sufficed.

To see more of the island we decided a car was necessary, so off to Fun Car we went; Mo was having nothing to do with driving an ATV around the island, so we rented a little car and headed to Mount Zas (Zeus). We intended to find the cave where the earliest Neolithic materials from the Cyclades were excavated.

On the way we stopped at a little church (Ayios Nikolaos, above) and visited a reconstructed 6th century BC temple, possibly dedicated to Demeter and later converted into a church. By the time we got to the ravine where the path leads up to Mt. Zas, it was mid-day and the sun was beating down. We hadn’t gone far before we came upon a cave, but deciding that this couldn’t be the cave, continued on up.

Morag heading up the start of the trail, Mt. Zas looming over her. The nice paved trail didn't go far.

The trek was very steep and we saw no one save some goats on the way up, but the trail was relatively well marked and we made the ascent of just over one kilometer (in elevation) in just over an hour. When we got to the top we met some Aussies who we could see arriving just in front of us – it turns out that we came up the hard way! Count on Yo and Mo.

On the summit of Mt. Zas

The top of the peak afforded a view of virtually the entire island, and we could see the islands of Keros and Koufinisi from which we had so recently made our escape.

Our chatty companions left soon after and we enjoyed the silence of the mountain top before heading back down to look at the cave, which turned out to be the Neolithic site. When we finally got back in the car, hungry and with no water left, we soon got lost (how is that possible on such a small island?) and finally happened upon a taverna that provided a delightful surprise of wonderful food on a breezy porch to ourselves overlooking a beautiful little village called Melanes.
Our next day with wheels took us through the center of the island, where we visited an ancient kouros, unfinished in the quarry where the ancient sculptors had abandoned it.

Nearby marble quarries are still in operation; Naxos marble continues to be valuable.

Later we visited Apiranthos, where a small museum included many more Cycladic figurines, marble bowls and other familiar artifacts. Nearby, the emery mines of Naxos have not fared as well as the marble quarries, and are now apparently abandoned. We continued on down to the port where the emery was once loaded and shipped.

Moutsouna: where Mo tired of tentacles and suckers. She'll miss them when she returns to Canada and its all, all the time!

After a yummy lunch where Yo hogged the cheese and Mo finally tired of octopus, we headed down to a remote beach (Psili Ammos). This was truly a beautiful beach, where you can see how few people we had to share it with.

As usual, however, Dr. AntsnPants couldn’t sit still that long and we soon hit the road after a nice swim and brief sunning. Our remaining two days included swims in the bay (no sand stuck in your toes Mo!) and a bike ride way down to another nice beach, populated by too many people edging towards 90 y.o. with no clothes on. Before returning nice margaritas were discovered, and we reined in the urge for a second one, knowing that the return bike ride might not go so well after two margaritas and much sun and surf.
Finally it came time to leave behind Naxos. As this blog is written, Mo is headed on ferry to Crete via Santorini, and Yo took a ferry back to Athens (via way too many other places!) for his flight back to Jerusalem. Yo will probably continue posting when he gets out of the library, but Mo will probably have very little access while on her next archaeological project.

Fieldwork at Wissad and Maitland's Fort

2008-06-06T21:28:00.025+03:00

Hopefully many of our readers know that Mo has been in the field for over a month on a small Greek island with very limited access to the web. I've been in Jerusalem, but with very little time before the beginning of the summer season and not much of interest to tell.

However, in the middle of May, Yo joined Prof G and Dr. AW for fieldwork at two sites: Wissad and Maitland's Fort. The focus was primarily on the Wissad Pool's area where AW and G planned a season of survey and mapping; we hoped to add just a few day's work to the season at Maitland's Fort. Longtime readers of this blog will recall Prof G's work in beautiful Wadi Ramm (mentioned in this blog on September 17 and August 29, 2007), which is easily accessible from the main desert highway just north of Aqaba.

Not so Wissad. Wissad is about 4 hours drive over dirt track from Azraq, already about 1 1/2 hours to the east of Amman. Readers may recall several visits to Maitland's Fort, most recently made with Mo on Boxing Day; Wissad is two additional hours to the east past Maitland's Fort. This remorte area in the 'badia' of eastern Jordan is a remote area of basalt thinly covering sand or limestone, with the occassional dry lakebed (known as a 'qa') separating these rocky areas. Here is a picture of the basaltic landscape.

The lakebeds, although dry now, are clearly active at times and provide water for the bedouin flocks. Here's a picture of Prof. G walking across a qa during a day of hot survey.

In such a remote location, with no roads and no cell phone reception, we had to bring everything we might need with us, all in one small truck. Using a trusty Toyota rented from S., we brought 3 tents, enough water for many days, a gas cook stove, bedding, food, extra diesel, TWO spare tires (good thing too, as we got a flat tire the first day before we even got to the site!) and plenty of beer. Here you can see Dr. AW unpacking when we first arrived at Wissad.

If you look just past the truck in the photo, you can see very light colored rock (actually, basalt), with a very straight line. These are all basalt boulders, and the lighter stone demarcates the line of sediments in the pool deposited by the pools of water. There probably would have still been water in the pools, but the badia police told us that the bedouin came with trucks and sucked the water out for their flocks elsewhere. So this would have been a very desirable spot for many thousands of years, despite the remote and rugged nature of the area.

So, what were we doing here? Prof G and Dr AW had visited before and wanted to begin documenting the area; establish the boundaries of their survey area, get a better understanding of what is there, and begin recording some of the structures. What is particularly interesting about the area is the high number of burials which range from tumuli (piles of rocks) to 'tower tombs' (the remains of tower-like structures built over chambers, as well as enclosures that are similar to modern sheep pens and probably served the same function. Everything is made out of the local basalt.

Here is picture of a "tower tomb":

And the picture above is a small circular structure, possibly with a standing stone (whitish upright stone).

Two primary questions to answer:

1) When were these different structures built?

2) How did they function?

In order to determine function, we can see by parallels to structures in other regions that many of these were certainly tombs. Others are less clear; large piles of rubble area probably collapse, destroyed or looted tomb structures. Some were clearly looted, and that allows us to see the interior chambers. (probably there was nothing there for the looters, who in these far-flung places are typically looking for gold).

The dating of the tombs is tricky. We were only surveying, not excavating, so we had to rely on material in and around these structures on the surface. There is very little material culture, and what is on the surface is not necessarily associated with the architecture. Still, if you begin to see a pattern of the material culture then that strengthens the association. So, for example, Prof G - an expert on Neolithic flint tools and production - could tell that much of the flint we were finding was either Pre Pottery Neolithic or Late Neolithic. For example, here is a Neolithic arrowhead, just as we found it:

We also found other arrowheads, some dated to the PPN and some to the Late Neolithic. The most symmetrical, beautiful flint object we found was discovered by Prof G. in an area where we also found a concentration of great rock art. The flint object may have been a knife, possibly even Chalcolithic (although I have never seen such a tool in the regions where I work in the Chalcolithic).

The rock art in this area is amazing. Concentrated in two areas, there were a number of identifiable themes. Animals were prevalent, of course, possibly reflecting a prime area for hunters: overlooking the pools that would have drawn animals. Animals included ibex, with the long curving horns arcing back to their rear:

The one above included other animals as well, possibly gazelle, and an odd creature that we couldn't decide on: hyena? Lion?

Another theme in the rock art were circular structures joined by a single wall or line. In some, there was an animal in the very center, possibly a gazelle or other cervid. Could these be depictions of 'kites' (enclosures used by hunters out in the desert to corral animals), or simply corrals of pastoralists? The animals depicted look more like wild animals rather than domesticated goats. You can sort of make out this type of rock art in the shot below.

Although we spent just about 12 days doing archaeology in the area (without a shower or bath), there was more to the landscape than archaeology. We started with a full moon and by the end of our time there, the night sky was wonderful, with Iridium flashes, many satellites, falling stars and constellations. We saw some wildlife, including a jackal, many lizards, including two amazing yellow lizards that looked as thick as my arm, and ran incredibly fast. One of them ran, the other stayed in place:

On the third day there, early in the morning, I discovered a small (c. 80 cm) snake in my path. Rather than dart away under a rock, s/he spent all of its time flaring its neck, and taking an aggressive, threatening pose. Perhaps this is the 'false cobra' which certainly would be a good name. When asked, the badia police who were visiting us one night said that it is poisonous, but I'm still unsure. But this little snake wouldn't back down! (too bad the light was poor, or I had the camera on the wrong setting!).

After four days, a gang from ACOR and the CBRL came for a visit. They brought with them coolers that had some cold beer, iced water, and many other special treats such as apples, bananas, oranges, Caol Ila, and too many other good treats to list here. We spent the evening chatting, eating E!'s amazing mole chicken that had been frozen - this was the most amazing wonderful flavor, even though it had only been four days of tinned food! Here's the gang.

We were actually very lucky because most days were merely hot, rather than blazing, must-quit-early hot. But a few were pretty hot. So what do you do? Get out of the sun, obviously. So we built our own shade where spent some time huddled in the afternoon, putting wetted bandanas over our heads to cool us -- which works beautifully -- and to keep the incessant, nasty, annoying flies away.

The picture above was actually taken later when we returned to Maitland's Fort, where it really was quite hot. Wet kerchief works well as an air-conditioning unit not only for the head, but for other things such as beer, as long as there is a breeze.

Finally, for amusement, or because we had been in the sun too long, we sought transformative experiences through nature.

