The Beginning

In the academic year 1967–1968 I enrolled as a student at the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Jordan. Unfortunately, in that same period the Arab-Israeli Six Days War began on June 5, 1967. As a result of the war, in 1968 the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR; now the American Society for Overseas Research), already based in Jerusalem, decided to establish an independent archaeological research center in Amman. For this purpose, a building located very close to the third circle in Amman that belonged to one of the members of the Khalifeh family was rented.

During that time, we had Egyptian and Syrian professors, and in 1969 one of them, namely Greco-Roman specialist Fawzi Fakharani, decided to take nine of us students to visit the so-called Temple of Hercules on the Amman Citadel. During our visit we visited the excavation of American archaeologist Rudolph Dornemann. That was my first experience with American archaeologists. In 1970 we were lucky to have Professor Bastiann Van Elderen, then director of ACOR, to teach two courses in archaeology at the University of Jordan: Research Methods in Archaeology and Field Archaeology. In addition, he took us to visit the archaeological site of Tell Hesban and trained us in the field by excavating a church in Amman’s Sweifiyyeh neighborhood (Fig. 1). That was the beginning of my relationship with the American Center and American archaeologists.

ACOR Was My Second Home (1973–1977)

In 1973, the University of Jordan started an MA graduate program in archaeology, and Bastiann Van Elderen was one of the professors who established its plan of study. At that time I worked as the curator of the University of Jordan Archaeological Museum and had the chance to enroll in the program. Van Elderen taught a course on Byzantine culture. In addition, during the time Henry (Hank) O. Thompson was director of ACOR (1972–1973), he started the Tell Siran excavation and found the well-known bronze bottle with what is considered to be the first complete inscription in the ancient Ammonite language. He was followed by Bastiann Van Elderen, who continued the excavation with the participation of a group of American students (Fig. 2).

If I remember well, van Aldren left the ACOR directorship in late 1973, and his appointed successor was Prof. George Mendenhall of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His field of study was ancient Near Eastern civilizations. During his teaching career at the University of Jordan, he taught a course on the epigraphy and history of the ancient Near East, and in June 1975 took us on a trip to Wadi Muqat in the Black Desert to copy, register, and study Safaitic inscriptions (Fig. 3). In addition, at that time James Abbot Sauer was a fellow at ACOR and along with Mendenhall conducted an archaeological excavation at the Ammonite site of Umm er-Rujm with the participation of the MA students, of whom I was one. Moreover, in May 1974 he resumed archaeological excavations at the site of Rujm Khilda (Fig. 4) with the participation of archaeology MA students from the University of Jordan and a few American volunteers; of them, I still remember the name “Richard Dorsett.”

In the 1975–1976 academic year, James Sauer (Fig. 5) took over from Mendenhall, and to our good fortune he began teaching archaeological courses at the University of Jordan. I enjoyed very much his course “Ancient Pottery of the Holy Land,” and I presented a paper entitled “The Late Bronze Age Pottery in Jordan: East Bank,” which later became the subject of my MA thesis. In addition, the MA students had been invited to participate in the 1974 season of excavations at Hesban (Fig. 6). At the dig, I was introduced to American senior archaeologists, and I am much indebted to Larry Herr, who was my area supervisor in Area D, Square 2, for training me in the field of archaeology (Fig. 7). At the dig, and along with James Sauer, I was honored to be introduced to Larry Geraty, Roger Boraas, and my square partner, Orly Nelson. I became much more acquainted with American excavating methods and habits by living with the expedition team for almost six weeks. That following year—1975—was a decisive one for my future career. I became very close to James Sauer and decided to write under his supervision my MA thesis, which I defended on June 19, 1977. The late Walter Rast was a member of the examining committee.

The year 1975 was full of joint archaeological fieldwork conducted by ACOR and other Jordanian archaeological institutions, such as the Department of Antiquities and the University of Jordan. One example is the Jordan Valley survey, which was conducted under the co-directorship of James Sauer, Khair Yassine, and Mo’awiyah Ibrahim. It was my good luck to have participated in the two seasons of this survey, 1975 and 1976, and I learned much from Sauer by attending his reading of the pottery found at the sites visited (Fig. 8). 

James Sauer became my mentor in my studies, and I found myself very much attached to him. Due to this, I became a regular visitor to ACOR and remember very well the flavor of Sue Sauer’s brownies. At that time, ACOR had only a small library, but it was very useful for me, and because I had started working on the material and writing chapters of my thesis, I met with Jim for long hours during the week. ACOR became like my second home. This lasted until I sat for the defense of my thesis, which took place on June 19, 1977, and I am very proud to mention that in addition to Jim, I had Walter Rast as a member of my thesis examination committee (Figs. 9–10). James Sauer is the one who put me on the real track of archaeology, and to him I will be indebted for my whole life.

During winter 1977, Khair Yassine, then professor of archaeology at the University of Jordan, agreed with James Pritchard of the University of Pennsylvania to excavate Tell es-Sa’idiyyeh, in the Jordan Valley. However, this excavation was cancelled due to security reasons, and most of the American students returned home, except for few of them, and one of these being Barbara Porter. Khair decided to continue his excavation plan, but instead at Tell Mazar. There, I worked hand in hand with the American participants on the dig, and I have been very close friends with Barbara Porter since that time (Fig. 12).

After my successful MA defense, I was very eager to pursue my PhD studies at one of the renowned American universities. I was in fact admitted to several of these, but without receiving any scholarships. Thus, I applied to the Deutscher Akkadmischer Austauch Dienst (DAAD), received a scholarship, and left Jordan on October 6, 1977, for the city Freiburg, where I learned the German language. This did not prevent me from continuing my relationship with my adored professor James Sauer or with ACOR (Fig. 12). I remember that during my studies in Germany I presented some books to the ACOR library. In addition, I shared with James Sauer all my interpretations of the archaeological material I obtained from the Jordan Valley Survey to use for my PhD dissertation.

I cannot remember exactly when (either in 1975 or 1976) ACOR moved from Amman’s 3^rd circle to the 6^th, though I preferred the older building to the new one. Jim started thinking of buying a piece of land to build a permanent residence for ACOR. I never stopped communicating with James Sauer, then the director of ACOR, during my time in Berlin, and in winter 1979 I came back to Jordan to study the pottery sherds and flint tools from the survey for my PhD dissertation, and ACOR was my study base. I used ACOR’s library, and ACOR’s draftsman (I believe Abdel-Razzaq?) helped in drawing the pottery sherds under study.

ACOR, My Research Center

After I finished my PhD studies in 1982, I returned to Jordan and joined Yarmouk University as an assistant professor. Because of this, we moved to Irbid, but I still went to ACOR to use the library and contact people there. I believe it was in 1981 when David McCreery took over the ACOR directorship from James Sauer, but this did not mean I stopped going to the center. David is a very nice and helpful person, and he was the one to finish construction of the new ACOR building and the move from the 6^th circle to Tla’a Ali. Professor McCreery participated in numerous excavations, most notably at Bâb edh-Dhrâ` and Numeira (Jordan). In addition, he served as co-director of the Tell Nimrin excavations in Jordan.

From 1982–1984 I taught for the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences of Yarmouk University, where we had several American faculty members, among them Robert Gordon, Gary Rollefson, and Scott Rolston, in addition to research assistants, including the photographer Cowherd and his wife. Those colleagues helped to establish the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology of Yarmouk University under the directorship of Mo’awiyah Ibrahim, who was behind this.

In 1984 I began my Jebel Abu Thawwab excavation (on the highway leading from Sweileh to Jerash), and David McCreery came to visit me several times. I remember that Larry Herr and some of the Tell ‘Umairi expedition team also joined him. During the second season of excavations, ACOR asked Yarmouk University to accept the participation of around 15 American students who came to Jordan through the President’s Council for International Youth Exchange to participate on the Jebel Abu Thawwab and Khirbet ez-Zeiraqoun projects (Fig. 13). In return, a group of Yarmouk University students was to be invited to visit several universities in the USA, and this is what happened.

