Insights

Welcome to Insights! Formerly our long-running quarterly e-update, since 2020, Insights has been our blog, hosting essays by fellows, interns, staff, and others.

Recyling Refuse in Ancient Petra

Sep 7, 2023 Posted in ACOR, Fellows, Fellowships, Insights, insights, NEH, Petra, Research Tagged with Archaeology, Petra, Pottery

The Petra North Ridge, with view of the city wall, the Blue Chapel, the Great Temple, and the Petra Garden and Pool Complex. Photo by Sarah Wenner.

by Sarah Wenner Hidden below an urban façade but nevertheless essential for its shaping, a city’s trash was routinely used in construction processes across the Roman world. Before that occurred, both established and ad hoc frameworks dictated the lifecycles of urban waste, from its initial discard, through its sorting and storage, to its reclamation by…

Between Jordanian and International Law: UNRWA Involvement in Jordanian Court Cases, 1948–1967

Aug 17, 2023 Posted in ACOR, CAORC, Fellows, Fellowships, Insights, insights, Research Tagged with History, legal studies, Modern History, refugee studies

Map by Kohlmayer-Ali and Ababsa, in M. Ababsa (Ifpo, 2013), Atlas of Jordan, Fig. V.14

by Kimberly Katz Many excellent studies have been published over the decades examining the impact of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Palestinians’ lives, in the refugee camps, on relief efforts, with human development, in camp structures, and on politics with host countries, among other topics. Legal…

Toward a Romani Ethnology of Jordan

Jun 20, 2023 Posted in ACOR, Fellows, Fellowships, Insights, insights, NEH, Research Tagged with ethnography, ethnology, Fellows, NEH Fellowship

Turkman girls in South Amman. Photo by Arpan Roy.

by Arpan Roy Romani people in Jordan, by some estimates, are as numerous as 70,000. Present in the Arab region in some capacity since the 8th century, Romani characters appear recurrently in literary works by luminous authors from the early centuries of Islam and into the medieval period, including al-Jahiz, al-Harriri, Ibn al-Muqaffa’, and Ibn…

In Small Things Remembered: Late Neolithic Material Culture of the Black Desert, Jordan

May 15, 2023 Posted in ACOR, Fellows, Fellowships, insights, Insights, NEH, Research Tagged with Archaeology, black desert, eastern badia, NEH Fellowship, neolithic

Stone labret. (Photo by G. O. Rollefson.)

by Yorke Rowan Material culture provides a glimpse into the important objects that people created, exchanged, and carried with them for functional and symbolic purposes. The study of archaeology requires a suite of specializations and perspectives, but material culture remains a fundamental source of information. In his pioneering volume In Small Things Forgotten (1977), James Deetz…

Water Use in Roman Cities

Feb 14, 2023 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Insights, NEH, Research Tagged with Archaeology, CAORC Fellow, roman, water system

Nymphaeum at Umm Qais. (Photo by Clare Rasmussen.)

by Clare Rasmussen The Roman Empire was one of many ancient civilizations that understood the necessity of a water supply system, and they became experts in building large aqueducts and urban water systems. They, along with the Greeks, spread new cultural institutions that required water to be used in ways that went beyond the communal…

Diverging Paths: A Socio-archaeological Investigation of Rural Settlement in Ottoman Palestine and Transjordan

Jan 11, 2023 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Insights, NEH, Research Tagged with Archaeology, CAORC Fellow, ottoman period

The village of Shammakh, southeast of Shobak

by Lauren Erker Rural life in Jordan during the Ottoman period is a topic that has received little attention from archaeologists. While there is a rich corpus of historical writings on the late Ottoman period due to the Tanzimat reforms, archaeological literature on the subject remains scant. Any tour across the landscape of Jordan will reveal remains…

ICHAJ 15 and the Value of International Collaboration in Cultural Heritage

Nov 16, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Insights, NEH, Research Tagged with ACOR projects, Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, department of antiquities, ICHAJ, internships

by Danielle Wolfson I am an emerging professional in cultural heritage, chosen by the United States Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (US/ICOMOS) to participate in their International Exchange Program (IEP), an honor that brought me to Amman for the summer of 2022. At the American Center of Research, I worked on…

