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. 

The post Toward a Romani Ethnology of Jordan appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

For the last hundred years, the archaeological community has assumed that certain palettes and mortars found at archaeological sites in Jordan were used to prepare and contain cosmetics—but were they really? And even if they were, had the makeup compounds been created with local ingredients or brought in through trade? These were some of the questions I hoped to address while in Jordan thanks to the Pierre and Patricia Bikai Fellowship.

Once I had compared the forms of cosmetic palettes and mortars from the sites of Tall al-‘Umayri and Khirbat al-Balu’a and performed non-destructive analysis of residues found on them, my research goal became a broader investigation. Did a link exist between cosmetic palettes uncovered at a variety of sites in Jordan from the late Bronze Age (1550–1200 BC) through the Iron Age (ca. 1200–330 BC)? And could I determine the extent of potential cosmetic adornment in ancient Jordan?

While chemical residue analyses have been completed on several Egyptian artifact types, such as kohl in tubes and on applicators,* stone cosmetic palettes from Jordan seem not to have been examined in this way. The residue analyses on Egyptian artifacts returned a series of ingredients that included galena (lead sulfide, used as eyeliner), stibium (also used for eye makeup), and fat**, which served as a base for many kinds of cosmetics. These data points served as a starting point for our residue analyses of the ‘Umayri artifacts.

We performed SEM-EDS analysis on cosmetic palette fragment #186 in the lab at the University of California, Riverside. In SEM-EDS, a scanning electron microscope—which employs a beam of electrons to produce an image of the surface of an object with staggeringly fine detail—is used along with an energy-dispersive X-ray detector, or EDS. Because the electron beam of the SEM excites the atoms in the sample, the EDS can “read” the atomic structures that are present and tell us what elements are present. In the case of #186, SEM-EDS found copper, a common coloring agent in ancient cosmetics, and a high carbon content that indicates the presence of organic material.

A sample of residue extracted from palette fragment #701 allowed us to subject it to gas chromatography, which separates out the chemical compounds in the sample. These are then analyzed through mass spectrometry, a technique in which the separated compounds are subjected to ionization (bombardment by electrons). The result is chromatograms that allow us to identify substances present. This was done in the La Sierra University chemistry labs by Dr. Jennifer Helbley, who documented a variety of fatty acids, steroids, and alcohols.

La Sierra University cosmetic palette fragments #186 and #701, both limestone from Tall al-‘Umayri excavations. #186 by Betty Adams. #701 by Vera Kopecky, Center for Near Eastern Archaeology, LSU.

Dr. Helbley used infrared spectrometry on pestle #5054.  This type of analysis relies on the different ways that substances absorb and effect wavelengths of infrared light. This pestle was shown to have hematite and a possible mixture of minerals such as esseneite and shulamitite, which occur naturally in Jordan and elsewhere. These three minerals, all reddish-brown because of their iron content, could have provided color.

Seventeen cosmetic items from the La Sierra University (LSU) collection went through a series of particle component analyses (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) (on Progenesis software) at the Institute for Biological Chemistry at Washington State University to determine if chemical signatures were present on the palettes and if the chemical compounds from the residue present were associated with palettes and mortars of specific forms. The initial indications are forms of the palettes did indeed group based on the chemical signatures, based on models run by Dr. Anna Berim, research associate at WSU. This demonstrated that the cosmetic mortars and palettes are more similar to each other than they are to what we call “perfume pots.” We intend to run these same types of analyses on the residue retrieved from palettes excavated at various sites in Jordan in order to build a picture of adornment patterns throughout the region.

Since 2018 we have been working with these stone objects, and last summer we tested a field-analysis system that allows us to complete non-destructive testing on cosmetic palettes and mortars from sites in Jordan.

While the worldwide pandemic has temporarily halted my fellowship studies in Jordan, I look forward to resuming work with the Department of Antiquities and sharing the resulting information in a database available to all researchers. Our hope is this data will give us starting points for answering the research questions noted and for expanding our knowledge of cosmetic adornment in Jordan in antiquity.

* Issa Tapsoba, S. Arbault, P. Walter, and C. Amatore, “Finding Out Egyptian Gods’ Secret Using Analytical Chemistry: Biomedical Properties of Egyptian Black Makeup Revealed by Amperometry at Single Cells,” Analytical Chemistry 82(2) (2010): 483. Doi:10.1021/ac902348g.