Although our efforts at aerial photography were thwarted early on by the demise of the camera, we had a very successful field season -brief as it was - and discovered many new sites, burial structures, and artifacts. We spent most of our time at Wissad, but also spent two days at Maitland's Fort before heading back to Amman. I think we all hope to return soon to follow up at both sites.

Another Conversation

2008-04-22T10:15:00.002+03:00

This posting is for our good friend from NOLA. He seems to be the only person reading our blog at the moment and he recently posted about Canadians. Just before I left for Athens I was in the car with my niece LL and her parents BDL and MRK. We were on on our way to see "Horton Hears a Who". This was the conversation:

LL: My butt is sore.

MRK (LL's mom): LL we like to say bum and not butt in our house - butt is what Americans say, we say bum in Canada. (Now I am not sure this is entirely true because as many of you know our family view of - what is Canadian - is somewhat skewed since we grew up in a little slice of Scotland that just happened to be located in Ontario).

LL: All the kids on TV say butt.

MRK: They are all Americans, it sounds more polite to say bum.

This is followed by a silence where I (sitting in the back seat with LL) can see the mental wheels turning as she thinks about her next response.

LL: How about ass, can I say ass? That's another word for butt, I mean bum.

MRK: LL! where did you hear that, no you cannot use ass, that is rude.

LL: Aunt Mo says it all of the time.

Once again there is silence in the car, although I can see BDL can barely keep the car on the road because he is trying not to laugh out loud. And my sister, who is trying to be the word use monitor, is barely keeping it together. So I chime in:

Mo: LL sometimes I am a bad aunt and use the wrong language in front of little kids. I really try to be polite but sometimes I forget, sorry. You shouldn't say ass and I shouldn't either, we should all say bum like good Canadians. Although in my defense ass is universally understood whether you are Canadian or American.

MRK was not buying that.

Conversations Overheard

2008-04-21T23:35:00.002+03:00

Niece #1 to Nephew #1 - Why are you so crusty (the term we use in our family to refer to people who are very cranky). You are a real crusty mccrusty.

Nephew#1 to Niece #1 - I don't know.

Niece #1 to Nephew #1 - You should eat your vegetables, they make you feel better and they don't make you crusty.

Nephew#1 to Niece #1 - I am NOT eating any vegetables, only Pokemon makes me feel better.

Niece #1 to Nephew #1 -You should still eat your vegetables it really helps.

Niece #2 - I eat my vegetables (sometimes) and they always make me feel better.

I was the only adult at home during this exchange and none of the parents believed me when I related the story, except for the part when Nephew #1 says he isn't going to eat any vegetables.

Vegetables are the key to happiness.

Hanging with the Rellies in Paradise

2008-04-20T21:59:00.005+03:00

Yo and I are very fortunate to have some very generous relatives. At various times throughout our married life we have "stayed" with Yo's brother and my sister while one of us (Yo) was overseas. At the moment I (Mo) am living with my roomie BDL: usually it's just me, BDL, Kitty and Davidson hanging in Bloor West Village. It's a lot of fun, watching bad TV (usually a variation of CSI or Law and Order) and having someone around when you get home from a bad day at work (for BDL) or the library for me. One of the other perks of living with relatives is spending time with our nieces and nephews. I was very fortunate to have an adventure with LL (daughter of MRK and BDL) in March. Her parents had "some business" to take care of in Canouan - a small island in the Grenadines, so I went halfway through their stay to "help" out with LL (which involved singing a lot of tunes from High Musical II and swimming in the luxury pool).
We stayed at the Raffles Resort. The resort is set on 300 acres of a 1200-acre private estate featuring three secluded, white sand beaches, all surrounded by one of the world's largest coral reefs. The Raffles Resort is set amphitheatre style around the protected bay with each of the 156 single and double story luxury villas offering breathtaking views. I leave you to decide whether being the crazy aunt is a tough life or not....

For those of you who have met my sister you know that we are quite different people. She is typically 1st class while I am definitely 3rd class or coach, so this was my first adventure in real luxury. It started with a small plane from Barbados to Canouan - for Raffles Resort people only.

LL and I played a lot of "chase the my little pony".
We ate a lot at the breakfast buffet . . .

We "surfed" a lot . . .

We made pizza at the kids club.

We swam all day, every day. For sure LL was the first person in the pool everyday without fail.

We had drinks at the swim up bar . . . Virgin pina colada for LL, dry martini for me.Then we played with the little umbrellas that came in our drinks from the swim up bar.

We hung out with LL's mom - MRK.

And finally we read books as we traveled home on the "private jet".It was an awesome trip (although I did have some heat rash). HUGE THANKS LL, MRK and BDL!

On the road again

2008-04-19T23:24:00.006+03:00

Sometimes it is difficult to keep tack of our collective movements - March and April have been busy times for us. Here is a brief recap of what we have been up to:

SAAs in Vancouver

Part of our "job" is to present the results of our research at academic meetings. It's fun to attend these meetings, you see old friends, visit a new city, hear some good papers and hopefully get feedback on your own work. At the end of March I (Mo) went to Vancouver for the SAA (Society of American Archaeology) meetings. It was the first time I had visited the west coast of Canada and I high hopes for an early spring. Alas the weathr was unseasonably cold - a freak snowstorm, hail, sleet and constant drizzle. Even though the weather was miserable, Dr. J and I went out to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, which was great.

Vancouver is beautiful and I am sure that it's a great place to live when it isn't unseasonably cold. I was very lucky to see some friends from Cambridge and their new family member - Harry. Thanks very much for making the trek to Vancouver G-Lo, Megs and Harry. The papers I presented went well and I got to hang with some fun friends, so it was fun.

DEAD SEA MARATHON

Once again Yo participated in the Dead Sea Marathon. You'll recall that last year he and AMP ran the 10k. This year Yo and my Cambridge pal HS ran the half marathon. Yo survived, but HS won her category - yeah for HS. Unfortunately no photos were taken . . .

MO BACK IN GREECE

I am now back in Greece gearing up for two field schools. On Friday I went my friend TL (a neolithic pottery expert) on a little trip to Mycenae, Naphlion and Franchthi Cave.

MYCENAE

Mycenae is a site that I have wanted to visit since my high school classical studies days with Roger McCombe. It did not disappoint. The ancient city of Mycenae was once thought to exist only in ancient Greek legend and the epic poetry of Homer. It wasn't until 1870 that an amateur archaeologist named Heinrich Schliemann (excavator of Troy) found the fabled city. Many people doubted that he would find such a city, but using only landmarks from the text of Homers Iliad, Schliemann uncovered the remains of a once thriving civilization. The city of Mycenae was the center of a large and powerful Mycenaean Greek civilization, which existed from circa 1900 B.C.E. to circa 1125 B.C.E. It is located in the south central part of what is present day Greece. The Mycenaean civilization was at its height between 1400 and 1200 B.C.E. It is believed that the entire civilization consisted of a few loosely joined city-states.

Grave Circle A

The main entrance through the circuit wall was made grand by the best known feature of Mycenae, the Lion Gate, through which passed a stepped ramp leading past grave circle A and up to the palace. The Lion Gate was built in the form of a 'Relieving Triangle' to support the weight of the stones.

Steps leading to the secret entrance to the cistern where water for the city was collected.

The site is well known for a series of tholos tombs

Interior of a tholos tomb

Legend has it that the site was built by Cyclops (those one-eyed giant creatures from Homeric myth) because the building blocks are so large.

It was a beautiful day and the poppies were in bloom. On my way to meet TL (he dropped me off and went to look at some Neolithic pottery) I passed some tourist shops and some "replica workshops", which as you all know I find fascinating.

FRANCHTHI CAVE

the way to Franchthi -

When I did my undergraduate degree in Classics I took a class in Prehistoric Greece. We were each assigned a site to present and mine was Franchthi Cave. Franchthi Cave is located in southeastern Argolid, across a small bay from the modern Greek village of Koilada. It is by far the longest recorded continuous occupational sequence from any one site in Greece. It is unique for having unbroken series of deposits spanning the period from ca. 20,000 BCE down to ca. 3000 BCE. Excavation by Karen Vitelli began in 1967 and ended in 1976. The dates for the various phases of occupation in the cave are from radiocarbon analysis of a total of over fifty samples, the largest number of radiocarbon samples from any prehistoric site in Greece.

There are many reasons why Franchthi Cave is an important site; three of them are the length and period of occupation, the quality of preservation of the seed and bone assemblages, and the fact that it was excavated in modern times. Length and period of occupation. The site was occupied, more or less continuously, for about 25,000 years, during which time came the invention of agriculture and pastoralism. What that means is that changes that were wrought by these phenomenal leaps in human understanding can be traced at one place, by examining differences between different layers. One of the most interesting things I saw was the continued use of the cave until today as a sheep pen.

Quality of preservation. In most of the layers excavated at Franchthi cave, remnants of animals and plants in the form of bone, shell, seed, and pollen were preserved. These kinds of artifacts have provided researchers with a wealth of information concerning diet and the course of domestication.

Modern excavation techniques. Franchthi cave was excavated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, by the Universities of Indiana and Pennsylvania and the American School in Classical Studies at Athens. These researchers paid attention to stratigraphic layers, and kept much of the faunal and floral materials that would have been ignored or thrown away in earlier times. (some information courtesy of http://archaeology.about.com/od/archa13/a/franchthi.htm)

Today the publication of the site is (in)famous. Vitelli received funds from the White-Levy publication fund and as per the contract for receiving the $$ Professor Vitelli acknowledged the funding source. On the next page Professor Vitelli suggested that the White-Levys should not collect unprovenienced material - causing many to state that "she bit the hand that fed her". It's an interesting ethical dilemma that I have used in past classes.

