by Nina Rozic This year I was able to participate in the study season for the Khirbet al-Muhkayyat Project, along with Kathleen Macleod Kerr, a fellow undergraduate student from Wilfrid Laurier University. We were delighted to return to the dig house in Madaba where we had stayed in 2023 while completing the field-school credit for…
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,…
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,…
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…
by Joel S. Burnett A visit to the Jordan Archaeological Museum on the Amman Citadel or the Jordan Museum in Ras al-Ayn brings you up close with multiple examples of stone statuary from Iron Age Amman (ca. 1150–550 BCE). These impressive sculptures include miniature statues of standing anthropomorphic figures and life-size and nearly life-size sculpted…
by Charlotte Vekemans “Heritage is Jordan’s oil.” This statement, which I heard from heritage experts, development workers, and Jordanian government officials, has come to be the most captivating way for me to summarize my PhD project. With the support of a Harrell Family Fellowship granted by the American Center of Research, I conducted field research…
by Katarína Mokránová I remember well the time when I was learning how to write. It took years for my first crooked letters to become the handwriting that, admittedly, I am still not quite so proud of today. When I get tired, the text that I write transforms into an indecipherable sea of wavy lines….
By Abbad Diraneyya لتقرأ المقال باللغة العربية هنا Under a hot October sun, from which I had nothing but a winter cap to conceal my face, the famous downtown of the Eternal City looked like a bunch of half-fallen columns emerging from a pile of rubble. “Disappointing” would be an understatement: I had patiently waited…
This written interview is part of a new series we are launching on Insights: “Ask A Scholar,” through which we hope to highlight the personal experiences of fellows and other affiliated researchers. The below conversation, with former Bikai and de Vries fellow and Islamic Baydha director Micaela Sinibaldi, Ph.D., took place by email in November, 2020….
A Pierre and Patricia Bikai Fellowship at ACOR was awarded to Betty Adams for spring 2020. She is a graduate student in Near Eastern Archaeology at La Sierra University in Riverside, California, where her studies have concentrated on the chemistry and composition of ancient makeup as represented by traces remaining on artifacts from ancient Jordan….
By Bilal Al Burini المقال باللغة العربية في أسفل الصفحة In 2003, the discovery of a Byzantine era lead coffin in the village of Jerash caused a wave of excitement throughout the region, especially for historians and archaeologists, but also for Jerash locals looking forward to the influx of tourists who may want to see…
Craig A. Harvey is the recipient of a Kenneth W. Russell Fellowship (Summer 2019). He is a PhD candidate in Classical Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan. Through this fellowship, Craig participated in a study season in Jordan alongside team members of the Humayma Excavation Project. When visiting the archaeological sites of southern…
Brittany Ellis was a Jennifer C. Groot Memorial Fellow in Summer 2018. She is an A.B. candidate in Anthropology at Harvard University. With the fellowship, she participated in the archaeological field school at Tall Hisban in the Madaba Plains region to write her thesis on community-based archaeology. This year marked the 50th anniversary of the…
My name is Emily Edwards, and I was a Pierre and Patricia Bikai fellow at ACOR in Summer 2018. I am currently a student of Dr. Megan Perry in the Anthropology M.A. program at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. My current research project concerns the presence of metabolic diseases in the juvenile skeletal remains…
Spotlight on selected 2016–17 JGSS Scholars The Jordanian Graduate Student Scholarship (JGSS) was first awarded in 2009. Students must be enrolled in the first year of an M.A. or Ph.D. program in Jordan in a subject related to cultural heritage. Typically, the applicants apply during their first year of graduate study and the award is to help them…