Animal Lives at Petra

Nov 15, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Insights, NEH, Research Tagged with Archaeology, CAORC Fellow, fauna, Petra, zooarchaeology

Dwarf dog humerus (upper forelimb) from the Petra North Ridge Project

by Kathryn Grossman I have been in Jordan for two months now, and Tom Parker’s presence is everywhere—in my work, in conversations with colleagues, on the stiff breeze at Petra. Despite twenty years in Near Eastern archaeology, this is my first time working in Jordan; I had just imagined he would be here when I…

Traversing the Landscape

Sep 30, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Insights, NEH, Research Tagged with agriculture, Archaeology, early bronze age, NEH Fellowship

by Amy Karoll I am currently a visiting professor in the Writings Program at New York University-Abu Dhabi and was an NEH Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Center of Research from March to August 2021. I arrived at the American Center in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and fresh from receiving my doctorate in…

Analyzing Petra’s Small Finds

Aug 23, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Fellowships, Insights, Named Fellowships, Petra, Research Tagged with named fellowship

Example of beads from the Petra collections, 2022.

by McClean Pink I am a master’s student in the Anthropology Department at East Carolina University. Throughout the months of June and July 2022, I held a Pierre and Patricia Bikai Fellowship at the American Center of Research in Amman and, while resident there, used their resources to complete the data collection for my master’s…

Jordanian Women and the Digital Economy During COVID-19

Jun 21, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, CAORC, Fellowships, Insights, Research Tagged with CAORC Fellow, economics, labor, Women

by Allison J. Anderson Jordan’s low female labor force participation rate has long confounded policymakers, researchers, and activists. Despite achieving progress on several determinants of female labor force participation over the last decade, including increasing levels of female educational attainment, higher ages of marriage, and lower rates of fertility, less than 15 percent of women are…

Ammonite Kings and Gods in Stone: Reading the Iconography in Its Broader Near Eastern Context

May 10, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, Fellowships, Insights, Named Fellowships, Research Tagged with named fellowship, Pottery, Tell Abu Sarbut

by Joel S. Burnett A visit to the Jordan Archaeological Museum on the Amman Citadel or the Jordan Museum in Ras al-Ayn brings you up close with multiple examples of stone statuary from Iron Age Amman (ca. 1150–550 BCE). These impressive sculptures include miniature statues of standing anthropomorphic figures and life-size and nearly life-size sculpted…

Apr 13, 2022 Posted in ACOR, CAORC, Fellows, Fellowships, Insights, insights, politic, Research Tagged with ethnography, linguistics, political science, refugee studies

Bilingual "You Are Safe Here" poster (Arabic and English)

Exploring the Political Economy of Cultural Heritage

Mar 30, 2022 Posted in ACOR, Fellows, Fellowships, insights, Insights, Named Fellowships, politic, Research Tagged with Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, ethnography, Madaba, political economy, political science, research

Sign at a heritage site under development in Madaba.

by Charlotte Vekemans “Heritage is Jordan’s oil.” This statement, which I heard from heritage experts, development workers, and Jordanian government officials, has come to be the most captivating way for me to summarize my PhD project. With the support of a Harrell Family Fellowship granted by the American Center of Research, I conducted field research…

Ethnographic Research on Graffiti/Street Art, Youth, and Urban Space in Amman

Feb 10, 2022 Posted in ACOR, ACOR Projects, CAORC, Fellowships, Insights, Research Tagged with Art History, CAORC Fellow, CAORC Fellowship, Urban Studies

A graffiti/street art wall in the Jabal Al-Luweibdeh neighborhood

by Kyle Benedict Craig With support from an ACOR-CAORC Predoctoral Fellowship, I conducted dissertation fieldwork on Amman’s graffiti/street art scene from May to August 2021. During this period of on-site fieldwork, I attended art exhibitions, observed graffiti/street art painting sessions, participated in walking tours of Amman’s public art scene, and conducted semiformal interviews with artists,…

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