I'll be in Greece until the end of July on various projects, but sometimes without internet access. Yo is coming out to Keros at the beginning of June (yeah!!), so perhaps we can post some images of us in the same place.

An Early Bronze Day (well, mostly)

2008-03-19T10:42:00.020+02:00

Invited for a day out to visit archaeological sites with two friends and colleagues, Yo jumped at the chance to enjoy a spring day visiting new places. Our two leaders of the journey were Dr. B and Dr. vdB. Dr. B is considered one of the leading experts on the Early Bronze Age in the southern Levant, particularly the pottery made during the earliest phases of the EBA. Dr. vdB (seen below) is, in fact, a noted authority on early predynastic Egypt, but has now been working in Israel for some years and has a great deal of expertise in the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze.

Dr. vdB enjoying the tour led by S near Fasa'el.

A beautiful day, with green hills that are usually brown or white, the flowers were thriving and the air was crisp and clear. Our first stop were the excavations directed by a graduate student, Sh., who is excavating sites in the area of Faza'el, an area in the Jordan Valley section of the PA (Palestine Autonomous area), north of Jericho. Excavations at this site exposed remarkably well preserved walls virtually at the ground surface, including curvilinear walls typically of EB I. In addition to the preserved, well-made walls of rooms and alleys, a very nicely preserved silo with the entrance is easy to see.

S., graduate student and director of excavations.

Fossilized ammonites (?) in the excavations - art for the EB folk?

Excavation squares (above); excavated silo (below) with baulk still cutting across the silo.

Nearby there was some sort of Roman structure, unexcavated; you might be able to just make out the line of walls.

Below, you can just make out the large boulders of some Roman enclosure or building.
In the immediate area we also visited a site partially destroyed by the security fence (below) for the local settlement, possibly a Chalcolithic site.

Yo at Fasa'el

After visiting these sites in the immediate area of Fasa'el, we drove back down the Jordan Valley rode toward Jericho. We first stopped in a beautiful little wadi (valley) known as Wadi Uja, with flowing water, some large caves visible up in the cliffs and a riot of wildflowers. We visited a site, probably occupied during various periods, possibly the Chalcolithic, the Early Bronze and porbably some later occupation as well.

Above, looking west up the wadi.
Above: The guys walking back across the site towards the vehicle amid wildflowers.

From there we went back out on the Jordan Valley rode where we visited a site immediately next to the road, just to the west on the hill above. This site, only recently identified and called something like "Hujet Musa", is thought to represent a period around the late Epipaleolithic or very early Pre-pottery Neolithic. The remains of the round stone structures of these hunter-gatherers are easily visible on the surface slope; all around the site are deep holes in the bedrock stone. These holes probably represent what are known as "bedrock mortars", spots where the people used to use long pestles to crush various nuts, grasses and other tasty treats. Over 200 were identified in the immediate vicinity of the site.

Note circular structures at ground surface. Thick line of stones near feet are NOT a wall, but an infilled trial trench.

Below, bedrock mortar

Below, Jordan Valley road with truckload o' cows going by. Next road is security fence and road used by army. Jordan is just across the river to east.

From here we went to Tiberias to visit the salvage excavations led by Dr. Y. A pipeline going in very near the road will destroy the archaeological remains, so Dr. Y's job is to salvage and document all of the ancient remains in that immediate area. His excavations exposed two different levels of occupation; an Early Bronze period which included some large architecture, and a Fatimid (Islamic) period occupation. These revealed an unusual aspect of re-use, where it appears that the Fatimid people re-used the much earlier (c. 4,000 years!?) architecture into their own buildings.

Hey kids! Remember this: good archaeologists don't sit on the ancient architecture!

The view from the excavations in Tiberias - not so shabby!

From Tiberias we went up near the "Golani junction" to have a picnic up in a wooded area. Although we weren't able to find a picnic table for Dr. B, he nevertheless shared an amazing lunch with us. Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures, but suffice to say, 4 archaeologists sitting around in the woods eating lunch was vastly more pleasurable for us than it would be for you to witness it.

We then made one final stop to excavations in the town of Kfar Kana. We weren't sure exactly where the excavations were exactly, which led to bickering between Dr. B and Dr. vdB that sounded like an old married couple. As we headed into town, one's mood could only lighten in the knowledge that at MonaLiza you could become a new woman.
We eventually did find the excavations, which included more stone walls of various thicknesses. I'm sparing you these particular walls; suffice to say that some were very large, thick walls, possibly fortification walls, except that they are being dated to the earliest phases of the EBA, which makes fortificaiton unlikely.

From Kfar Kana we went to Dr. vdB's new place in the town of Zefat (Safad, and many other spellings), at one time one of the centers for mystical Judaism, and something of a tourist attraction, with a small but thriving arts community. Many of those people have moved on, yet it remains a largely religious town.

We admired Dr. vdB's view over the Sea of Galilee and Tiberias to the south; even though it was quite hazy this day, his view from the backyard is still quite beautiful. After some drinks and a wonderful meal we sat and chatted and listened to music. The next morning I tried a Dutch taste treat for breakfast which I've never had before: chocolate sprinkles on buttered bread. Yum! Quite the tasty way to start the day!

View to the south from Dr. vdB's backyard (above) and his backyard (below).

Chocolate sprinkles, breakfast of champions! YUM!

Many thanks to Drs. B and vdB for inviting me, it was a great trip!

Keeping Busy

2008-03-10T19:03:00.008+02:00

Once again I (Mo) have been a bad blogger - just not that much going on and I am not sure that reporting on the interior of my "office" would be all that interesting. Basically I've just been working and shoveling snow . . . However in the past of couple weeks I did do some interesting things.

Visiting Mrs. Fleming's Grade One Class

A few months ago our 5 year old niece decided that it would be interesting for her class if "someone" (since Yo is in the Middle East that would be Mo) came to talk about archaeology. Last week I went to the class taking along a bag of goodies. I borrowed some Jordanian artifacts from the lab at UToronto and took my tools and dressed like an archaeologist. The kids were great, they asked a ton of questions and had some great guesses about the various artifacts I took along.

Sample Questions:

1. How old are you? LL and I had practiced my talk before I went to the class and she assured me that someone would ask how old I was - I was unconvinced but we practiced the answer at her insistence.

2. How many years have you been in school? We glossed over the answer so as not to put the fear of god into these budding academics.

3. What cities do you work in? Memphis, but not where Elvis comes from. "My dad has Elvis albums" "Who is Elvis?" I left Mrs. Fleming to answer that question.

4. Are you a paleontologist - another classmate answered - "no she doesn't dig up dinosaurs, so she's an archaeologist". Great when the kids do the work for you.

5. Do you watch the Magic School Bus? They have archaeologists on that show.

6. Is that used for air hockey? It was a ceramic handle that did look like an air hockey paddle (only in Canada).

I asked one of LL's classmates if he wanted to be an archaeologist (he asked a LOT of questions) he answered - "no I am going to work at MarineLand (like San Diego Sea World, near Niagara Falls) with the dolphins". LL tells me later that this little guy is obsessed with dolphins, sharks and pandas and "we aren't supposed to talk to him about them, he gets too excited". Kids make me laugh.

Archaeology is in the news in our small town of Ingersoll as during the development of a site downtown, some skeletal remains were uncovered. The remains may be associated with the nearby Catholic Church or they might be the remains of some individuals who were part of the Underground Railroad. Investigations are continuing but when I mentioned the Underground Railroad the kids wanted to know what that was - Mrs. Fleming left me to explain that one . . .

I stayed about 45 minutes and I think that kids enjoyed measuring each other, using the calipers, and guessing the potential uses of the artifacts.
Raptor Girls

On Sunday afternoon I went with my pal Dr. J to a Raptors' game (Toronto's NBA team), tickets courtesy of the ever generous brother in law BDL. I had never been to a game nor had Dr. J, we both admitted that while neither of us were bball fans, we were interested in the spectacle - the game did not disappoint. Unlike baseball (Dr. J is a huge Red Sox Fan) there is constant music, noise and movement - the action never stops. As I waited on the subway platform to meet Dr. J, I overheard two fans "this is going to be an excellent game. It's sold out, and the Supersonics (Seattle) are a great team". I felt a bit guilty because we had great seats and these die hard fans were probably not in row 10. We sat next to a guy and his little boy - they have been season ticket holders since the beginning and knew all of the ins and outs of attending.

Like when the opposing team is taking their foul shot the fans have to make tons of noise with these clappers.
When to dance, so the camera will zoom in on you and you'll be on the big screen. No picture because "we do not dance".When to shout defense and when to clap. For two very tall women (hovering around 6ft) we really had no clue.
This is the pretty creepy Raptor who rolls around on the floor and throughout the crowd. Apparently you can "rent" him for birthday parties . . .
The final score - yeah the Raptors won!Thanks BDL we had a great time!

Mt. Gilboa/Yitzpor

2008-02-17T18:45:00.016+02:00

As some readers of this blog already know, Yo moved operations over to the Albright a few weeks ago. This entailed a bit more work than usual to cross a border, because in addition to the usual suitcases, 7 boxes of books, notes and papers were lugged along. Here is Yo preparing to leave Amman, not exactly traveling light!