In the year 1979, the famous site of ‘Ain Ghazal was exposed during the process of bulldozing the highway connecting the capital Amman with the city az-Zarqa to the east. In the beginning of the 1980s, Gary Rollefson, who was a fellow at ACOR, and Khair Yassine, professor of archaeology at the University of Jordan, visited the site and decided to start rescue excavations with the cooperation of the Department of Antiquities. Unfortunately, Khair was asked to leave the project by the DoA, and ACOR and the Department of Antiquities continued the rescue excavations. In 1983, Gary joined Yarmouk University as a faculty member, and I benefited from this in that I obtained permission from the dig to study “the white-ware objects.” In 1984, Gary was offered a job at San Diego State University. He left Yarmouk, and I took over the project from him as Yarmouk University’s representative (Fig. 14), although the project continued to be a joint Jordanian-American project. Because of this project, I became acquainted with many American archaeologists who either participated on the dig or who came to stay at the ACOR residence. Gary Rollefson, Alan Simmons, and I became like brothers.

It can be stated here that during all seasons of excavations at ‘Ain Ghazal, and also durin the Wadi Shu’eib 1988 and 1989 seasons, ACOR was always involved in offering either financial help and/or a place to study, as well as facilitating the American members’ accommodation. ACOR’s permanent building was opened in 1986, a major milestone for which David McCreery deserves credit. Bert de Vries followed David McCreery as ACOR’s director (1988–1991). During this period, I was outside Jordan on sabbatical leave without pay, first at the Free University of Berlin and then at King Sa’ud University. Bert’s main archaeological interest was in documenting, restoring, and presenting Jordanian architecture from antiquity. His main love was the multi-period city of Umm el-Jimal in the Basalt Desert in northern Jordan. Yarmouk University faculty members and students were also involved in his Umm el-Jimal project.

ACOR as a Partner

In 1991, I returned to Yarmouk University from my sabbatical and leave without pay, which lasted for three years (1988/1989–1991/1992), and I was appointed as a director of the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at Yarmouk University. During my work, I continued the same policy of cooperation with all national and international archaeological institutions. During my period as director of the Institute (1991–1997), Patricia and Pierre Bikai were the directors of ACOR, from 1991 to 2006. Their publications and numerous fieldwork projects were a major contribution to the archaeology of Jordan. Moreover, in 1987, the cultural resources management (CRM) program was established jointly with the Department of Antiquities, with the purpose of preventing the destruction of archaeological sites in Jordan. In addition, Gaetano Palumbo, the ACOR contracted archaeologist, published an inventory of around ten thousand sites under the title “JADIS,” the Jordan Antiquities Database and Information System. All my surveyed or excavated sites were registered in this inventory.

During the tenure of Pierre and Patricia, we kept up the good relationship between our two institutions and I remember that I was always invited either to participate in workshops or to meet people at ACOR, and visa-versa, with Pierre being a regular visitor to the IAA/Yarmouk. I still remember his Arabic song to me, saying:

على دلعونا وتحت الصفصافة   وينو حبيبي زيدان كفافي

والله لأرحله وأمشي له حافي   لوكانوا  رجلي عم يوجعوني 

Pierre and Patricia’s main interest in the archaeology of Jordan was concentrated in Petra, and the excavations of the Great Temple and the Petra Church took all their time. The discovery of the Petra Church papyri absorbed much of their attention, which helped in the decipherment of these Byzantine-era documents. Pierre Bikai was also the person who advised the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, delegation to visit Yarmouk University in 1997 and to seek the possibility of starting a joint CRM project (Figs. 15–16). That delegation, consisting of William Schwab and Jerry Rose, and accompanied by Pierre and Ghazi Bisheh (then director general of antiquities), visited Yarmouk University and successfully negotiated a plan to apply to USAID to finance such a project. In addition to the exchange between faculty members of the two universities, a joint excavation project was started at the site of Ya’moun. In September 1997 I finished my role as director of the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology and was assigned as a dean of research and graduate studies at Yarmouk University. Although I changed positions, I continued my cooperation with ACOR.

Welcome to My Friend Barbara

Pierre and Patricia Bikai were followed in the directorship of ACOR by an excellent and very close friend of mine with whom I worked at the Tell Mazar excavation in 1977, namely Barbara Porter (Fig. 17), who kept this position from 2006 until 2020. During her stay in Jordan, Barbara Porter became a friend to many Jordanians and became acquainted with Jordanian habits and customs. In addition to this, she was enormously active in studying, presenting, and preserving Jordanian archaeology. One of her most excellent accomplishments was organizing the International Conference in the History and Archaeology of Jordan in Washington, D.C., in 2007. Many Jordanian archaeologists and I were involved in the arrangement of and participation in this conference. Moreover, she much enlarged ACOR’s library collection. Due to this, it became well visited by researchers and students. She also organized a mostly monthly lecture series discussing the archaeology of Jordan, and I was a regular visitor to those events. In addition to this, during her directorship, ACOR assisted projects through its library as well as with the ACOR Conservation Cooperative, created in 2007. Under Barbara’s leadership, ACOR began implementation of the USAID-funded Sustainable Cultural Heritage Through Engagement of Local Communities Project (SCHEP) in 2014. As a result of this project, there are now several archaeological projects that were adapted to different site-specific or urgent needs, such as rescue excavation at Beit Ras and, more recently, the excavation of the Ammonite site Khirbet Abdoun.

For a researcher, the best place to go to is ACOR’s library, but in return one must give back something in thanks; thus I presented to the library all my published books (Fig. 18). Barbara Porter’s chapter in my festschrift (published in winter 2023) contributed an informative article discussing the ACOR’s role in Jordan’s heritage over 50 years. This number of years equals my number of years in very successful and fruitful cooperation with ACOR. In addition, Barbara finished her work as ACOR’s director in 2020, and I finished my job as a president of Yarmouk University in 2020 and went into retirement. Thank you to my dearest friend, Barbara. To show our gratitude and love to Barbara, we gave her a farewell party at our home (Fig. 19).

Pearce Paul Creasman

In February 2020, Dr. Pearce Paul Creasman became ACOR’s director. Dr. Creasman’s scientific interests focus on the heritage, archaeology, and environment of the Middle East and North Africa. Dr. Creasman is a cooperative and helpful archaeologist; this is reflected in his encouragement to Jordanian archaeologists regarding their publications. He continues to open the doors of ACOR’s library to all Jordanian researchers.

ACOR has influenced my archaeological career greatly and helped me in my archaeological studies and research. Many thanks to ACOR for being an excellent factor in my life.

Zeidan Kafafi received his PhD in February 1982 and since then has taught general and specialized M.A. courses at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (1982–1984) and in the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology, then the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, (1984–present) of Yarmouk University. His major field research and subsequent publications have centered on archaeological excavations and surveys, with special emphasis on Neolithic sites in Jordan (‘Ain Ghazal, Abu Hamid, ‘Ain Rahub, eh-Sayyeh, and Abu Thawwab), which contributed to a better understanding of the Late Neolithic periods and their material culture, as well as connections with neighboring regions. In addition to the Neolithic period, he is interested in other early periods, such as the Chalcolithic, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age; thus, he has directed or participated in expeditions at sites related to those periods, among them Abu Hamid, Deir ‘Alla, Mugheir, Dhaher el-Madina, and Tell Damiya. The results of his research have been presented in both local and internationally recognized journals. He has also been active in a wide range of university and community services and has received several prizes, presents, scholarships and awards from Jordan and other countries. A royal decree was issued on March 18th, 2018, by His Majesty King Abdullah II appointing Dr. Kafafi as the president of Yarmouk University. He served in this position until September 12th, 2020, and currently he is professor emeritus in archaeology.

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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 or even resale to builders. The management process thus created an economy of refuse in Roman cities, one that was directly tied to the urban construction industry. Working in tandem, these industries transformed a city over time, from its subterranean foundations to the walls that bounded Roman daily life. 