** David A. Scott, “A review of ancient Egyptian pigments and cosmetics,” Studies in Conservation 61(4) (2016): 185–202.

The post Cosmetic Adornment during the Iron Age in the Southern Levant appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

Twice daily during the spring of 1996 our British Museum team would drive along the southern Dead Sea highway on the way to our excavation at Deir ‘Ain ‘Abata (Lot’s Cave Sanctuary) past the intersection of the Kerak road, only slightly slowing down mindful of the adjacent police post. We could have hardly suspected that precisely at this busy junction lay thousands of well-preserved two-thousand year-old burials. The nearby Early Bronze Age site of Bab edh-Drah, first identified in 1924, was well-known from archaeological excavations and surveys during the 1960s, 70s and 80s so we assumed records were made of the antiquities in the area. One day though, we noticed bulldozers widening the road and that locals were digging the surroundings and so we decided to stop and investigate for ourselves. What we discovered were human remains littered on the surface along with bits of clothing.

In the days that followed, we took time from our excavations to visit the place again and walked over several hundred square meters of abandoned agricultural lands now pitted with numerous deep holes revealing tombs. We took samples of pottery sherds and pieces of cloth to identify and date them.

Back at our dig house we had a better look at the pottery fragments that we had collected and concluded they were ancient and probably all from the Roman period. But what about the well-preserved textiles associated with the human body parts in equally good condition? A small sample of a textile was taken to the British Museum to show renowned textile expert, Hero Granger-Taylor. Her immediate response was “this is certainly ancient, most probably from the Roman period”. Granger-Taylor had studied and published textiles from Fayum in Egypt and Masada in Israel/Palestine, so her judgement was unquestionable.

Now having pottery and textile evidence dating to the Roman period, our discovery in Jordan took on a different dimension and became a matter of urgent rescue. So I took the decision as director of the Deir ‘Ain ‘Abata excavations to divert some of our time and expertise to further investigate the site which the locals called “khirbet Qazone” after the Armenian landowner, Haygason. Fortunately, we had a seasoned physical anthropologist, a surveyor, and experienced field archaeologists on our team. So in collaboration with the Department of Antiquities, we began rescue excavations which continued until 1997. The results were astonishing.

Over 3,500 shaft graves were counted, most of which had recently been robbed out. We were able to collect more dateable finds. Meanwhile, we also carefully excavated 22 burials providing definitive evidence for the cultural identity of those interred.

Each of the graves had a single burial and there was no evidence of re-interment. Most of the graves were dug about two meters into the natural soil, undercut to the east and covered by adobe brick slabs, a practice hitherto only known at Khirbet Qumran of Dead Sea Scrolls fame. But here women and children, as well as men were laid out with their heads at the south end of the grave. The dry and saline conditions of the soil in which they were buried allowed many of the bodies to be very well preserved. Some had leather and textile shrouds wrapped around them. The dozens of complete and semi-complete garments were an important discovery since they are usually found in a fragmentary condition. Thus, it was possible to distinguish them as Graeco-Roman style mantles, tunics and shawls made of wool, linen, and cotton. Only a few of these burials contained any grave goods, such as iron and copper bracelets, silver and gold earrings, beads, and there was one scarab. A wooden staff, sandals, and a wreath were also discovered in the tombs.

Five funerary stele were found from robbed-out tombs, four of which had engraved Nabataean betyls. One was inscribed in Greek, “Afseni the pretty one” (female). Papyri scroll inscribed in Greek found by tomb-robbers at the site mentioned Nabataean names and land-ownership and date to the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D. Similar scrolls discovered in the Cave of Letters on the western shore of the Dead Sea mention the port of Mahoza and the town of Mazra in the district of Zoara. Could these be the sites associated with Khirbet Qazone? It seemed very likely so!

The results of our rescue excavations were met with great interest in Jordan and abroad. Visitors flowed to the site, but its protection was ultimately not secured. So further fieldwork was deemed necessary to fully assess the site. Meanwhile, conservation of the textiles was conducted by the British Museum with several complete pieces being mounted for display.

By 2004 enough institutional support was acquired, including from the National Geographic Society and the British Academy, to conduct a third, and final season of excavations. A complete and detailed contour survey map was made locating the entire cemetery, now estimated as having approximately 5,000 burials. More typical deep shaft tombs were excavated but as work was extended northwards, a different burial type was revealed which was shallow and covered by large stone slabs. The pottery, beads and tombstones engraved with crosses associated with these graves indicated they belonged to Christians of the 4th century A.D. In 2015 a church adorned with ornate mosaic floors was discovered nearby, again accidentally by bulldozers. This was definitive evidence that the Nabataean community endured at Khirbet Qazone into the 6th century A.D., but now with a new faith.