Nevertheless, through the good services of Arrow VIP services and at some additional cost everything arrived and Yo stayed with Dr. D, a friend of many years. After about 10 days there was space at the Albright and Yo moved into his small room with the unheated bathroom and shower down the hall. This was just in time for a big snow, which didn't quite shut down the city, but pretty close. It was a very wet snow, and so walking around entailed getting soaked within minutes. Here is the Albright Institute in the snow.

And here is the Mt. of Olives in the snow, with the Church of Mary Magdalene barely visible.

In the more north-easterly direction is Mt. Scopus, not really visible behind all the fat wet flakes falling.

And here is the Rockefeller Museum tower.

However, this snow was about two weeks ago, and yesterday was predicted to be fairly nice.

So, Yo joined Albright resident scholars A, R and C to visit an area near Mt. Gilboa, to the west of Bet Shan. This entailed going down Rte 6666, otherwise known as "The Way of the Beast" - or at least, in our car, thats how it was known.

Arriving at the muddy entrance to the small park, a collection of cyclists came zooming past in the early morning sunshine.

Our intrepid group had three goals for this trip into the heart of Nahal Yizpor: 1) identify and photograph irises, 2) re-enact popular biblical narratives, and 3) try bbq rock hyrax.

To our surprise, many wildflowers were in bloom.

Here we see A examining some specimens more closely to judge whether or not they might be irises, or at least good bait for hyraxes. They were neither.

The way down was very muddy and thus very slippery. Stopping on the way down, a quick enactment of Saul falling on his own sword allowed us to check off goal number 2 for this trip. For good measure, a smiting scene was thrown in....
Heading down the wadi, the valley bottom with Beth Sean and the Jordan highlands in background became visible. Finally we were able to find a sunny place with flat rocks for a lunch of hummus and strawberries; it was also an ideal vantage point for spotting the rock hyrax for the bbq later.
As we headed back out, Dr. T was viciously attacked by a bush; A. galantly saved her just before we were about to abandon her to her fate with the voracious local wild hyraxes.

The way back up was much easier because the ground had dried and our balance was easier. After returning to the car, we moved up to the next short hiking area which offers short trails leading up to an old tower and provides wonderful views of the Jordan Valley, Jezreel, and even the Jaulan in the background.

After all of this we were all getting a bit whiny and hungry; some needed coffee, others a beer, still others a nap. Although we had reservations for 6 pm at the Herb Farm (thanks for the number and directions B!), we arrived more than an hour early. Through a pure charm offensive, the waitress was persuaded to let us dine earlier; the many available tables might also have been a contributing factor. We had a yummy meal, with great salad, homemade breads, pasta and other treats. Oh yes, especially the "chocolate treats" option - highly recommended by Dr. T. and Y.

Dr T and Yo with the great view in the background that A and R were able to enjoy while at the Herb Restaurant. Although we failed to find any irises or hyrax bbq, it was still a great day!

A Late Christmas Lunch at ACOR

2008-01-19T16:40:00.000+02:00

You might remember the gingerbread house we constructed around Christmas time, a fun project that helped bring a bit of holiday spirit to ACOR. That house decorated the front room of ACOR for some weeks before the big Christmas lunch, which occurred much later (in mid-January) for a variety of reasons. That large lunch included the employees and their families, so Abed, Naif and Said's children came and were fascinated by the gingerbread house. If you remember, originally it looked like this. (Yo is particularly proud of his icicles hanging from the eaves!). Well, actually, in this picture the chimney is missing already because Yo ate it long ago!

But it was time to decide what to do with the house. Figuring that no one would care too much if the house had been sitting out for a few weeks, we declared it open season on the gingerbread house.

This was popular, and within minutes the house looked like this:

Yo helped with the devouring, and helped 'raise the roof', although the candies proved more popular than the rather cardboardish house structure of gingerbread.

In the end there was not a candy left, and although it looks like a tornado hit it, it was clear many enjoyed this novel experience.

Antartica Fun Facts: Animal House Version

2008-01-11T09:06:00.000+02:00

We've been closely following the unfolding news about Antartica and fun facts over at the Life of Wiley blog, but we noticed many stories about penguins, cyanobacteria, cephalopods and other such ocean detritus (oh, and how much warmer it is than South Bend!). But what we did not see was the reason for the trip.

But this news story offers a clue to the true purpose of the trip. Who needs Padre Island or Daytona Beach?

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN0954453620080109?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews

Hopefully things have calmed down since Christmas. If not, watch out Wiley, mom is going to be tired when she gets back!

Have a good trip, and be good boys!

Build a Bear!!!

2008-01-05T00:27:00.001+02:00

As many of you know Yo is obsessed with Build a Bear. We have all heard his idea of opening a franchise in the Mecca Mall in Amman. We've seen the store front in malls but have never visited. Yesterday Mo had the opportunity to visit a store and watch the building a bear process in person. For Christmas our nieces and nephew each got a certificate to Build a Bear and yesterday was the day. Boy were they excited!! Here are the 3 bear builders (MRK, LL and FMK) outside the store:

The store is actually not that big but it is overwhelming - filled with animals, clothes and accessories.
STEP 1: picking a "bear" and bear is a misnomer since you can choose from all different types of animals. Here MRK is deciding between a triceratops and a moose. Of course being a good Canadian he chose the moose, whom he named Elliot.

STEP 2: You get to pick a sound that goes with your animal. Here LL and FMK are picking their sounds. LL chose a cheetah as her bear and she picked the "hello girlfriend, you are my best friend" sound. FMK chose a bunny as her bear and then chose the monkey sound to accompany her bunny. When we got to the next step (stuffing) Courtney (our stuffer) said she had never come across anyone who wanted the monkey sound put into a bunny. That's FMK she marches to her own drummer, definitely related to Mo.

STEP 3: waiting in line for the stuffing. Here are the patient new "best friends" and Mo waiting in the line. We asked and apparently it's always like this no matter what day or time, always a line and always pretty busy.

Once we got to the front of the stuffing line the next step is giving your bear to Courtney and then you get to step on the peddle that controls the stuffing of the bear. Here MRK is a little unsure of the stuffing procedure. But the very helpful Courtney (seen here stuffing FMK's bunny) was very reassuring and asked all the right questions. STEP 4: Giving the animals a heart. This part of the process is fascinating. Here Courtney asked each of the kids to pick up a heart that would be put into their bear. She asked them to rub the heart between their hands to get the hearts warm and beating. Then they were asked to rub the heart on their heads and stomach to make sure that the animals would be wise and never go hungry. They had to promise to always look after their animal. STEP 5: Fluffing and grooming. There is a station where the kids can brush and fluff up their bears.STEP 6: Clothing the bears, because no animal can ever be naked. . .

Here LL surveys the array of clothes to choose from. This was definitely the most overwhelming and costly part of the adventure. At one point LL had her cheetah completely dressed but she decided that the tiara she had chosen didn't go with the outfit and she wanted the "change" her clothes, but we had already taken the tags off so we "owned" the original clothes she chose. It's an interesting lesson in making choices and living with them. It is Canada so there was the requisite Mountie outfit.But it was definitely game over for MRK when he saw the hockey outfits. Elliot was to be dressed in an Ottawa Senators (his favourite team) outfit, skates, stick and puck. Here is MRK dressing his moose:

STEP 7: Picking a name

This is a very important part of the build a bear process - picking name. It's here that you enter your details so they can contact you in the future to lure you in to buy more things and revisit the store. You fill out the details and then when you head to the cash register you get a "birth certificate" for your animal.

And you get a "house" to take your bear home. We ended up with a pink cowboy boot wearing bunny named Livy who makes monkey sounds, a moose name Elliot who plays hockey for the Ottawa Senators and a cheetah named Nala who wears a tiara and carries a wand, but who is not wearing the right dress:

And three very happy campers. A fun time was had by all and everyone walked away with the build a bear of their choice. Aunt MRK walked away with a much lighter wallet, build a bear is not cheap, but it was on sale . . .

Boxing Day in the Desert

2007-12-29T15:36:00.000+02:00

Other than the recent trip to Jawa, Mo hadn't been to the eastern desert of Jordan, and Yo wanted to revisit the site of Maitland's Fort (see earlier posting, November 1). The site is two hours east of Azraq via dirt tracks, just north of the Saudi border; Azraq is just over an hour from Amman. During the last visit we simply spent the night camped at the foot of the site, but these days it is quite cold -- and the days are much shorter. So we left from Amman at just past 5 am, arriving at Azraq at just before 7 am. Unfortunately one gas station was closed, so we had to turn around and go back to town in order to find an open one, just to be sure Said's trusty truck was topped up with diesel.

Headed back out through the last eastern farms of Azraq, it was just getting light, a beautiful hue to the desolate landscape. Luckily we were able to follow the modern rock piles and didn't really need to rely on a the borrowed GPS or the maps to find our way.

Arriving in the general area, Yo took the long way around (unintentionally!), but we eventually found our way to the foot of Maitland's Fort, the basalt topped mesa. At the foot of this mesa are a number of structures that seem vaguely similar to the nawamis of Sinai - dry stone built graves dating to the mid-fourth millennium BC, known in this region as the late Chalcolithic or early phases of the Early Bronze Age. Whether or not these structures at Maitland's Fort are similar in function (some are clearly larger than the nawamis of Sinai) and chronological related must be investigated. Those at M's Fort seem very well built and made us wonder if they weren't built much later. Here is one:

Walking up the slope there are a number of these, and it almost seems as if they are intentionally situated along the easiest path to the top. On the top of the mesa are numerous stone features; perhaps one of the most intriguing features are the series of cairns established along the southern edge.