The recycling of refuse in Petra, the capital of the Nabataeans (Fig. 1), was an especially critical element in the building process in the long century before the Roman annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom. Many of Petra’s most famous monuments were constructed at the end of the 1^st century BCE and the start of the 1^st century CE, likely during the reign of Aretas IV (r. ca. 9 BCE–40 CE). These structures include but are not limited to the so-called Great Temple, the connected Garden and Pool complex, Qasr al-Bint, the Temple of the Winged Lions, and likely the theater. But the city continued to grow, and rapidly so, over the rest of the century. Surveys of Umm Rattam, Jabal Ash-Shara, Jabal Haroun, Wadi Silaysil, Wadi Musa, and Udhurh, among others, have found that sites dating to the second half of the 1^st century CE dominated all others. As surveys and excavations continue, it only becomes more and more evident that Petra’s population exploded in the 1^st century CE, spilling out into any hinterland space available. 

During that period of rapid hinterland expansion, several new structures were erected on Petra’s North Ridge, overlooking the city center, including two sub-elite domestic complexes and a villa urbana, complete with a bathhouse (Fig. 2). These structures were made not just of stone but also refuse. When discarded ceramics were mixed with soils, the conglomerate could be used to raise the floor level or make the floor itself. 

The question then is, where did the refuse come from if the structures represent some of the earliest occupation in that area of the city? Before the Nabataeans lived on the North Ridge, they interred their dead there. Tombs were cut several meters down into the bedrock and opened into a chamber where numerous individuals could be buried. Families buried their kin in such tombs for generations, moving the decomposed bodies to the side to inter new family members. During and between burials, the living mourned the dead, dining both in the tombs themselves and on flattened surfaces by tomb entrances. And each ritual dining episode produced significant amounts of ceramic refuse. As excavation has shown that just five of the rock-cut shaft tombs on the North Ridge were used to burry over 120 individuals, the refuse produced from the decades of dining with the dead in and around all the tombs that honeycomb the North Ridge must have been immense. Based on the similarities between the dining refuse and the materials used to create the domestic structures’ floors and leveling fills, the builders must have recycled the ritual debris that then littered the North Ridge. As competition for building resources was especially high at this time in the mid 1^st century CE, when Petra’s residents were building in any open area they could find, builders turned to whatever materials were available, even if the materials were scattered across the surface and likely difficult to collect. 

A few decades after the Nabataean houses were built, residents renovated several units. Unlike the earlier floors that seemingly recycled ritual debris, the new floors, installed in the late 1^st or early 2^nd century CE, contained materials that were more typically associated with domestic life: cooking vessels, food remains, and storage and serving equipment. In the decades between the original construction activities and those at the turn of the century, Petra’s residents produced ever more refuse that they likely stored in a convenient location near to their home but out of the way of traffic. These dump piles did not grow exponentially, however, as they were seemingly recycled in building fills nearly as quickly as they were produced. Only one Nabataean-period dump has been identified in Petra at this point, and archaeologists are split as to whether it truly dates to the Nabataean period or if, instead, it represents clearing activity after the Roman annexation. Based on the dearth of Nabataean dumps and the prevalence of Nabataean building and rebuilding over the 1^st century and into the 2^nd century, we can argue that refuse had the potential to be a resource, and a valuable one at that, during periods of urban growth.

But just as cities were not always in periods of growth, the value of refuse did not remain stable over time. Building initially resumed in the decades following the Roman annexation, but the construction industry slumped later in the 2^nd and through the 3^rd century CE. Many of Petra’s Nabataean-period monuments fell out of use during that time, as did several of the houses on the North Ridge and elsewhere in the city. What do appear to have grown, however, were the urban dumps. On the North Ridge alone, excavation recovered approximately 40 cubic meters of domestic and industrial waste piled against the city wall and another approximately 20 cubic meters of domestic debris dumped into just one of the now out-of-use rock-cut shaft tombs. As there was no building on the North Ridge during the Roman period, and building was generally decreased elsewhere in the city, the industry that previously consumed the materials in great quantities had little use for it. As a result, it grew in increasing amounts until residents moved away entirely. 

Based on the trends in one area of the city, refuse could be a hinderance in periods of low building activity or a valuable resource in times of urban growth. Questions still remain, though. Did Nabataean builders prefer certain sources or types of refuse? Was ease of access, to other building materials but also debris deposits, a factor? Is it possible to discern how long discarded materials remained exposed to the elements before they were recycled in fills? Did the builders of elite structures consume urban refuse in similar quantities as builders of sub-elite structures did? To answer these questions, I have begun to look at other archaeological contexts, including the Petra Garden and Pool Complex, the Upper Market, surveys of Petra’s hinterland, the Byzantine period structures in Bayda, the bathhouse and Nabataean dump at Humayma, and the Nabataean caravanserai and Roman fort at Khirbet al-Khalde. With these additional datasets, we can better articulate the complex but invisible urban system that produced, managed, and consumed urban refuse within the Nabataean kingdom. 

Sarah Wenner holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati in classical archaeology; her dissertation examined the role of discarded materials in shaping urban spaces throughout the Roman empire, with case studies from Petra, Pompeii, and Segedunum (UK). She has worked on many Roman sites and projects in Jordan, including Petra, Udhruh, Wadi Ramm, and Aqaba, and is assistant director of the Petra Garden and Pool Complex excavation, ceramicist for the Khirbet al-Khalde project, and co-editor of the Petra North Ridge Project’s final report. Wenner’s ACOR NEH Fellowship (2023–2024) project, South Jordan Ceramics as a Lens to Site Formation Processes, expands on her dissertation research for her first book project, which considers how southern Jordan’s ancient ceramic tradition contributed to the site formation processes of Petra and surrounding sites from the 1st century BCE through the 5th century CE.

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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 analyses have focused on the structure of UNWRA within the international refugee regime that developed in the years following World War II, as the Palestinian Nakba (“Catastrophe”) came just a few years after Europe and the newly created United Nations were grappling with the massive demands posed by displaced persons around the world resulting from the war, decolonization, and regional conflicts. Absent from the scholarly record is a history of the legal relationship between UNRWA and the Jordanian government, which, in part, my project at the American Center of Research will begin to rectify by focusing on the following questions: How did legal and administrative agreements between the Jordanian government and UNRWA affect Palestinian citizen-refugees struggling to rebuild their lives in Jordan? What did the changing Jordanian legal landscape in the early 1950s mean for the country enforcing its national laws for Jordanian citizens, which at times included a party (UNRWA) to legislation that held diplomatic immunity in Jordan? How did the international context in which Jordan was not yet a member state of the United Nations affect Jordan’s enforcement of national law in court cases that involved UNRWA and its officials, who sometimes were also Palestinian citizen-refugees of Jordan?^[1]

As a ACOR-CAORC Postdoctoral Fellow in summer 2023, I primarily searched in UNRWA’s Amman-based archives, particularly the central registry, for historical documentation during the 1948–1967 period, when Jordan ruled the West Bank and East Jerusalem. While this period remains understudied in Jordan’s history, this project is a natural continuation of my earlier research: 1) in 1997–1998 I focused on Jordanian Jerusalem during this time in my doctoral dissertation (Katz 2005); and 2) while my second book, a critical edition of a World War II-era Palestinian diary, focused on the writing by a young man from Hebron during the British Mandate period, my current project extends the analysis of Hebron and its surrounding villages and refugee camps during the early 1950s, following the end of the British Mandate and the division of Palestine between the newly established Israel and the expanded Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. 

My efforts turned up documentation elucidating the administrative and legal relationship between the Jordanian government and UNRWA in correspondence between the sides, along with staff memos, reports, drafts of reports, legal documents, meeting notes, and other related materials. The central registry in UNRWA’s archives “contains records related to various legal and administrative matters pertaining to programs, agreements with governments and international organizations, and information about UNRWA personnel” (Tamari and Zureik 2001). The documents found during weeks of searching in the central registry will enhance my historical analysis of the legal relationship between UNRWA and the Jordanian government and the Jordanian legal system in the early years of the Palestinian refugee crisis and UNRWA’s existence. Having already discovered Jordanian arrest records from the Hebron District for the limited 1951–1953 period, which serve as a critical primary source, the project also focuses on Palestinians’ lived experiences in the Hebron District, under the legal and administrative frameworks established by Jordan and UNRWA after the 1948 war, both as refugees and as Jordanian citizens. The additional resources I found in UNRWA’s archive will undoubtedly expand my analysis of the legal circumstances of Palestinian citizen-refugees in Jordan from 1948–1967. 