Regional investigations have shown that similar period cemeteries and sites were situated at Deir ‘Ain ‘Abata, Ghor as-Safi, Khirbet Sekine, Haditha, Numeria, Feifa and Khanezirah. These all formed part of a population with a Nabataean character living on the south-eastern shores of the Dead Sea from the 1st-6th centuries A.D.

Please join Dr. Politis at the next ACOR public lecture, Nabataeans on the Shores of the Dead Sea on March 10, 2020.

The post The unexpected discovery of Khirbet Qazone and the revealing of Nabataeans on the shores of the Dead Sea appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

Christine Sargent is the Spring 2019–2020 ACOR-NEH fellow and an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Colorado Denver. During her ACOR fellowship, Dr. Sargent will be working on her first ethnographic monograph, which is based on her Ph.D. dissertation.

Dr. Sargent began research for this project in 2013–2014, with support from the University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School and International Institute. She returned to Jordan in the fall of 2014 as a Fulbright Student Program fellow. She has conducted over 20 months of fieldwork, primarily in Amman, interviewing family members, teachers, therapists, and activists involved in the lives of children and adults with Down Syndrome.

While at ACOR this spring, Dr. Sargent will continue visiting familiar faces from her previous fieldwork while focusing on developing the book project. She will also start collecting data for a project examining the impacts of prenatal screening and diagnostic technologies on pregnancy and childbirth, from the perspective of both health professionals and women themselves.

Dr. Sargent earned her Ph.D, in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 2018. Her scholarly work has been published in The International Journal for Middle East Studies and Somatosphere.

The post Christine Sargent, NEH Fellow, Spring 2020 appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

Every year ACOR funds travel scholarships for two Jordanian researchers to attend the annual meeting of ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research). Sahar al Khasawneh, Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology at Yarmouk University in Jordan is an awardee of a Jordanian Travel Scholarship to attend the ASOR Annual Meeting in San Diego, California in November 2019. She writes about her paper and experience at the conference.

By Sahar al Khasawneh

I specialize in luminescence dating and its applications in archaeology. Despite recent successful developments of luminescence dating in geology, the technique still has limited applications in archaeology. In my work, I attempt to employ these new techniques to resolve chronological questions at archaeological sites, particularly where organic materials are scarce for carbon dating. For example, rock surface luminescence dating is a new approach that has been established in the last few years to define the date when the rocks were last exposed to the sun. In archaeology, we could use the approach to define when rocks were used for construction. The approach could also be useful for dating widespread megalithic structures. In Jordan, I was successful in dating the construction from enigmatic megalithic structures including Khatt Shebib structure (dated to ca. 400 BCE) and a so called Desert Kite structure in southern Jordan (dated to ca. 8000 BCE). I presented my work on dating the Desert Kite site at the ASOR Meeting in 2017.

I also worked with young geo-archaeological sediments such as those at Tell Maqass and Tell Damiyah, and with older sediments such as those at the Dead Sea and Wadi Hasa. At the ASOR 2019 Meeting, I had the opportunity to present my work on Tell Maqass with two different approaches of luminescence dating for the same sample, which acts as an internal age control for the site.

The ASOR Annual Meeting is one of the most important meetings in Near Eastern archaeology in North America. To me, it is an opportunity to follow up with the recent works in Jordan archaeology, and to network with other professionals and archaeologists. The ASOR Annual Meeting is also where I establish research collaborations with other scholars. I am grateful to ACOR and ASOR committees because without the travel award, I wouldn’t have had this opportunity to take part.

Attention Jordanian scholars!
Jordanian Travel Scholarship for ASOR Annual Meeting: Two travel scholarships of $3,500 are funded by ACOR and they assist Jordanians participating and delivering a paper at the ASOR Annual meeting in mid-November in the United States. Academic papers should be submitted through the ASOR’s website (www.asor.org/am) by February 15, 2020. Final award selection will be determined by the ASOR program committee.