Although many are destroyed and robbed, one can still get a sense of how similar they were, in size and formation. They all lead up to a very large (robbed) cairn on the southeast edge.

There are other more enigmatic structures on top as well, some of them wall-like structures, but built with vertial slabs that are heavy and seem like a lot of work just to make a sheep pen, such as those below.

And here is another. Ritual in function, or just an upright wall slab? This one is situated along the edge of the mesa, facing east: Down below at the very base of many of these mesas are animals corrals, which look quite different. These could have been made recently, or hundreds of years ago (or more?) and then re-used seasonally over many decades or even centuries. Here are some at the foot of Maitland's Fort:

We lounged in the warm sun on top while eating some fancy cheese imported by us from North America (sharp cheddar, yumm!) and decided to go visit the next mesa to the south. Named Tall Beta by Prof G. and A, this mesa is similar in size and configuration to Maitland's Fort, but has far fewer features on the slopes or on top. Still, there was one huge cairn on the top, also destroyed and robbed (photo below).The view to the north gives a very nice perspective of Maitland's Fort, and allows a view of the path leading to the top through the burial cairns on the lower slope. You can only barely trace this path in the photo below.

Finally we made a quick stop at Tall A to investigate what appears to be a similar "tumulus tail" as what we saw on Maitland's Fort. However, what appeared to be a regular pattern from a distance was apparently only a few cairns connected by a low stone line, barely visible in this photograph.

At this point we were getting a bit tired. If only you could hear the muttering that accompanied this final descent.

Although it was only 2 pm, we had only 2 1/2 hours of light, just enough to get back to Azraq. The drive back went smoothly, particularly as we went across the 'qa' (playa, dry lake bed), which is quite a pleasure after all the rattling and slamming over rocky tracks for most of the drive.
Smooth roads make us happy!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!

Christmas in Amman

2007-12-27T11:18:00.000+02:00

Happy Holidays!! Yo and Mo with the ACOR Christmas tree:We decided (based on the suggestion of our good friend BAP) to document the holiday season in Amman by visiting some of the fancier hotels and having our picture taken with their Christmas trees. Yo and Mo at the Meridien:Yo and our friend LH at the Marriott: Yo at the Hyatt with their very white Christmas Tree. No tree at the Intercontinental but a festive centerpiece:
BAP took this picture of Yo and Mo in front of the tree at the very strange Royale hotel. The Royale was built by Saddam Hussein and is filled with a weird mix of Mesopotamian and Art Deco decor. We went with BAP and Prof. G to the Embassies holiday bazaar. Crowds at the Embassy holiday event.
Mo lasted about 10 minutes - too many people bumping up to her and too many pushy holiday shoppers.

On Christmas Eve we were invited to the farm that our friend E is house sitting in Naur. E is an extraordinary cook and put on a fabulous feast - turkey mole (which E had to explain was mo-lay the sauce and not mole the rodent), fish pie, many types of salad and lots of wine. The company was excellent and the food divine.

The festive table:

Lots of cheer and merriment:
BAP and Yo enjoying the evening:
Reading the cups - our friend LH is an expert at reading people's fortunes in their coffee cups.

The fabulous hostess, thanks so much E!!!On Christmas day we made a pilgrimage to Starbucks and put together a gingerbread house with our pal EC.

We wish all our faithful blog readers the best for 2008!

In the spirit of the season...

2007-12-24T15:38:00.000+02:00

Morag and I wanted to do this little dance for you. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1754974945

(And many thanks to Jamie U., who first drew our attention to this important leap forward in technology!)

Jawa Lost, Jawa Found

2007-12-24T11:38:00.000+02:00

The approach to Jawa. Those are the city walls in the distance.In his blog post from June 3, Yo recounts an interesting adventure with AMP and JK to Qasr Burqu and the search for the Bronze Age site of Jawa. As Yo mentioned Jawa was excavated by Sven Helms (see Jawa: Lost City of the Black Desert, 1981) in the 1970s and it claims to have one of the earliest sophisticated water management systems in the world (3000 BCE). Jawa is out in the eastern desert of Jordan up near the Syrian border. Due to the fact that Yo had experienced a previously failed attempt to find the site we got up extra early to set out, so early that there was still frost on the truck:Here Mo is using a credit card to scrape the ice from the windshield. After getting a little lost in East Amman (we definitely needed the navigation skills of JK here in East Amman) we managed to find our way to Azraq, with a couple of pit stops at Quranah (our friend L's site) and some weird structures in Azraq. Then it was off to find Jawa. Armed with a great set of Google earth maps supplied by our friend SR from the CBRL we had no trouble finding the site after about a 45 minute drive across the arid basalt landscape. YEAH! we found it, we promptly celebrated by having a lunch of tinned sardines, mandarin oranges and dates - very Christmassy. This is the landscape approaching the site.After lunch we went off to poke around the site and found some very impressive walls and structures and a lot of recent evidence of looting. This site is in the middle of nowhere and doesn't really have all that impressive artifacts on the surface and yet there were a lot of looter's holes. Here are some images of looting at Jawa. Jawa was much more impressive than either of us expected. We were very glad to finally make it to the site.

Eid ul Adha

2007-12-20T16:25:00.000+02:00

Today is the beginning of the Eid ul Adha (the feast of sacrifice). It is a religious festival celebrated by Muslims and Druze worldwide as a commemoration of Ibrahim's (Abraham) willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael to Allah. It is one of two Eid festivals, whose basis comes from the Quran. There are some traditions associated with this Eid: Men, women, and children are expected to dress in their finest clothing to perform the Eid prayer in the mosque. The accountant here at ACOR was telling me the other day that she was taking her 13 year old daughter to the dreaded Mecca Mall to buy some new clothes for the Eid. We were talking about the tradition of getting new clothes for certain holidays (the Eid, or in my family it was Easter) and how everyone does it on the same day, at the same hour, in the same crowded malls. It doesn't seem to matter where in the world you are, shopping at the holidays is a nightmare.

Those who can afford to do so sacrifice their best domestic animals (usually sheep, but also camels, cows, and goats) as a symbol of Ibrahim's (Abraham's) sacrifice.
These cut outs of sheep with a telephone number are all over Amman - telling you when and where to get your sheep for the Eid. Last year while we were here for the Eid we just happened to be out in the city when the butchering was taking place. Lucky for you we have no pictures of sheep being slaughtered for the Eid. According to the Quran a large portion of the slaughtered sheep should be given to less-fortunate families so everyone can partake of the Eid. This is also the festival that occurs the day after the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca - the holiest Muslim site.

Looting in Jordan

2007-12-19T11:45:00.000+02:00

Looting at Bab Edh Dhra, JordanAs many of you know, Mo is examining different laws that countries have to help stop looting in the Eastern Mediterranean. Yesterday we drove down to the Dead Sea area known as Ghor es-Safi (Arabic Al Ghawr). Entirely below sea level and bordered by steep escarpments, the Ghor is part of the Great Rift Valley complex. People have inhabited the area for thousands of years and yesterday we were checking out the Early Bronze Age cemetery sites at Bab Edh Dhra and the EB site of Numeira. This is the pock-marked lunar landscape that once housed an Early Bronze Age burial ground and is now a looted mess of holes. Here is Mo standing in one of the looter's holes. They can be quite deep (if the looters think they have found a shaft tomb) or rather shallow (if the looters decide there is nothing there and move on to the next hole).
Yo is holding part of a very typical Early Bronze Age bowl. During this period the dead were buried with a variety of grave goods, which included these types of pots. While Mo was conducting research for her dissertation in Israel she came across many of these bowls for sale in the various shops in Jerusalem. Part of her current research is trying to figure out how these bowls looted from this cemetery end up for sale in Jerusalem. How does a small juglet like this:

End up in a shop window like this?We had hoped to visit a few other sites but we spent a lot of time at Bab Edh Dhra, the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Dhra and then a huge (400m+) wall on a promontory. And we also spent some time looking for Yo's passport, which had dropped out of his shirt pocket at some point earlier in the day. Luckily we found it lying on the side of the road (looking like it had been run over by a truck). Whew, dodged that bureaucratic nightmare (getting the passport replaced, getting a new visa for Jordan and on and on).

More November Catch Up

2007-12-16T08:33:00.000+02:00

The yellow banana slug in Muir Woods The very wet visit to Muir Woods with our hosts: the wonderful Beanie, Elie (where's my mushroom dress), Eric and Sarah
Wet in Muir WoodThe amazing view from the Addison/Connor homestead deep in the heart of wine country California.In order to save the rock you have to buy a piece of the rock. Interesting sales ploy. Mo and Yo on the Alcatraz boat
Mo yakking it up at the ASOR meetings (Image courtesy of our friend Louise H. Check out her blog at http://lahconfidential.blogspot.com/ or her dog Asta's blog at http://astawft.blogspot.com/). I was a participant in the Anthropology session at ASOR run by Louise and Andrew (I look very professional don't I? - too bad you can't see my amazing red shoes!!!). There were a number of questions after my paper on Archaeological Ethnography and the Antiquities Trade, which meant that some people were actually listening. Yo and his pal DI gave a paper on the Chalcolithic Negev as one big mortuary site, very interesting, but no blood-sucking or excrement.

The ever sweet Miss Sophie from San Diego . . .

And this is what you might look like if you drink one too many martinis at Nai on the occasion of your birthday.

Bad Bloggers

2007-12-15T09:00:00.000+02:00

Yesterday Mo's brother sent an email message stating that we sucked as bloggers and we do. We apologize to our faithful readers for our long delay in posting. The following is a quick catch up and recap of what's been going on for us for the last 6 weeks.