My writing thus far has clarified how Jordan’s government enacted new laws for the post-1948 period in the unified kingdom (1950) and enforced laws on citizens, including Palestinian refugee-citizens, laws that also affected UNRWA, an extra-territorial international institution. Gathering historical sources for Jordan during the 1948–1967 period remains challenging, leaving this time in Jordan’s history and the history of Palestinian refugee-citizens in Jordan understudied. By turning to a broad range of historical sources, such as those available in UNRWA’s archives, historians can continue to expand historical knowledge during the early, challenging years in Jordan following its independence, while analyzing the aftermath of the seismic event of the Palestinian Nakba and the relationship that UNRWA had with the Jordanian government as the primary aid organization for Palestinian refugees.   

The UNRWA documentation will help clarify how UNRWA and Jordan dealt with legal issues from 1951 to1953. Much of the documentation in the central registry traces the nature of immunity and privileges for UNRWA employees (effectively international staff) included in the 1951 Jordan-UNRWA agreement, but it draws on the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations. The issue of ration cards is also quite well documented in the UNRWA archives, mainly regarding the rolls of who had the right to a ration card and who did not. The precarious circumstances for Palestinian refugees during the post-1948 years led ration cards to become the source of criminal activity, and the crime registers include several cases of theft, forgery, and selling of stolen ration cards. In addition to the crime registers, the UNRWA archives include several cases, both criminal and civil, that are unusually well documented and stretch across the 1950s. Such cases can only add to our understanding of the intersection of legal issues between Jordan and UNRWA. 

References

Katz, Kimberly. 2005. Jordanian Jerusalem: Holy Places and National Spaces. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Tamari, Salim and Elia Zureik. 2001. “UNRWA Archives on Palestinian Refugees.” In Reinterpreting the Historical Record: The Uses of Palestinian Refugee Archives for Social Science Research and Policy Analysis, edited by Salim Tamari and Elia Zureik, 25–60. Jerusalem: Institute for Jerusalem Studies.

^[1] Jordan was admitted to the United Nations on December 14, 1955.

Kimberly Katz is professor of Middle East history and coordinator of the Human Rights & History minor at Towson University in Maryland, focusing her research and teaching interests on social, cultural, colonial, and post-colonial history of the Middle East and North Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. She has conducted research in Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Egypt with the support of various fellowships, including from the Fulbright Program, Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), and the American Center of Research (ACOR). Her first book, Jordanian Jerusalem: Holy Places and National Spaces, was published in 2005 by the University Press of Florida. Her second book, A Young Palestinian’s Diary, 1941–1945: The Life of Sami ‘Amr, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2009 and in Arabic by the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing (AIRP) in 2017.

The post Between Jordanian and International Law: UNRWA Involvement in Jordanian Court Cases, 1948–1967 appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

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 Daniyal. Romanies appear prominently in Orientalist travelogues in the early part of the 20^th century, as well as in works by Arab authors. For Mahmoud Darwish, often considered to be the greatest modern Arab poet, the figure of the landless, wandering Romani became a metaphor by which to romanticize the Palestinian refugee crisis. He wrote in a famous poem, “Violins weep with Romanies going to Andalusia / Violins weep for Arabs leaving Andalusia.”

In Jordan, Romanies were a favorite theme of Mustafa Wahbi Al-Tal (also known by his pen name, “Arar”), the early 20^th-century poet and one of the architects of Jordanian identity. Prone to raucous depictions of revelry evoking the medieval Sufi poets (but without their spiritual double entendres), Arar would often write of his benders in Romani tent encampments around his home city of Irbid which was then a small town. Like his Andalusian contemporary Federico García Lorca, Arar found in Romani people a romanticized purity: a discursive site from which to critique modernity and what he thought to be its hypocrisies. Arar’s son, Wasfi Al-Tal, who became a prominent Jordanian political figure, was also an early patron of Abdo Musa, a Romani rabab master and singer who was arguably the first authentically Jordanian musical voice. In the 1980s, the Romani bouzouk player Jamil Al-Aas, along with his wife, Salwa Haddad, popularized what is today one of the most widely loved folk songs in Arabic: “Wen a’ Ramallah.” The song is Palestinian and its performers Palestinian/Jordanian, but what is not popularly known is that it is most likely of Romani origins, as Romanies themselves attest; it is an invocation of a bygone era of Romani wandering through Palestine and the Levantine region. 

Yet, in spite of this continuity of an over a millennia-long presence and cultural contributions, Romanies remain strangers to mainstream Jordanian consciousness. I have made theoretical arguments elsewhere on possible reasons for such an omission, so I will not repeat these arguments here. Rather, for the remainder of this essay, I will offer a basic ethnological sketch of the various Romani groups in Jordan.

For a start, the ethnonym “Romani” is a polite umbrella term for referring to an array of groups that are related by language, history, or sometimes mere affinity (more on this shortly). In English, the better-known term is “Gypsy;” but that is an uncomfortable lexical choice that carries with it centuries of racism and abuse. In Arabic, the literary term is al-ghajar, but the more colloquial ethnonym in the Levantine region is al-nawar; a situation that corresponds to the Romani/Gypsy divide in English. Because of how and what demographic data are collected in Jordan, it is impossible to have a detailed quantitative discussion of Romani life in the country. The population estimate of 70,000 cited earlier was reported to me by one Fateh Abdo Musa, a Romani politician (and son of musician Abdo Musa) who has for many years attempted to form a unified Romani political bloc and who has run unsuccessfully for a seat in the Jordanian parliament several times. In reality, the total number of Romanies in Jordan is unknown; it could be possibly lower, or quite plausibly much higher.

Even less known are the population dynamics of Romani sub-groups, clans, and tribes. This is, again, mostly because of the reluctance of the Jordanian government to collect ethnicized data. But there is another problem here. Romanies in Jordan are indicative of a much wider tendency in Arab/Islamic society that historically feigned ambiguity in various areas of life that later underwent examinations of scientific exactitude in the 20^th century. Some such areas, argues the Arabist Thomas Bauer, included sexuality, Qur’anic interpretation, linguistics, religious skepticism, and more. The move away from ambiguity and toward standardized categories (and consequent intolerances), argues the Bauer, has largely been a result of the interventions of European powers that were for centuries engulfed by the Catholic dogma of un roi, une loi, une foi. I argue in my upcoming book on Romani kinship in Palestine that ethnic groups and boundaries were also historically ambiguous in the region and that presently ambiguous Romani formations are a relic of this premodern past. This being said, the two main Romani groups in Jordan are Doms and Turkmen, although each one is then subdivided into various groups, some of which often overlap with non-Romani lineages.

Doms are the largest Romani group in the Middle East (Fig. 1). Dom is a cognate term with rom; both terms for “man” in Domari and Romani languages, respectively—the former being the language of Doms, and the latter the language family of European Roma. Thus, there is a clear linguistic connection between Doms and Romani peoples of Europe. Domari is largely no longer spoken in Jordan, with the exception of the Daqdaqa tribe of Doms (Fig. 2). The name of this Dom tribe most likely refers to the Arabic daq “tattoo,” a prominent feature in the culture of this group. Most Doms in Jordan are refugees from Palestine, although very few use such language themselves to describe their fortunes. Having arrived in the thousands with the Palestinian exoduses of 1948 and 1967, Doms, in this sense, constitute an integral part of the Palestinian story in Jordan.

A second Romani group that is prominent in Jordan is the Turkmen, a Turkish-speaking group with likely neither linguistic nor ethnic ties to other Romani peoples (Fig. 3). However, the consensus in the scholarly field of Romani studies is that Romani identity is bound not only by shared ethnicity but also by affinity, and the situation in Jordan shows that Turkmen and Daqdaqa Doms settle in the same neighborhoods whenever possible. Although sometimes professing their distinction from one another, the two also cooperate on practical matters: conflict resolution, wedding celebrations, and political life. That is to say, Doms are always invited to Turkmen weddings and vice versa, members of one group will turn to the other group’s sheikhs when there is a conflict in the community, and both are represented in Jordanian politics by Fateh Abdo Musa.Most importantly, perhaps, both Doms and Turkmen (with the exception of Doms from Gaza) are Jordanian citizens, meaning that these populous communities with a historic continuity in the region constitute part of the Jordanian political body and are also part and parcel of the human index of what we call varyingly and at various strata as the bilad al-sham or the Levant, the Arab world, and the Middle East.