في كل عام يقوم المركز الأمريكي للأبحاث الشرقية (أكور) بتمويل منح سفر لحضور الإجتماع السنوي للمدارس الأمريكية للأبحاث الشرقية (أسور) تقدم لإثنين من الباحثين الأردنيين؛ سحر الخصاونة، أستاذ مساعد في كلية الآثار والأنثروبولوجيا في جامعة اليرموك – الأردن، حصلت سحر على منحة السفر للمشاركة في إجتماع (أسور) السنوي والذي أقيم هذه السنة في سان دييغو – كاليفورنيا، في تشرين الثاني 2019. وقد كتبت لنا عن ورقتها البحثية و تجربتها في المؤتمر

بقلم سحر الخصاونة

أنا متخصصة في التأريخ بظاهرة التألق الضوئي وتطبيقه في علم الآثار. على الرغم من التطورات الحديثة في تقنية التأريخ بظاهرة التألق الضوئي في علوم الأرض، فلا يزال هنالك تطبيقات محدودة لاستخدام هذه التقنية في علم الآثار. في عملي أحاول استخدام هذه التقنيات الجديدة لحل المسائل الزمنية في المواقع الأثرية، لا سيما عندما تكون المواد العضوية شحيحة لاستخدامها في التأريخ بالكربون المشع. على سبيل المثال يعد تأريخ سطح الصخور بظاهرة التألق الضوئي تقنية حديثة تم تطويرها في السنوات القليلة الماضية لتأريخ المرة الأخيرة التي تعرض بها سطح الصخر لأشعة الشمس. في علم الآثار ، يمكننا استخدام هذا الأسلوب لتحديد متى تم استخدام الصخور في أعمال البناء. و بهذا يمكن الإستفادة منه في تأريخ التشكيلات الحجرية الضخمة الأثرية ذات الإنتشار الواسع. في الأردن نجحت من خلال هذه التقنية في تحديد زمن بناء بعض هذه التشكيلات الحجرية الغامضة مثل خط شبيب الأثري (الذي يرجع تاريخه إلى 400 سنة قبل الميلاد)، ومواقع المصائد الصحراوية في جنوب الأردن (يرجع تاريخها إلى 8000 سنة قبل الميلاد). قدمت عملي حول تأريخ المصائد الصحراوية في اجتماع (أسور) في عام 2017

 عملت أيضًا في مجال علم الآثار الجيولوجي وبالأخص على الرواسب الجيولوجية الموجودة في موقع تل المقص في مدينة العقبة و موقع تل داميا الواقع في غور الأردن، و في البحر الميت و وادي الحسا. في اجتماع أسور لعام 2019، أتيحت لي الفرصة لأعرض أعمالي في موقع تل المقص بطريقتين مختلفتين من التأريخ التألق الضوئي على نفس العينة، والتي عملت بمثابة مراقب داخلي لعمر الموقع

الإجتماع السنوي لأسور هو واحد من أهم المؤتمرات في علم آثار الشرق الأدني في أمريكا الشمالية. بالنسبة لي، إنها فرصة لمتابعة آخر الأعمال الأثرية في الأردن، و للتواصل مع المتخصصين و غيرهم من علماء الآثار. وهو أيضا المكان الذي أقيم فيه علاقات تعاون مع الباحثيين الآخرين. ولهذا أنا ممتنة جداً للمركز الأمريكي للأبحاث الشرقية (أكور) و للإجتماع السنوي للمدارس الأمريكية للأبحاث الشرقية (أسور) لأنه بدون تقديمهم لمنحة السفر هذه لما أتيحت لي فرصة المشاركة

تذكير للباحثين الأردنيين

منح سفر للأردنيين للمشاركة في إجتماع (آسور) السنوي: منحتان للسفر بقيمة 3500 دولار لكل منهما مقدمة من قبل المركز الأمريكي للأبحاث الشرقية (أكور) لمساعدة الأردنيين سواء كانوا طلاب أو أكاديميين أو باحثين للمشاركة وتقديم ورقة بحثية في الاجتماع السنوي للمدارس الأمريكية للأبحاث الشرقية (آسور) الذي يقام في منتصف تشرين الثاني في الولايات المتحدة من كل عام.  يرجى تقديم الأوراق الأكاديمية من خلال موقع أسور  (www.asor.org/am)  الإلكتروني مباشرة

 آخر موعد للتقديم هو 15 فبراير لعام 2020. سيتم إختيار الحاصل على المنحة من قبل لجنة برنامج أسور

The post ACOR Supports Jordanian Researchers: Dr. Sahar al Khasawneh Presents at 2019 ASOR Meeting appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

Professor Katz joined Towson’s History Department in 2003 after earning her Ph.D. in History and Middle East Studies from New York University in 2001. Her research and teaching interests focus on social, cultural, colonial, and post-colonial history of the Middle East and North Africa in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. She has conducted research in Jordan, Palestine, Tunisia, and Egypt with the support of various fellowships, including Fulbright, Palestinian American Research Center (PARC), American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS), and the American Center of Oriental Research (ACOR).