California.

In early November we met up in Washington DC, Yo had flown in from Amman and Mo drove the car down to DC from Toronto (9 hours - thank god for the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows CDs). We flew out to San Francisco the next day - Mo made a pit stop in Stanford to give a seminar and visit her advisor Doc B. and Yo went on to stay with our gracious hosts the Kansa family. We hung out in Berkeley visited friends, had a behind the scenes tour at the Bade (thanks to AB and CPF) Museum, saw some banana slugs at Muir Woods and ate some very good food.

Pillar-based figurines from the Bade Museum, Berkeley

On Sunday we all piled into the small orange car and drove up into wine country to visit our friends at http://www.karmadog.us/pages/contact.html We (the Kansas, the Addison/Connors and us) all worked on a dig (Shiqmim) together in 1993 and have remained in touch since then. The tribe has grown with the addition of Elie (where's my mushroom dress), Helena (or Bean), Rowan and Finn, so it was excellent to all get together. W and P have just finished building a barn to house the construction business (see image). If you live in CA and need a kitchen redo or cement counter top Preston is your man.

A few days later we all went down to San Diego for the annual ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research) meetings. We try to attend these academic meetings every year - its a good way to catch up with old friends, see a new city, and hear the latest about excavations in the Middle East. Yo (with his pal JE) is in charge of deciding who gets to present a paper when and where. Quite often the papers are not that exciting, but this year we heard a great paper by a cultural anthropologist (a rarity for ASOR) about a goat sacrifice in India. There was a video of the event, which ended with the priestess sucking the blood from the neck of the newly slaughtered goat. Cool but quite graphic. The keynote speaker was a famous archaeologist - Jodi Magness. She managed to turn a few heads by discussing the textual evidence for excrement at Qumran. The talk also became quite graphic at times - one woman shouted "ooooow" when Jodie mentioned that the Essenes used poop to seal their clay pots. Another person leaned over to Mo and said she was leaving if Jodi said poop one more time . . . All very intellectual. We were lucky to have a mini ACOR reunion in San Diego as J and her old man drove down for dinner one evening. Thanks!!

After the ASOR meetings we hung around San Diego for a few more days to see our friends P, B and S, they live in the very hip Pacific Beach. It was our first meeting of the divine Miss Sophie, and it was delightful. We stayed in a hotel with this sign in the front hall:

You have to love California.

After SD we headed back up to San Fran where we were lucky to meet up with Yo's rellies. Congrats to new American Michael! We wandered around the town and finally made it to Alcatraz. It was a great.

Yo in solitary confinement at Alcatraz:

After Thanksgiving we headed back to Washington DC for our next set of academic meetings - the American Anthropological Association meetings. We both presented papers, saw friends, looked for jobs and ate some more good food. By the time early December rolled around (HAPPY BIRTHDAY YO) we were fat and tired. Luckily we headed back to Amman for some rest and bad food. And that's where we are today.

Maitland's Fort

2007-11-01T13:39:00.000+02:00

Prof G and A were planning to survey and excavate in the eastern area of Jordan, in the region known as the badia, approximately two hours east of Azraq by dirt tracks. I knew of A by reputation and publications, but only met him for the first time recently at the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), an institution very near ACOR in west Amman. A. told us about a site first identified by a RAF pilot by the name of Flight Lieutenant Maitland. Maitland flew the mail route from Cairo to Baghdad in his small plane during the 1920s, sometimes landing on desert airstrips along the way. Along this stark, beautiful landscape he observed various plateaus in the area, many of which are capped with a stratum of basalt. On one mesa he noticed numerous structures, some fairly substantial, and suggested that this might be a "hill-fort". According to Alison Betts, from the air, Maitland's 'hill-fort' reminded him of a Welsh Iron Age hill-fort, Tre'r Ceiri, which was heavily fortified. This was because the top of the mesa exhibits a vertical rock face breaking into rectangular chunks which from a distance could look like intentional masonry. Maitland had left only a rough sketch of a nearby site, known as Tell A, which mentioned that it was 1 1/2 miles from his "hill-fort".
The Google Earth image shows the location of Azraq, the only town in that part of Jordan; the yellow line to the south is the Saudi/Jordanian border.

Given that vague reference and the remoteness of the region, its no wonder that later in the 20th century, the location of Maitland's fort was unknown. As part of a larger survey conducted by the British Institute of Archaeology and History at Amman (now the CBRL), Betts sought to identify the location of Maitland's fort, reporting on it in the 1980s. Through detective work at the British Museum, a photo published by Maitland, and intimate knowledge of the area, she and her team were able to identify the site.

I joined up with J, known as the Queen of the Chalcolithic in some circles, who borrowed a truck from the CBRL and plugged the coordinates of Maitlands hill fort into her GPS.

This was necessary because the drive takes nearly two hours over dirt tracks directly west from Azraq. In many places the track is marked by stone cairns, but these are sometimes missing or destroyed.

In the picture below, you get a sense of the open desert with the mesas in the distance. To the left of the photo, you can just make out one of the stone cairns marking the road. This dirt track used to serve as the road to Baghdad, and travellers such as Gertrude Bell would have ridden in buses that bumped along this track.

We arrived only slightly late for our appointment with Prof G and A. For scale, you can barely make out their truck (actually, Said's truck), at the base of this mesa. This is the next mesa down from Maitland's fort, but looks very similar in size and configuration.

After an amazing picnic lunch supplied by J, we headed over to the next mesa where the "hill-fort" identified by Maitland is located. Although fortifications at the top of the mesa are not actually man-made, they could serve the purpose of protection. Access is relatively easy from only one point on the site, a path leading up through a crevice in the natural fortification ringing the top of the mesa. The path leads up directly past some burial cairns and other structures.

Below, looking south towards Saudi Arabia (about 20 kms to the south), you can see a dust storm approaching. It had rained the night before, and this also looked like rain - but turned out just to be dust and wind.

At the top, a complex array of stone structures are evident, probably dating from different periods. Some are large enclosures (for animal pens?), while others are burial cairns. Determing the date of these structures is very difficult because there is so little in the way of material remains (flint tools, pottery, coins, etc) that could give us some clue. Although it is possible that there are some material remains buried in some of the burial cairns and within other structures, scarce material remains would not be surprising if pastoral nomads were frequenting the site.

Some of these structures, particularly the large enclosures you see in the picture below, may have served as animal pens for sheep and goat.

Others clearly did not serve that purpose, and the fact that they many are collapsed doesn't make it much easier to understand how they functioned.

Above, you see two lintels in an apparently joined structure. No idea when it was built or its purpose.

In the photo below, you can see structures in the foreground. We are looking south, and notice how all along the edge of the mesa are structures of similar size and spaced rather evenly, particulary when you consider that many are either collapsed, looted, or both.

A number of structures were built with flat slabs placed upright, like stelae. Below you can see Dr. J doing her best Vanna White impression with a particulary nice stele.

There was also some rock art (as well as inscriptions) pecked in to stones on top of the 'fort.

Some structures are built with standing stones, in an arc, facing to the south, similar to structures Prof G identified in Wadi Ramm and mentioned in earlier posts.

Similar to many other sites, some of the cairns on top of this site have been looted, leaving behind small fragments of bone and not much else. Below, A. examines a looted stone structure.

We camped at the site, just below. Our hosts built a wind break out the vehicles and everything from the back of the pickups. This was effective and we had a wonderful evening of delicious food (lamb steaks from Australia!?) cooked over open coals and many other delights. Happily, there was no rain that night.

The next day, we visited "Tell A", a much larger mesa just over a mile away. Although there are some structures on top of that site as well, the density is slight compared to Maitland's Fort. Dating these structures was just as difficult, although I did find an Acheulean hand axe at the foot of the "tell", so we know that there was some Paleolithic presence the area.

On the top, pecked rock art was visible.....as were some other structures made of the local basalt.

This was truly a fascinating part of Jordan that I had never visited, and it was wonderful of our colleagues to take time from their field work to meet us and spend the afternoon at the site. Many thanks to Dr. J as well for coordinating the vehicle and the feast!

Book Recommendation for Mrs. Goodwrench

2007-10-30T22:41:00.000+02:00

This post is for our friend and avid reader, Mrs. Goodwrench. I just finished this novel by Stephen Carter (Yale Law Professor and author of The Emperor of Ocean Park). I liked it but in the reader reviews on Amazon (where I went to "borrow" the jacket image) the postings were mixed. I leave it to you to decide.

At Long Last Baby W

2007-10-23T18:38:00.001+03:00

Yeah for Wylie James! He arrived on the 21st and was 8lbs 3oz. Big brother Noah is very excited as are the proud parents CML and CHR. Definitely a future archaeologist . . .

They Might Be Giants

2007-10-19T00:34:00.000+03:00

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=19482974

Some light humour for all you Near Eastern archaeologists out there. Check it out.

Welcome Babies A and J!!!!

2007-10-13T19:01:00.000+03:00

On Wednesday our pals WW and MA welcomed their brand new bundle of joy - Agatha Marie Anderson into the world. She weighed in at 6lbs 8oz and is very cute. Given that she was born in Atlanta I am sure that she will grow up to be a great southern belle . . . Of course given that her dad is WW she may just be a dead head or phish phanatic . . .

Yeah for baby A!

And on Thursday baby Claire (well she's not the baby anymore) brought home her little brother Jack Barry Rutledge. Jack weighed 7lbs 15oz. Her dad says that Claire likes Jack, but wishes he could dance. Here are baby Jack and proud sister Claire:

Congrats to the Rutledges! Yeah for baby J!