Arpan Roy was the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellow at the American Center of Research for 2022–2023. He is an incoming Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Humanities at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain. He earned his PhD in anthropology from Johns Hopkins University in 2021. His book manuscript, tentatively titled Relative Strangers: Romani Kinship and Palestinian Difference, is currently under review with the University of Toronto Press. He is also co-editing the first book project of Insaniyyat, the society of Palestinian anthropologists. He has published articles in Anthropological Theory, CITY, Social Anthropology, and Jerusalem Quarterly. 

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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 argued that seemingly small and insignificant objects capture a fundamental part of our existence. Although primarily interested in North American historical archaeology, Deetz emphasized the need to understand artifacts as more than just typological entries. For the people living and visiting the landscape of the Black Desert in Jordan, the rich material culture was not solely for the functional purposes of survival but evoked connections with other people, places, and meanings. 

Climatic conditions in the southern Levant during the 9^th and 8^th millennia BCE created environments in which increased cereal and pulse farming, and animal husbandry, fostered population growth and higher-density settlements. By the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (c. 7500–7000 BCE), larger settlements emerged in the region from southern Jordan to southern Syria. Some of these villages were abandoned around 7000 BCE while others suffered a depleted population. In contrast to the well-known fundamental changes that occurred across southwestern Asia during the early Neolithic, the subsequent Late Neolithic (LN) is poorly documented and was once considered a “hiatus” in the southern Levant. Even less well understood, the marginal steppes and deserts outside the “Fertile Crescent” were often viewed as underpopulated and of little significance to the larger neolithization process. Until recently, few structures were known in the steppes and desert to the east dating to the 8^th to 6^th millennium BCE. These “small things remembered” provide another glimpse into what was once thought to be a hiatus. 

Since 2009, the Eastern Badia Archaeological Project (EBAP) has examined two areas, Wisad Pools and the mesas along Wadi al-Qattafi (Fig. 1). Both are located on the margins of the harra, the volcanic Black Desert of Jordan. These sites were used intensively by prehistoric hunters and herders from the early 7^th to mid-6^th millennium BCE. Based on the many substantial, well-built Late Neolithic structures and the botanical evidence for trees (oak, willow, acacia) and marshy plants, mounting lines of evidence paint a picture very different from that of the bleak and desolate desert we see today. Rather than brief, temporary visits of small groups of people passing through, we now believe that people built and occupied substantial structures organized into hamlets, spending much of the year hunting and herding. Many questions remain, of course: where did these people come from? We know that they were hunting gazelle, onager (wild donkey), hare, and a few other animals, but to what degree did herding of domesticated animals play a role? Did the escalation in gazelle hunting with animal traps (“desert kites”) increase the role of hunting in exchange across the region? 

Wadi al-Qattafi is a major drainage basin about 60 kilometers east of Azraq where a series of about 30 basalt-capped mesas loom 40–60 meters over the desert floor. Various collapsed structures found atop the mesas and along their lower slopes include animal pens, tower tombs, desert kites, and cells. The EBAP team excavated four structures along Wadi al-Qattafi; two are small huts atop Maitland’s Mesa (Mesa 4; Fig. 2) that provided no artifacts or carbonized remains. In the other two structures were found arrowheads, beads, animal bones, and various small finds dating to the Late Neolithic, although these finds were possibly separated by as much seven to eight centuries. Sixty kilometers farther to the east, the extensive site of Wisad Pools includes over 500 ancient structures concentrated around a series of about nine pools. Three structures excavated over the past decade date to the Late Neolithic, with some structures built in the earliest stages of the this period. In addition to the variety of structures around the pools, over 400 petroglyphs are pecked into the basalt, primarily depicting horned animals (such as ibex, kudu, and cattle), camels, and desert kites (Hill et al. 2020). 

In the decade since the EBAP was established, our understanding of the recently defined Black Desert Late Neolithic (Wasse et al. 2020) has been transformed. The multi-faceted and far-reaching changes documented at Wisad Pools and Wadi al-Qattafi during the later 7^th and earlier 6^th millennia cal. BCE seem to be part of wider, regional transformative processes playing out concurrently along the arc of the upper Mesopotamian and Levantine desert line. Emerging evidence suggests that sites such as Wisad Pools and Wadi al-Qattafi, as crossroads on the steppe, played important roles as hubs of cultural exchange between disparate regions during the Late Neolithic period. Long-distance contacts may have formed an essential component in interregional networks that are largely unexamined for the later prehistoric periods in the southern Levant, particularly during the Late Neolithic period. 

To study this potential nexus of interconnected spheres, a critical component is the analysis of the small finds collected from the excavations of these five Late Neolithic structures. Chipped stone and animal bone constitute most finds, but the stone and shell beads, palettes, rings or bracelets, ochre, shells, and other small objects signify important elements of personal identity, status, and connectivity. By identifying the material type, potential origins of material, documentation of form and metrics, and parallel types from roughly contemporaneous sites, a database for comparative study with the wider Neolithic world will be established. Most non-flint small finds are beads manufactured from a variety of materials such as limestone (Fig. 3), bone, Dabba marble (Fig. 4), and carnelian. While limestone and bone probably originated locally, Dabba marble derives from farther away, perhaps to the southwest, near Wadi Jilat. Carnelian sources are not well known and be in the south, in Saudi Arabia, or even farther away. 

Other unusual objects hint at connections with more distant lands, such as the incised cone (Fig. 5) and the large mother-of-pearl plaque (Fig. 6). The shape of the incomplete incised cone is reminiscent of Mesopotamian tokens, commonly made of ceramic, the function of which continues to be debated. Secreted inside of a reconfigured doorway, the mother of pearl originates far from the Black Desert and must have been a prized possession. Another intriguing artifact is the labret, made of hard gray stone, an item thought to decorate either the lower lip or the ear (Fig. 7). Known from Mesopotamian contexts, the labret hints at connections to the east or northeast. The study of small things remembered contributes to a reconsideration of the putative lacuna of occupation in the region.

References

Deez, J. 1977. In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life. Garden City: Anchor Press/Doubleday.

Hill, A. C., and Y. M. Rowan. 2022. “The Black Desert Drone Survey: New Perspectives on an Ancient Landscape.” Remote Sensing 14(3) [special issue: Jesse Casana and Elise Jakoby Laugier (eds.), Remote Sensing of Past Human Land Use]: 18 pp. DOI: 10.3390/rs14030702.

Wasse, A., G. O. Rollefson, and Y. M. Rowan. 2020. “Flamingos in the Desert: How a Chance Encounter Shed Light on the ‘Burin Neolithic’ of Eastern Jordan.” In P. M. M. G. Akkermans (ed.), Landscapes of Survival: Pastoralist Societies, Rock Art and Literacy in Jordan’s Black Desert, 79–101. Leiden: Sidestone Press. 

Yorke Rowan, ACOR NEH Postdoctoral Research Fellow 2022–2023, is an anthropological archaeologist and research associate professor at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures Museum (formerly the Oriental Institute) of the University of Chicago. He focuses on later prehistory (Late Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Early Bronze), with thematic research interests in death, prehistoric ritual performance, and material objects mediating these human actions. His most recent publications include The Social Archaeology of the Levant: From Prehistory to Present (2019, Cambridge University Press, co-edited with A. Yasur-Landau and E. Cline) and “The Black Desert Drone Survey: New Perspectives on an Ancient Landscape” in the journal Remote Sensing (2022) with A. C. Hill. He co-directs the Kites in Context Project and the Eastern Badia Archaeological Project, both in the Black Desert of Jordan.

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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 needs of the city, such as fountains and bath houses. However, the function and form of these new water supply systems depended on their regional context and could indicate significant cultural changes. My research project at the American Center of Research is part of a larger endeavor, which is to better understand how water was used in Roman cities, especially in provinces distant from the capital at Rome.