Professor Katz’s published works demonstrate a specific interest in biographical and urban history. 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.  In 2017, that book was published in Arabic by the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing (AIRP) in Beirut. She has also written many articles for academic journals, including Urban History, Biography, the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES), and the Journal of North African Studies (JNAS).

Professor Katz spent the 2018–2019 academic year on a Fulbright Fellowship in Jordan conducting archival research. In the summers of 2019 and 2020 she is continuing this research thanks to a CAORC (Council for American Overseas Research Centers) Fellowship at ACOR. She will present the early results of her current research at the Nordic Middle East Studies Conference in Helsinki, Finland in August 2019 and at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) conference in New Orleans, Louisiana in November 2019.

The post Kimberly Katz, ACOR-CAORC Post-Doctoral Fellow Summer 2019 appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

Bakeries lie at the center of communal life in Jordan’s cities and towns. They mark daily rhythms and movements in countless neighborhoods. The subsidized bread they dispense is crucial to the subsistence of many of the country’s inhabitants. Yet bread’s importance is not only a product of its strictly nutritional properties. It is valued not only as a source of calories or a strategic foodstuff linked to daily consumption but as a cultural and political symbol. Loaves are frequently waved at Friday protests. Empty bags are placed next to, rather than inside, garbage containers. When a piece of bread hits the ground it is picked up, pressed to the forehead and kissed. In brief, khubz ‘arabī (Arabic—or pita—bread) holds a symbolic value that is not easily quantified. It is frequently associated with dignity, survival and sustenance. During the most recent food policy debate (2013–2015), one prominent Jordanian journalist referred to the bread subsidy that ensures the foodstuff’s availability as “the last red line” in the social pact between the government and the citizenry.

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Today, Jordan is one of the largest per capita spenders on food subsidies in the world. The vast majority of this sum is expended on khubz ‘arabī. Residents of the country are estimated to consume nearly ten million loaves a day, averaging around 90 kilograms of bread per person annually. The subsidy has been a mainstay of the Hashemite regime’s welfare provisions since the early 1970s. Although the Jordanian government has at various points subsidized a host of basic foodstuffs (frozen poultry, rice, cooking oil) and other household items (tea, coffee, cigarettes, heating oil, water), the vast majority of these undertakings have been scaled back, if not completely eliminated. Despite cutbacks to these and other social expenditures during the last 25 years, the bread subsidy has not been changed. In 2014, the government spent approximately 265 million dinars ($374.25 million) to maintain the price of 16 qirsh ($0.23) per kilogram. Why has this policy survived more than two decades of austerity and free market reform? How do the meanings with which this foodstuff has been imbued contribute to this outcome? What is subsidized bread’s “place” in the country’s social contract?

Over the last six months, I was fortunate enough to receive an ACOR-CAORC pre-doctoral fellowship to continue addressing these questions. Crucially, time as a fellow allowed me to build upon research I first began during a Fulbright grant in 2013–2014. I spent much of my time in the country observing and working in three different bakeries. These bakeries were in very different socio-economic milieus, and the time spent baking, conversing, and witnessing their role in the urban fabric was intensely fulfilling. Although untraditional in my field (comparative politics), I believe this ethnographic approach to the study of bread helped me better apprehend the foodstuff’s importance: how its availability has become closely linked to a perceived right to subsistence, why its provision is frequently described as a sacrosanct responsibility of the government.

Undoubtedly, the bread subsidy is and will remain subject to fluctuations in the global wheat market and sensitive fiscal considerations. But to analyze food policy solely through recourse to these easily quantifiable factors misses a key part of the story. Consistency in prices, the psychological comfort of feeding one’s family, escaping the specter of starvation—their import is inaccessible without access to meanings that only human actors can provide. Where international financial institutions and neoliberal technocrats see an inefficient universal subsidy distorting natural market signals, Jordanian citizens see a welfare program linked to social values and hard-earned rights, one crucial to their daily subsistence. Systems of social provision are always embedded in cultural and political contexts that shape their development. They are not easily studied by way of a dataset or from the comfort of an armchair.