Where were you AMP???

2007-10-11T22:20:00.000+03:00

This post is for our pal AMP, because I really missed her today when I attended a seminar entitled: "A Diplomat's Role in the Middle East". Former Ambassador to Israel Daniel Kurtzer gave a seminar in the Munk Centre International Studies on diplomacy in the Middle East and I could have used the many insights and running commentary of AMP - political economist extraordinaire. Without a doubt I was the only archaeologist in the room. You might wonder why I went along, but I assure you that it is relevant to my work. I am often told that those in the diplomatic corps collect antiquities, facilitate the movement of material, or receive artifacts as part of their job. I am always interested in making connections with collectors, so I thought I'd go along to "meet" Ambassador Kurtzer (which I did not). Also Yo and I have spent a considerable amount of time in the Middle East and in a former life I worked for the Dept of State, so the topic piqued my interest. And finally, I am working on a project with CML on diplomacy and archaeology, so all-in-all it seemed like a good idea.

I am glad I went, Amb. Kurtzer was an engaging speaker and had some interesting things to say. I wish that AMP had been there so we could discuss the Amb.'s comments over martinis - I need some of AMP's perspectives on this seminar. One of the points that resonated with me was that most governments pay little or no attention to diplomacy and they do not use it effectively. Many countries (read the US) jump into war long before they have exhausted all diplomatic avenues, a depressing but true fact. In discussing the current situation in the Middle East Amb. Kurtzer suggested that many Middle Eastern countries do not take responsibility for each other. He said that there is more foreign aid to places like Egypt and Palestine from places like Europe and North America than the Middle Eastern countries like UAE and Qatar. Now if AMP had been there I could have asked if this was true, I have no idea.

I also thought it would have been interesting for AMP as she spent last year in Jordan and is in Egypt on a Fulbright this year, Amb. Kurtzer spent 8 years in Egypt with the US Embassy, he used a lot of Egyptian case studies to illustrate his points. There was a lot of talk about democratization in the ME. He cited the arrest of noted scholar and pro-democracy advocate Saadeddin Ibrahim. Arrested numerous times in the past, Professor Ibrahim is currently not allowed back into Egypt after organizing a conference on Middle East democracy in the Gulf. Amb. Kurtzer suggested that countries could be using diplomatic means - getting Egypt on the Human Rights Watch list, supporting Amnesty International to sway the case of Professor Ibrahim. He suggest that cutting off aid is not always the answer to getting what the West wants in the Middle East - the usual knee-jerk reaction in the West. It would be interesting to get AMP's perspective on this from inside Egypt.

And AMP would be proud, I asked a question about the efficacy of cultural programming (the softer side of diplomacy - exchange programs, educational outreach, cultural programs - archaeology often falls within this realm). Amb Kurtzer related an interesting tidbit when he suggested that in the 1960s the US Cultural Affairs Officer in Cairo who tapped a little-known Anwar Sadat as a participant in the State Department's International Visitors program deserved a President medal for doing more to cement the future relationship between the US and Egypt than anything else. While posted in Egypt Amb. Kurtzer helped to establish a service center for NGOs for capacity building and creation of sustainable projects, perhaps AMP has come into contact with this organization in her research? The subject then turned to the peace process in Israel and Palestine and the upcoming talks in Annapolis, all very interesting for someone who has spent a lot of time in the area, but perhaps not quite a relevant for my research (although regional instability does usually mean an increase in looting). So that was much of my afternoon. This evening I am off to the swanky Arts and Letter Club for a forum on International Art Law - hopefully more relevant for my research.

What does an archaeologist do??

2007-09-26T23:28:00.000+03:00

The other day I said to our niece "I have to go to work now" and she laughed. Usually her aunt mo and uncle yo just lie around, drink martinis, and watch bad movies when they visit (to be fair it is usually a holiday). I think that the thought of her aunt actually going to work was pretty amusing. I bet she wonders, as might most of you, what we actually do. We say that we are archaeologists, but when we aren't on a dig or teaching what does that mean? I thought it would be a good idea to explain what we do -- well I'll tell you what I do here in Toronto, Yo can post his own blog about what he does in Amman - sounds like a lot of martinis and lying around watching bad movies. Yo at Nai drinking martinis:I currently work on a field project in Greece. Usually in May and June I am in Greece working on the Early Bronze Age project of Keros (you can see earlier blogs for greater detail). This is an image of our transport to and from the site:Hopefully this coming season Yo will join the project as the ground stone specialist (I'll let him go into detail about ground stone etc...). I am interested in the archaeology of the Bronze Age Cyclades, but I am also interested in the looting that took place at the site in the 1960s and 1970s. This is an image of a looter's pit on Keros. My area of specialization is how countries legally protect their archaeological sites from looting. I am interested in whether or not laws work, how they work and why countries pick particular laws. I am also interested in why people loot sites, why people collect archaeological artifacts and how these practices effect archaeology. For my PhD I looked at antiquities laws in Israel and Palestine. In Israel you can buy and sell artifacts from pre-1978 collections. This a shop in Jerusalem:Palestine is currently writing their legislation and I was very interested in the process behind the writing. I spent a year living in the area talking and interviewing people about their involvement with the antiquities trade. Why am I telling you this? Because much of what I am doing now is writing articles based on the research from my dissertation. Why am I writing articles? Because that's how you get "known" and then maybe somebody or some institution will want to hire you.

So one thing we do is write articles, books, reviews and present the results of our research at conferences. Last week I finished an article called Legislative Legacies for a journal called the Jerusalem Quarterly. The article is about the laws in Palestine and their historical antecedents in the mandate and Ottoman periods. I spent a lot of time looking through archival material for information about the writing of the laws. A lot of detective work.

We also teach. I don't have much teaching experience, but I would like to get more. Yo has tons and has taught all kinds of courses at all kinds of universities and colleges. This past year I took 12 students to the site in Greece for a field school. Field school photo: At the excavation the students learned how to excavate, how to get up in the morning, how to interact with locals, how to socialize with famous archaeologists and how to "be" an archaeologist - all useful skills regardless of whether you end up an archaeologist. Dancing with ACR:Archaeology is definitely not for everyone, but generally everyone has to get up in the morning and go to work. Sorting the wet sieve material in the early morning:
While I am here in Toronto I am analyzing the results of my research from my 6 months in Jordan last year. I did a lot of interviews and I now need to look at all of the answers that people gave and look for themes and similarities, sort of like connecting the dots. I am also doing some more interviews while I am here, hopefully with people from the Royal Ontario Museum. During my poking around in the archives in Jerusalem I came across some information about artifacts that the ROM bought in the 1920s, so now I want to trace the information from the ROM angle. Why? Because it is useful for anthropologists and museum professionals to know about past museum acquisition policies in order to make improvements or change the way we acquire artifacts (not buying anything that is looted). The demand for artifacts from museums and individuals is what drives looting, so I am always chasing leads on what creates this demand. The new Michael Chin crystal at the ROM:

I also spend some days working on the Antiquities Market section of the Journal of Field Archaeology http://www.bu.edu/jfa/. I am a co-editor (with CML) and we have to badger people to submit articles for the journal or we have to edit articles.

I (along with CML) also work for Prof G, a lawyer from DePaul University on a project, which brought 35 middle eastern cultural heritage experts to Washington to discuss how they protect their cultural heritage.
I sometimes review World Heritage Site nominations for UNESCO http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1108. I am also working on developing some new projects - a co-authored book (with CML) on aspects of this research and a collaborative field project where another archaeologist (MSC) and I try to trace the pathway of looted artifacts from Jordan to Israel. A type of pot we are attempting to trace:

There are lots of other things we do - writing grant applications, applying for jobs, giving public lectures etc... but our real love is being out in the field and travelling. It is all about visiting far away places.

Birthday High Jinks

2007-09-24T15:50:00.000+03:00

This month our nephew MRK and our niece LL had birthdays. Going back to school, the summer ending, and having a birthday in one month all makes for a lot of adventure and high jinks.

LL turns 5

Here is LL with her 12 Dancing Princess cake:

And the aftermath of eating the cake:

And martinis for the parents:MRK turns 6

CR plays a tune, following in her father's footsteps:

Smile for the camera . . .Even if you don't have snow in Canada you can still use a sled, it just takes a little more effort:

All that effort requires food - feeding the masses:

FMK helps celebrate her big brother's birthday. She looks angelic, but really she is the female version of my brother at age 3 and a half, enough said. Sometimes you dress like a lion to help celebrate a birthday:

And sometimes you dress like a Princess:

Apparently the whole gang thought it would be a good idea to dress up:Happy Birthday MRK:After all the cake and play and fun you sometimes just have to relax:

And just a reminder to be thankful for good drivers and sturdy SUVs, last year when we all piled into the huge honking family SUV to attend MRK's birthday party we has a small mishap on the way. I ended up looking like this:

For a while I was sporting the very fashionable "three eyebrow" look, but I am much improved. We are very glad that we made it to the birthday bash safely this year. Happy Birthday MRK and LL.

Tabular Scraper Production Sites

2007-09-20T17:44:00.000+03:00

Earlier this week I joined Prof G, B and T, all archaeologists. Prof G was leading us to some sites south of Azraq where tabular scrapers were once produced. T is an archaeologist who specializes in Upper Paleolithic and Epipaleolithic sites and directs excavations at sites in Azraq. His fellow countryman, B, recently studied similar sites up near Ruweished, not far from the Jordan-Iraq border (see our post on "Burqu, basalt and badia", June 3 for the area of Ruweished).

