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.

Through the Cracks of Détente: The Superpowers, the Arab “Radicals,” and the Coming of the Second Cold War, 1977–1984

Feb 20, 2024 Posted in Fellows, Fellowships, insights, Insights, Named Fellowships, Research Tagged with History

by Benjamin V. Allison In November 1980, the Arab League met in Amman, Jordan, for a summit aimed at promoting Arab unity, particularly against Israel and Egypt, which had concluded a peace treaty the previous year. But the summit rapidly fell apart, as members of the Steadfastness and Confrontation Front (جبهة الصمود والتّصدي) — Syria, Algeria,…

Dating Mamluk Manuscripts from Levantine Collections

Jan 23, 2024 Posted in CAORC, Fellows, Fellowships, insights, Insights, Research Tagged with Arabic script, document studies, Mamluk

Example of the naskh calligraphic script under the Bahri Mamluks, page containing Qurʾanic verses 1: 1–7 from a fourteenth century Mamluk manuscript, calligrapher unknown (LCCN 2019714580). (Image courtesy of the Library of Congress, African and Middle East Division, Near East Section Manuscript Collection.)

by Sarah Islam For Islamic intellectual and social historians, medieval manuscripts are indispensable primary sources for investigating what ideas and perspectives were being discussed in a given time period and region. Islamic manuscript repositories are often difficult to access and the manuscripts they contain even more difficult to read and assess, requiring the researcher to…

Decoding Late Neolithic Tools and Technology in the Black Desert of Jordan

Dec 8, 2023 Posted in CAORC, Fellowships, insights, Insights, Research Tagged with Archaeology, black desert, neolithic

From left to right, Haparsa point; transverse arrowhead; and Badia point. (Photo by Gary Rollefson.)

by Gary Rollefson In the 1920s pilots flying over the Harrat ash-Sham volcanic fields (also known as the Black Desert) were struck by a landscape that was “rugged and desolate” (Maitland 1927: 198), “like a dead fire — nothing but cold ashes” (Rees 1929: 389), whose “odious flat-topped slag heaps” instilled a “sinister foreboding” and…

Places and the Past: The Bidul, the Layathna, and Narratives about Indigeneity in Petra

Nov 5, 2023 Posted in CAORC, Fellows, Fellowships, insights, Insights, Petra, Research Tagged with ethnography, History, Petra

by Nicolas Seth Reeves The former capital of the ancient Nabataean Empire, the city of Petra serves today as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s most popular tourist destination. Tourism constitutes the lifeblood of three tribal communities that live in and around Petra Archaeological Park: the Bidul of Umm Sayhoun, the Layathna of Wadi Musa, and…

Being Introduced to Archaeology in Jordan at Khirbat al-Mukhayyat

Oct 5, 2023 Posted in Fellows, Fellowships, Insights, Named Fellowships Tagged with Archaeology, groot fellow, Khirbat al-Mukhayyat, Madaba, Pottery

Wilfrid Laurier University students walking to the site at Khirbat al-Mukhayyat. (Photo by Miya Pletsas.)

by Miya Pletsas I had the opportunity to participate in the Khirbat al-Mukhayyat Archaeological Project in Jordan for my first field school as an undergraduate from Wilfrid Laurier University thanks to a Jennifer C. Groot Memorial Fellowship award from the American Center of Research. I enjoyed working alongside my peers, the local community, and professors,…

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…

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