I chose to study water because water infrastructure is an overlooked data set in ancient cities. Scholars typically look at artistic and ceramic remains to assess questions of social development. When hydrology is considered, scholarly attention is given to the engineering and architectural aspects of aqueduct construction, ignoring how and why water was utilized and consumed by the inhabitants of the city. My project aims to address an understudied region within water studies and encourage a deeper discussion on the influence of cultural and social diversity on water consumption in the Roman Empire.

My research focuses on several cities within a micro-region of the Roman Empire called the Decapolis (Fig. 1). The Decapolis was a geographic region within the Near East consisting of a loosely grouped collection of ten city-states that emerged in the Hellenistic period and continued to identify together in the Roman period. The ten cities of the Decapolis are located in present-day Jordan, Israel, and Syria. For my dissertation and American Center project, I analyzed four of these cities, all located in northern Jordan: Jerash, Umm Qais, Amman, and Pella. I chose this region and these cities because they provide a unique atmosphere to study waterscapes. They share many similar characteristics of urban planning and investment in Greco-Roman architecture but are topographically diverse. Jerash and Umm Qais are the best-preserved sites, boasting complex aqueducts and water installations. I am using these two cities as my type sites from which to compare two others that are less well preserved: Amman and Pella. Thanks to funding I received from the American Center, I was able to visit these archaeological sites and document water supply features such as pipes, non-ornamental fountains, and water channels. 

The first part of my stay at the center was spent visiting archaeological sites relevant to my dissertation and collecting data from existing archaeological remains. Hydrological features are not always included in site plans and excavation reports, so it was important that I visit each in person. My study visits included basic documentation, such as taking photographs of in-situ archaeological features, recording basic measurements, and noting elevations of these features. 

The first site I visited was Amman, known as Philadelphia in the Roman period. I visited the Citadel (Al-Qal’a) (Fig. 2) and the Roman buildings downtown. At the Citadel, I analyzed the cisterns and wells that are thought to date to the Umayyad period. The Umayyad palace is, in fact, on top of an earlier Roman monumental structure, so the cisterns and wells of the palace could have been part of a previous Roman enclosure. I also studied the area around the Roman theater and the nymphaeum. It seems that the main water supply was focused in this area during the Roman period and was directly connected to the wadi. 

Jerash is a massive site, about 80 hectares in size, which is almost 112 soccer fields! My favorite monument was the Temple of Zeus, which was built on a large hill overlooking the site. It has a spectacular view of the oval plaza and the colonnaded street (Fig. 3). At Jerash, I spent several days visiting the site and walking around the remains, identifying water installations. I found several street fountains along the main colonnaded street, as well as evidence of water supply on the other side streets. I also documented reservoirs and cisterns from the Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic periods. Additionally, I took elevations and analyzed potential water-supply routes.

Pella, also known as Tabaqat Fahl, is located northeast of Jerash, near the junction of the highlands and the Jordan Valley. When I first arrived at the site, I thought it was at a very high altitude overlooking the valley, but when I checked my elevation, I was actually below sea level! The site is famous for its Byzantine churches (Fig. 4) and Iron Age temples. The Roman material is below the Byzantine layers and very hard to excavate because the water table is so high. I was hoping that my observations from the other sites would help me to identify water features at Pella, but the only one I could identify is the already-excavated exedra (seating area), likely part of a bath, and the vaulted structure next to it. The Roman period will continue to remain a mystery here for now.

Umm Qais, also known as ancient Gadara, is an amazing site located in the northwest corner of Jordan. On a clear day, from here you can see the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Heights in the distance. The long colonnaded street has been excavated, but no street fountains other than the monumental nymphaeum have been identified yet (Fig. 5). However, I found several potential fountains that all had architecture similar to the other Roman monuments and had evidence of plastering. 

I spent most of the second part of my stay at the American Center of Research creating a database of all the hydrological data I had collected during my site visits. Additionally, I spent time in the library sifting through old excavation reports and books to which I had had no prior access. My fellowship has also allowed me to travel to other cultural heritage sites in Jordan. For instance, I got to visit Ajloun Castle, Madaba, Umm ar-Rasas, the Dead Sea, Petra, Wadi Rum, and Aqaba. Visiting Petra had a great impact on my research perspective and allowed me a means to compare how other cultures were supplying water in a different region. The aqueduct channel carved into the rockface of the Siq attests to the fact that region, topography, and access to water directly affect how water will be supplied and used.  

Jordan is a truly wonderful place, full of rich cultural heritage, and I am lucky that I was able to fully immerse myself in its traditions. 

References

Lichtenberger Achim and Rubina Raja. 2018. The Archaeology and History of Jerash: 110 Years of Excavations. Turnhout: Brepols.

Northedge, Alastair. 1992. Studies on Roman and Islamic Amman: The Excavations of Mrs. C-M Bennet and Other Investigations, volume I. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Smith, Robert Houston, and Leslie Preston Day. 1989. Pella of the Decapolis, volume 2: Final Report on the College of Wooster Excavations in Area IX, The Civic Complex, 1979–1985. [Wooster, Ohio]: The College of Wooster.

Clare Rasmussen is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College. She holds a BA in anthropology and classical archaeology from the University of Michigan and a MA in classics from the University of Arizona. She is primarily interested in Roman archaeology with a particular focus on water studies, city planning, architecture, landscape, and cultural identity. While she is a resident at the American Center of Research, Clare will be working on her PhD dissertation project, “Water Consumption in the Decapolis: Examining Water Use in Gerasa, Philadelphia, Gadara, and Pella during the Roman Period.” Her dissertation aims to explore the social, cultural, and religious implications of water-supply systems in select cities of the historical Decapolis region of northern Jordan in order to understand how and why local inhabitants adapted, adopted, and modified hydrological structures into the urban armature of their cities. Her project seeks to address an understudied region within Roman water studies, encourage a deeper discussion on the influence of cultural and social diversity on water consumption, and examine the widespread perception of homogenous water consumption in the Roman Empire.

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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 of the Ottoman period, the most obvious being the Ottoman hajj forts (Fig. 1), many of which were constructed or reconstructed during the early Ottoman period. Less conspicuous are the remains of villages, which are usually located within or near modern villages (Fig. 2). Sometimes they are majestically poised on tops of hills, or along the slopes of wadis, hidden from view. Approaching them from afar is a special experience: sometimes they blend into their surroundings well, being constructed of local limestone and nari (calcrete/caliche), but just as often they feature local basalt in the construction, making them a striking image in the landscape. In other cases, the modern villages have grown around the old Ottoman-period structures (for example, Fig. 3), which were often themselves built on earlier remains. Many of these villages were occupied for centuries and thus hold special historical value to Jordan, although they are often overlooked for scientific study in favor of ancient sites.

Popular discourse has it that archaeological sites of the later periods do not hold the same romantic associations and mystery that those of the ancient periods do, and this has unfortunately led to their being forgotten, by locals and academics alike. Although the late medieval/early modern periods have not often been considered with a great deal of seriousness by archaeologists, this is slowly changing, as the inherent value that these villages have to our archaeological knowledge is beginning to be understood. These multi-period sites are valuable not only because they have earlier occupation levels; it should be made abundantly clear that the current hierarchical perception of time periods in the field of archaeology is an archaic viewpoint that must be left in the past. The fact is that these villages represent continuity, a topic not often favored by academic research, as sudden changes in the archaeological record present a mystery to be solved. However, it needs to be acknowledged that continuity is what archaeology is meant to examine as well—what everyday life was like for people: not just in those moments of crisis and war, but what characterized the lives of people, most of whom fell within the social category of “peasantry” (or fellahin). Ironically, this class made up the majority of the population, yet they remain the least understood.

One of the ways that we can begin to understand the lives of the fellahin in Jordan is through the study of the villages they left behind, which are steadily disappearing. Many are currently in ruins and as of yet have not been systematically excavated. Places of the later periods in this region are often seen only for their worth in terms of cultural heritage, and while they are of course important in this respect, they also hold great value in terms of advancing our archaeological knowledge of the region. However, simply preserving them for future generations is not enough; understanding their inherent value begins with devoted academic engagement.