Written by José Ciro Martínez, ACOR-CAORC Pre-Doctoral Fellow for 2015–2016 and Ph.D. Candidate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. All photographs in this article were provided by and are the copyright of the author.

The post When Bread Is More than Just Bread appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

The ACOR Video Lecture Series provides stimulating and accessible discussions of new research into Jordan’s past and present, as presented by leading scholars and researchers working in Jordan and neighboring countries. This first lecture in the series, adapted from the October 2015 ACOR public lecture of senior archaeologist and prehistorian Gary Rollefson, highlights new discoveries that are changing our view of Jordan’s forbidding Black Desert in the deep past.

About the Lecture

Passing through the Black Desert in northeastern Jordan, one is struck by the lifeless and forbidding character of the landscape. The rainfall in the winter is sporadic and miserly, amounting to less than 50 mm on average per annum, although there may be many years in a row when a particular locality receives none at all. Bedouin herders have managed to eke out a living with their flocks, yet the population density of people and animals is among the lowest of the habitable regions of the planet. Archaeological investigations in the early and late 20th century indicated that this harsh region was inhabited for periods ranging certainly into the Neolithic and earlier periods, 7,000 to 10,000 years ago, and older.

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Archaeological surveys and excavations undertaken since 2008 by the Eastern Badia Archaeological Project have changed our understanding of what was considered the dismal nature of the Neolithic landscape into one that was much more inviting than what we can see today. Instead of timid migrations of a few families into the Badia, hundreds of kinship groups made the move about 7,000 BC from the damaged farmland of western Jordan into a region that, although it could not sustain agriculture, for thousands of years was probably a relatively lush grassland providing abundant pasturage for sheep and goats, even as far east as Ruwayshid. Veritable villages of families could live in permanent housing for five to six months of the year, tending their flocks and hunting teeming herds of gazelle and other animals. Charcoal from oak trees and preserved topsoil under Neolithic houses reveal that rainfall was probably considerably higher then, and that moisture penetrated the soil, providing extended growth capabilities for grasses and other plant life.

About Gary Rollefson

Gary Rollefson is Professor of Anthropology at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. With nearly 40 years of archaeological experience in Jordan, Rollefson is a specialist in the archaeology and peoples of the prehistoric Near East. He is well known for the excavation, together with Jordanian archaeologist Zeidan Kafafi, of the important Neolithic site of Ain Ghazal, where some of the world’s oldest statues were discovered. Rollefson studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley (BA, 1965) and then at the University of Arizona (MA, 1972; Ph.D., 1978).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post A Kinder, Greener Black Desert—An ACOR Video Lecture by Leading Prehistorian Gary Rollefson appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

Jordan is a rewarding place to be a geographer. To the south and east, deserts host an array of communities living close to tribal traditions, while the north is the very picture of settled agriculture, its loping hills blanketed with olives, figs, and pomegranates and dotted with Greek and Roman ruins. Lying at the confluence of environmental, but also cultural and historical spheres of influence – or as King Abdullah likes to put it, “between Iraq and a hard place” – Jordan also becomes an important place for studying political geography in the Middle East. For me in particular, it is an ideal vantage point for studying the conflict across the border in Syria.

It is not hard to feel this conflict’s impact on Jordan. The struggles of Syrian refugees here (as in Lebanon and Turkey) is by now well-known, while more recently the question of resettling refugees in the United States has divided domestic politics in America. But I came to Jordan this summer to investigate the Syrian civil war from a different angle – namely, how exiled Syrian dissidents continue to shape events inside despite being scattered across Europe and in neighboring countries. And this is no small question: After five years of civil war, it is difficult not to wonder how the exiled Syrian opposition has managed to keep alive the struggling movement opposing Bashar al-Assad in the face of enormous challenges. All of this takes place amid the personal traumas and the difficulties of everyday life in exile, which tears apart families, friends, and communities.

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Language is important to this story. Is it right to call this agglomeration of individuals, organizations, and narratives a coherent opposition movement? What about the word opposition? A prominent historian and analyst of Syria likens attempts to understand the opposition to “nailing Jello to a wall.” What is it exactly that ties these Syrians together, beyond the shared trauma of exile? How do they come together in practice, and what are they able to achieve when they do?