What, you may ask, is a tabular scraper? These are tools made of flint that are sometimes found at Late Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Early Bronze sites, so from perhaps 6000 BC to 3000 BC. The tools are large "flakes" of flint material. What makes them interesting is that they are a very specific, recognizable flint tool found across sites in Jordan, Palestine and Israel - but in very low numbers. Although we find them at sites far to the west, including sites virtually at the Mediterranean, there has been very little information about where they were being made, or where the flint originated. Some sites where these tools were manufactured are known from the Negev, but those are fairly small spots and seemed unlikely to be sufficient to have supplied all of the known sites. Thus the discovery of sites where many of these were produced is a significant discovery to archaeologists working during these periods across the region.

We left from Amman and headed south on the Airport highway, or the Desert Highway. This is the same road we used before to get to Wadi Ram and other points south. However, to get to the area, we need to head southeast, so we eventually took what is know as the "HAZMAT" road, a well paved road that cuts across the desert to the east. As you might have guessed, this road leads to a major, very large area for the disposal of waste. This is, in fact, a little known highway that leads to Qasr Tuba (see earlier post Tuba bound, May 27)

Since we were with prehistorians, no one had been to Qasr Tuba before (!), although T and Prof G have been visiting Jordan for some time. (actually, few people visit this site - its very remote, and not accessible by car). We stopped off for a quick visit, which had no site caretaker this time (presumably on Ramadan leave). In his wake he left many, many flies to keep people away. We quickly complied. The lack of flint may have contributed to the drifting interest of the prehistorians.

Driving away quickly in the hopes of decreasing the fly population, we headed south on the main road from Azraq to Saudi Arabia. At one point we stopped at the "Ba'er Station" for fuel and snacks, which you can see off in the distance. Although I actually had tinned tuna and sardines with me, there was no bread, crackers or anything similar, so that idea was out. Everyone had different choices: Prof G, being wealthy and tenured, went for the Hala Chips; being a naive and poor money manager, I did the same.

T, on the other hand, went for the Krokodile chips.

G went for the "Ringo".

The taste comparison achieved a quick and conclusive consensus: they were all nasty. But we all agreed that G won the prize -- the policitically incorrect Ringos were easily the most revolting of the bunch. Or any that I had ever tasted. Apparently it IS possible to simply whip cheap oils and then make them spongy (not really crunchy). No need for actual vegetables or anything. Or perhaps its a similar technology to cotton candy, where by adding enough air makes a sponge chip out of oil.

Our charming ramadan lunch complete, Prof G easily found one of the sites that he had identified years ago.
What you are looking is a vein of flint that has been ripped up. The people found the layer of flint, and then dug down, so that we can now see the shallow pit forming in the photo above.

In order to make tabular scrapers, ancient flint knappers really wanted one thing: a very large, flat flake from the outside of the flint. This outer flake would still have the cortex on it (sort of the 'skin'). So at quarries like this the primary evidence you find are large flint nodules with negative bulbs of percussion (which you can see in the photo above), where massive blows have knocked off these large cortical flakes. The flakes were then moved somewhere else, trimmed for the desired shape of the tool, and then either used or perhaps exchanged.
The vein of flint is also visible eroding out of the side of the cliff (below).Of course, it CAN be difficult to get a good shot from above, so a little help from Said's truck helps immensely.

Wadi Ram (Pt II), Kerak and Humeima

2007-09-18T22:55:00.000+03:00

Yes, its only been two weeks, and already I returned to Wadi Ram. It is a beautiful place, and this time it was the beginning of Ramadan, the holy month. This holy month, when muslims fast from sun up until sun down, starts at the new moon, which meant a better stargazing night while sleeping on mats out in the desert this time. Last time we visited, two weeks ago, the moon was nearly full, which is nice but obliterates the stars. This time I joined Prof G, A. and M. Although A and M study post-interesting periods (Roman stuff, and Crusader stuff, respectively....really just a joke), it was ok because Prof G was there. At any rate, we visited some of the same sites as my post (see Wadi Ramm, 8.29) of a few weeks ago, so I will only post a few new photos from Wadi Ram.
First, where is Wadi Ram? Far to the south in Jordan, almost to the southern tip, where the port town of Aqaba is located. The southern yellow line is the border with Saudi Arabia; to the east is Israel.

You may recall that last time we looked at some fairly enigmatic features, some of which Prof G had uncovered during his initial research investigation this past summer. This included some stone arc features with paving stones and upright stele. I had also included some photos of an odd sinuous 'wall' or paved walkway, which seemed to connect to nothing nor lead anywhere (seen above with an apparently skeptical A and Prof G). There are three segments of this sinuous walk or wall, and although they are not connected it is apparent that they are from the same general period of time and probably built at more or less the same time, by the same people. But why?

Well, I don't know! But here is what the next best thing to an aerial view looks like of these three wall/walkways. You can just trace the line of the walls, primarily because they were cleared by Prof G and his able assistant. And the view below gives you a (admittedly slight) sense of the other features in the same general area where these walls or processional walks are located. I like the term Processional Walk, don't you?

We also returned to the rock art area.

That evening we sat and enjoyed the softening light. We also enjoyed watching a young bedouin fellow bring home a few camels he recently purchased (clip above). Prof. G comments that the price of dog food has gone up so much its cheaper to just use his four wheel drive!
After a rather chilly but beautiful evening sleeping in the same area as the processional walk, we awoke and counted off - still four of us! Despite our best efforts to put A out on the edge of the mats as bait, no dingos had carried her off.

The next day we bought some sodas and some "date newtons" for brunch and headed out. We stopped off at the Nabatean temple again, but that was boring the first time 'round, so you can refer back to the earlier post if you care for substantial architecture and reconstruction. (ok, thats not true, I think that A and M quite enjoyed it). Heading north, we crossed the narrow little rails that once served the Hijaz railway, but now primarily serves the limestone mines to the north.

Go little pufferbelly!

On our way north, we stopped off at the site of Humeima, a Nabatean site (with a temple, possibly seen below), Roman occupation, with subsequent occupation during the Ummayyad period (early Islamic).

Nabatean temple?

From Humeima we continued north toward Amman, and made one final stop, at Kerak. I had been to the town of Kerak before, but I'd never visited the castle or seen the museum. M., an expert on Crusader pottery, wanted to visit the Kerak Museum to see what is on display for future comparative research. And it was a beautiful day, so why not visit a castle?

To the west, one can see the Dead Sea and Judean desert to the west, even on such a hazy day. (The slightly darker patch is the Dead Sea).

And finally, the gang - many thanks for such a wonderful trip!!

Creationism in Canada

2007-09-06T16:46:00.000+03:00

We are in the midst of a provincial election here in Ontario and yesterday the front page headline of the Globe and Mail read: "Christian private schools should be allowed to teach creationism if they receive public funding, Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory said yesterday." Tory is the leader of the Progressive Conservative party, a party vying for control of the province. Currently the Liberals are in power here in Ontario, the premier is Dalton McGuinty. I went online to find out a little more about Dalton and I was saddened to see that the first thing that pops up on the screen is some footage of McGuinty shaking hands with Arnie, the governor of California - I guess Dalton thinks that will garner him some votes "I am pals with the terminator..." But back to Creationism in Canada - some six hours after the headlines appeared John Tory went into damage-control mode, saying "creationism should be explored only in religion class and not elsewhere in the curriculum, such as in science class." In Ontario there a basic school curriculum that everyone has to follow if they receive public funding. As a tax payer you can choose whether your tax dollars for education are put into the public or separate (Catholic) school system - a legacy of the French/English divide. At the moment those are the only choices for public funding. Both school systems teach evolution, but in Catholic school in religion class they might go into creationism or they might not. In response to Tory's comments the current Minister of Education (coincidentally the person running against Tory for the Don Valley west seat in Toronto) stated "In terms of public dollars, those public dollars should go into a curriculum that has been agreed upon as being the one that is the best for our kids and is rooted in science and is rooted in evidence." There is hope yet...

The other day we were going to Booster Juice for a smoothie. As we got to the front door we all noticed a couple seated on the patio. The male had his shirt off and the female was picking things on his back. We were all taken aback and quite frankly - repulsed. LL really wanted a Booster Juice but none of us wanted to walk any closer to this couple, finally her Daddy relented. We did decide that if you did not believe in evolution this public display of "nitpicking" was living proof.

First Day of Grade One

2007-09-04T21:45:00.000+03:00

Today our niece LL started grade one at her new school St. Pius X.

She was up and dressed at 6:00am, raring to go. She picked out her own outfit and she looked good. In consultation with her folks I decided to head to the university as I normally do, that way LL wouldn't be overwhelmed by big people - her mom, her dad and her crazy aunt. I called her dad later to find out how it went and everything was fine and dandy. Apparently after she finished her breakfast she ran upstairs, brushed her teeth, did her hair and grabbed her backpack and announced - "Let's go, I'm ready". Her mom - not so ready...
On Friday we made a trial run to the school to check out her classroom and meet her new teacher, Mrs. Cherevaty. Visiting the classroom for the first time outfit:

The apple tree with the names of all of the students in the class.

Her desk, with her name. There are three Olivia's in her class, but only one Livy, which is what we call her. It was good to have a trial run.

Our nephew MRK also started grade one today, but I will have to get the pictures from his mom and dad on the weekend before can post about his first day. Grade one is very exciting.