Ottoman archaeology is an historical archaeology, and it represents an opportunity to bridge the fields of history and archaeology, both of which have serious weaknesses in the study of this period in Jordan. In terms of historical sources, the first century of Ottoman rule in the region was fairly well recorded through tax registers and regularly conducted cadastral surveys, making their combined analysis a perfect tool for the archaeologist, who studies processes as they occur over long periods of time. Unfortunately, this practice was discontinued after this first century of rule, but this in itself reveals something important about state and local relations, indicating that state presence was ephemeral, if not completely nil. The general lack of textual data thereafter has been historically interpreted as something of a dark age in the region, where Bedouin raids and lawlessness became the norm. However, this is a gross oversimplification of the situation that does not take into account the archaeological data. What is indicated by material evidence is rather a process of ruralization, where local rulership and industries would prevail. But, as is well known, history is almost always written from the perspective of the ruling elite or by those of higher classes who were literate. A case in point are the European travel accounts that abound for the region of the “Holy Land,” where pilgrimage became popular from the 19^th century on. While many of these narratives contain useful information on the various villages and landscapes of Jordan, they must be read with great caution, given the prevailing ethnocentric viewpoints of the time.

The way of life in Greater Syria would change again with the reintroduction of direct Ottoman rule via the Tanzimat. These reforms were meant to recentralize Ottoman rule and utilize the vast agricultural potential of the region to the benefit of the state, whose treasury was pitifully empty after the many wars engaged in with Europe. The Ottomans saw Greater Syria as an economically beneficial tool, provided they could manage to organize the lands to work in their favor. In the end, the many reforms regarding land tenure were to prove unsuccessful, with their overall plan backfiring, as land was gradually collected by wealthy landowners at the expense of both the state and the peasantry.

The remains of the villages that we see today are a reflection of the prevailing situation during the late Ottoman and early (British) Mandate period. As agricultural production decreased due to the profitability of employment in manufacturing industries, people left their villages for lives in the towns and cities. However, many of these old villages are still being occupied in some form (Fig. 4)—usually as stables for animals, or as storage units, where they continue to remain an integral part of the village fabric. As such, these places are truly temporal palimpsests, the physical depictions of centuries-old processes of rural life in Jordan, with every region having its own unique characteristics and each village its own stories to tell.

Lauren Erker is a PhD student in the Islamic Archaeology Research Unit at the University of Bonn in Germany. She received her BA in anthropology from Metropolitan State University in Denver, Colorado, and her MSc in late antique, Byzantine, and Islamic studies from the University of Edinburgh, and she has held an ACOR-CAORC Predoctoral Fellowship (2021–2022). Having excavation and survey experience in the states of Colorado and Wyoming as well as in the countries of Oman, Israel-Palestine, and Jordan, she now works for the American Center of Research as archaeologist for the Amman Citadel project. Her dissertation is a socio-archaeological analysis of rural settlement in Palestine and Transjordan during the Ottoman period.

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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 the Prevention of Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property Project under the leadership of Dr. Ahmed Fatima Kzzo. Funded by the Office of Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Amman and in cooperation with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities (DoA), this project aims to combat the illegal acquisition and destruction of antiquities in Jordan and to strengthen national and international efforts to preserve and protect cultural heritage by supporting the DoA’s anti-trafficking unit. My role was to support the initiative by drafting the outline of a training manual for DoA staff and local archaeologists to ensure the project’s sustainability, as well as by analyzing trainees’ data for periodic quarterly reports on the project, preparing designs to be used for public awareness, and undertaking other tasks.

In addition to my work at the American Center, I had the privilege of attending the Fifteenth International Conference on the History and Archaeology of Jordan (ICHAJ 15), with the theme of “Thoughtful Archaeology in the Ecosphere and Sociosphere,” at Yarmouk University. This was the second time I was fortunate enough to visit Irbid, the first being when I visited the Dar As-Saraya Museum for a training program related to the Prevention of Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property Project.

The conference was inaugurated by HRH Prince Hassan, who delivered an engaging and thoughtful speech about Jordanian cultural heritage. Prince Hassan, a longtime supporter of archaeology and protecting Jordan’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage, made an effort to engage with a variety of presenters during his speech. Over three days, ICHAJ had at least a hundred presentations, five multi-hour workshops, eleven online lectures, and a poster session. Topics discussed included conservation and community participation, capacity-building for sustainable preservation, the fight against illicit cultural-heritage trafficking, and more. I was very appreciative of the conference’s focus on accessibility, as every session was translated into both Arabic and English. This feature fostered a welcoming atmosphere, overcoming the typical issues of language barriers at international conferences.

The lectures provided great insight into the latest research in Jordan. Of particular interest to me, Dr. Helen Malko (associate director for fellowships and programs) and Dr. Ahmed Kzzo (director of the Prevention of Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property Project) presented the American Center’s illicit-trafficking prevention project on the second day of the conference. It was incredibly special for me to witness research I had participated in crafting presented at an international conference. I also greatly enjoyed hearing from scholars such as Dr. Craig A. Harvey (a former American Center fellow), who presented on Roman marble sculptural fragments found at the site of Humayma. Beyond individual lectures, I attended a two-hour workshop on the Madaba Regional Archaeological Museum Project (MRAMP) hosted at the Museum of Jordanian Heritage at Yarmouk University. The workshop was moderated by Douglas R. Clark, who, along with fellow team members Suzanne Richard and Basem Mahamid, provided an overview of the progression and projections of their exciting project. Additionally, the American Center’s own Jehad Haron (associate director and cultural-heritage resources development lead for its USAID-funded Sustainable Cultural Heritage Through Engagement of Local Communities Project) joined the workshop to present his forthcoming book, a manual about the pottery of Jordan.

To conclude each day of the conference, ICHAJ staff organized fantastic group excursions to archaeological sites near Irbid. In Jerash, I had the privilege to dine with HE Dr. Nayef Himiedi Al Fayez, the minister of tourism and antiquities, and Prof. Fadi Al Balawi, director general of the Department of Antiquities. We traveled to Umm Qais on Thursday evening and dined within the site. I felt very privileged to see the ancient city of Gadara at sunset and take in the view of the Sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights, and the surrounding states. ICHAJ 15 came to a close with a gala dinner at the Amman Citadel (Fig. 2). We genuinely had a red carpet rolled out for us as we walked into dinner serenaded by bagpipes. It was a regal conclusion to an enlightening conference, and I was grateful to be among the international cohort of voices vowing to protect Jordanian history and archaeology.

My welcoming experience at ICHAJ mirrored my time at the American Center. The newly renovated building was pristine, especially the outdoor patios, library, and gym. However, the most significant takeaway from my time at the center has been the network I have crafted here. Having an international cohort of voices to run ideas by, discuss trends among, and share experiences with as foreign scholars was the single most impactful aspect of my time in Jordan. Going forward, these relationships will continue to bolster my understanding of the cultural heritage space and how we safeguard our interwoven histories. I am so thankful that I got to experience living and working in a research center and for the colleagues I met and friendships I made while at the American Center of Research. 

Danielle Wolfson is the administrative coordinator at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communications. She is a cultural heritage specialist with experience in Germany, Greece, and now Jordan. Creating her own major in museum studies, she earned her BA from Drexel University in 2020. Her current research looks at analyzing museums as institutions for social change and current provenance standards.

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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 arrived. I am an assistant professor of anthropology at North Carolina State University, where Tom worked until his unexpected death last year, and my specialty is zooarchaeology (the analysis of animal bones recovered from archaeological sites). A few years ago, Tom asked me to analyze the animal bones from the Petra North Ridge Project, which he and Megan Perry co-directed from 2012 to 2016. Tom’s initial request led, as such things often do, to my widening involvement in Jordanian zooarchaeology. Last year, Tom asked me to publish the animal bones from his Roman Aqaba Project. Around the same time, Jack Green (who was ACOR’s associate director at the time) asked me to analyze the animal bones from the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management project. Because most of the animal bones from the Petra North Ridge, and all from the Temple of the Winged Lions project, are housed in Jordan, I applied for an ACOR fellowship to undertake those analyses. I was awarded an ACOR-CAORC Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2021, and I took up the fellowship this past summer. 

What does a zooarchaeologist do? What does it mean to “analyze animal bones”? Well, it depends on the questions that we are trying to answer. I am not a zoologist; my research questions are cultural, rather than biological. I am interested in how people and animals interact and influence one another. When I study animal bones, I begin by determining what animals the bone fragments came from. Humans use horses in ways far different from how they use sheep, for example, so determining what animals the bones come from can tell us if they were animals typically used for food or as ritual sacrifices or as transportation. I also determine what body part the bone came from. If the assemblage is dominated by the small bones of the feet, for example, but lacks those from the spine and upper limbs, I might deduce that the animals were butchered at the site, but the meaty portions of the body were eaten elsewhere. I also study whether the bones came from young or old, male or female animals; that can tell us, for example, whether the people were slaughtering young males and keeping females into old age as breeding stock or for their milk. 

The vast majority of animal bones from Middle Eastern sites represent sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, dogs, horses, donkeys, and camels. Wild species such as gazelle, rabbits, deer, and onagers (Asiatic wild asses; the subspecies that lived in Jordan is extinct) are rarer, but not unexpected. So zooarchaeologists typically need to learn the skeletal anatomy of only a handful of species that predominate in a particular region. When we come across something unexpected, there are many options for figuring out what kind of animal it came from. We can look up pictures of suspected species. We can take the bone to a natural history museum and try to find a match in their skeletal collections. We can post a picture on the Zooarchaeology Listserv—a web resource where zooarchaeologists (there are, shockingly, thousands of us) share pictures and ask for help with identification. I did just that this summer. I put an image of a strange-looking bone on the listserv, and within hours several helpful colleagues had identified it as a particular kind of dwarf dog found at Roman-period sites (Fig. 1). They even sent photos. It was an exact match. 

In my two months at ACOR, I’ve studied more than 70,000 bone fragments from the Petra North Ridge and Temple of the Winged Lions projects. Most of the animals are sheep and goat, but there have been some surprises. There is now pretty clear evidence of a workshop on Petra’s North Ridge where residents were butchering camels and using their lower limb bones to fashion pins, needles, rings, plaques, and more. We find not only the tools in the bone assemblage but also the detritus of the tool production process (Fig. 2). We have two different species of dog: the dwarf variety and a longer-limbed breed. There are also a lot of fish bones—especially parrotfish, with their distinctive beaks, which would have been transported in from the Red Sea. There are still more bones to study, but I was able to examine the majority of both assemblages while at ACOR. 

But the best part about working at ACOR has been the people I’ve met. Early in my stay in Jordan, I met Lubna Omar, a zooarchaeologist who was in Amman for the month of July (Fig. 3). Lubna was looking for a new project, and I had a lot to do, so I asked her to collaborate with me on the Petra North Ridge bones. We worked together for several weeks and will publish the results jointly. The ACOR residents this summer also included a host of friends old and new, and conversations with them at lunch, on the patio, and out on the town helped alleviate the stress of recording 70,000 tiny bone fragments in a vast Excel spreadsheet. The staff were also unflaggingly kind and helpful and ensured that I had everything I needed to accomplish my research goals. I wish I could thank Tom Parker for introducing me to Jordan, ACOR, and this new network of friends and colleagues. Thanks to my time at ACOR this summer, I’m now even more prepared to answer the question that I know he would ask: No, Tom, there are still no dinosaur bones in the assemblage.

Kathryn Grossman is assistant professor of anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at North Carolina State University. She is an archaeologist and zooarchaeologist with expertise in the complex societies of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean. She earned her BA in archaeology from Tufts University and her MA and PhD in Near Eastern art and archaeology from the University of Chicago. Her current research focuses on resistance to state-making, the biographies of early cities, and human/non-human animal relationships in early complex societies. She directs the Makounta-Voules Archaeological Project in Cyprus and has been a senior staff member on archaeological projects in Syria, Cyprus, Egypt, and Iraq.

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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 Near Eastern languages and cultures from the University of California, Los Angeles. My earlier studies included an MA in 2011 from the University of Arkansas in anthropology, looking at the transition from the Early to Middle Bronze Age in the Orontes Valley of Syria, and a BS in 2009 from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in archaeological studies. I have excavated and surveyed in various places across the globe, including Bolivia, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arkansas, and California. My PhD and ongoing research focus on landscapes of change and mobility during the transition from the Early to Middle Bronze Age.

In its broadest sense, my research focuses on flashpoints of change from a landscape perspective. The foremost aim of my project is to address the interrelationship between Early Bronze IV (EB IV) settlement locations and environmental niches. The primary objective has been to further analyze the Early Bronze Age IV (c. 2500–2000 BCE) from multiple perspectives in the Levant. This was done from multiple theoretical perspectives, focusing predominantly on models of resilience and methodologies associated with landscape studies including geographic information systems (GIS).

Most of my time at the American Center was spent cleaning and amassing archaeological survey data for the entirety of the Levant. In total, I now have a database of over 10,000 archaeological sites that have been surveyed in the southern Levant, ranging from the Chalcolithic through the Iron Age, with an emphasis on the transitional periods. The data came from Department of Antiquities websites, as well as surveys published by various research institutions. Some of my time during this fellowship was spent creating Python scripts to strip data and put them into a manageable database and a more manipulatable form. I used open-source Python libraries to help determine some logical patterns. Once regular patterns were established, the data were converted into comma-separated-value (CSV) tables, which are readable by Microsoft Excel. These data, which included geographic locations in the form of latitude and longitude, were then input into ArcGIS to create maps and establish spatial patterns for analysis (Fig. 1).

In addition, I visited archaeological sites and regions in Jordan that I had previously been unable to. The last time I was at the American Center of Research was during the winter, which limited the places I could go. During my fellowship at the center, I visited sites particularly in the southern parts of the country along the desert highway. Throughout my research, I noted that marginal zones and areas of transition were those that experienced the most impact during times of change. I wanted to better understand what types of resources these areas could maintain and wanted to see in person where they were on the landscape. A lot of my research to that point had been done with remote sensing and by analyzing satellite imagery. However, these portray only a small part of the picture, and a more extensive understanding of the areas was necessary to further my studies. Specifically, areas that are on margins of agricultural productivity, places that receive the bare minimum for dry farming at the 200–250 mm isohyet^[1] (indicating a so-called zone of uncertainty, a region in which agriculture that relies on rainfall is possible but risky), were occupied during this transitional period.

My favorite part of the fellowship was being able to drive to viewpoints and overlook the landscape about which I was writing. It was also an excuse to visit sites outside of my time period of focus. In particular, I went to Petra (Fig. 2). Several of the sites that I have in my data set are in the Arabah Valley. I hiked up the hill to the ad Deir Monument and just sat and looked over the valley. It was one of the times I could simply think about my research without having to worry about recording every detail of a site and making sure I got all the pictures just right. Sitting on the castle walls overlooking the valley, I thought about what it would have been like to travel here in antiquity. How did people access all the various environmental niches? What did they think about going along the few paths that went through the landscape? I do not typically write about or research phenomenological experiences of the landscape, but being at such a high point makes it hard not to think about it.

It was also fun to drive around and find the few safe paths through the landscape. I got to think about the logistics of travel and population movement. It is one thing to see two disparate points on a satellite image and to logically know there are elevation differences, steep slopes, and various other geological features to confront to get from one place to another, and something very different to try to drive between those two points. Even though I write about and study the EB IV landscape, it was not until I tried to physically traverse the landscape myself that I began to understand just how difficult it would have been. It gave me a much greater appreciation for the people that I study and their resourcefulness.

^[1] On a map, a line that joins points that receive the same amount of rainfall over a certain period of time (—eds.)

Amy Karoll is a visiting professor in the Writings Program at New York University-Abu Dhabi. The University of California, Los Angeles, granted her doctoral degree in Near Eastern languages and cultures; previously, she earned a master’s in anthropology from University of Arkansas and bachelor of science in archaeological studies from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. The American Center of Research awarded her an ACOR-CAORC Pre-doctoral Fellowship in 2019 and, in 2021, an NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has excavated and surveyed at sites in western Asia (Syria, Israel), South America ( Bolivia), and North America (the United States: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Arkansas, and California).

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