This last year I was fortunate enough to receive an ACOR-CAORC pre-doctoral fellowship, which has enabled me to begin addressing these questions. Although the first portion of my dissertation research began in Turkey, being an ACOR Fellow has made the Jordan portion of my fieldwork significantly more productive by placing me in contact with other scholars and resources. I have been able to learn far more about my project in Amman than I had otherwise expected thanks to this research residency.

As far as my broader project is concerned, I am conducting field research and interviews in two cities that have, until now, played critical roles in the experience of Syrian exiles. The first is Gaziantep, a peripheral city of the Turkish Republic lying a mere 120 kilometers from war-torn Aleppo. In some ways, Gaziantep could not be further from the conflict in Syria. As bombs continue to fall in rebel-held, liberated neighborhoods of Aleppo, Syrians meet in the shining new shopping malls of Gaziantep to write grants, fix journalists with local informants, and enjoy coffee with friends. At the same time, Gaziantep now hosts a bewildering array of civil society and international NGOs, humanitarian organizations, private contractors, journalists, and armed factions, all composing the larger landscape of opposition to the Assad regime in Damascus. Gaziantep has become a political center, the exile-capital for individuals from across Syria.

The second city is Amman, Jordan’s capital and largest city in the Kingdom. It, too, is an exile-capital of sorts, but a struggling one. Life in the city is difficult for Jordanians as much as Syrians, and the government navigates the pressures of being so close to an active war zone. International humanitarian organizations like the United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Islamic Relief International, and the World Food Program send flows of aid into Syria, while the UNHCR (mufawidiye), Save the Children, and the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations struggle to provide aid to refugees inside Jordan. Meanwhile, activists open smaller organizations closer to the everyday realities of Syrians like the Mulham Volunteer Group and Auranitis. Journalist networks like Orient News, Souriali, and Syria Direct provide opportunities for Syrians within and outside Syria to discuss events “inside.” All of these activities are coordinated and organized from Amman.

A great deal sets apart these two cities in ways that transcend a simple focus on state refugee policy. The mix of social forces present in both cities, the regional origins of Syrians who have settled in them, the forms of mobility (legal and illegal) available to Syrians, urban political economies, locations relative to the Syrian border, and finally, the discourses of the war circulating among Syrians all shape the decision and ability of Syrians to come together and continue opposition politics from these places. But, despite these differences, both cities offer their own respective testimonies to a community of Syrians engaging in exactly the kind of politics that the Assad regime has tried to “kill,” to use the words of University of Chicago political scientist Lisa Wedeen.

And it is in both contexts that my research seeks to understand the various ways that these political communities are managing to survive in exile. I want to show, from the inside-out, that to become a refugee is not to lose one’s political agency. Rather, as scholars like Edward Said and Liisa Malkki have argued, it is sometimes through exile that people discover it.

My project is not about finding an end to the conflict. Nor is it about the end of life in Syria for its many exiled citizens. My project is more concerned with the relationships, activities, and narratives that emerge from the semi-chaos of exile, and the messy politics of how these are assembled in specific places. We are increasingly pushed to notice how different “political orders” arise during and change the course of civil war. In the case of Syria, exile-capitals represent yet another distinct form of political order, one that could use a little more attention.

Written by Ali Nehme Hamdan, ACOR-CAORC Pre-Doctoral Fellow for 2015-2016 and Ph.D. Candidate in Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.  All photographs in this article were provided by the author.

The post Understanding the New Urban Geographies of the Syrian Conflict appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

From time to time, the ACOR Blog highlights the careers and accomplishments of notable Jordanians in the field of archaeology and cultural heritage management. Our most recent profile is of Zakariya Na’imat, a Jordanian archaeologist who has been affiliated with ACOR for more than 15 years.

Zakariya first began studying archaeology at Mu’tah University near Karak, where he received his B.A. in 1988. He continued his studies at Yarmouk University in Irbid, earning an M.A. in Archaeology and Anthropology in 2004. He then returned to Mu’tah for several years, first as a research assistant and then full-time instructor in the department of archaeology and tourism, where he helped lead excavations at the early Islamic site of Shuqayra al-Gharbiyya. Over the years, he also worked on various excavation projects in Syria, Turkey, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2014, he left Jordan to enter a Ph.D. program in Islamic Archaeology at the University of Bonn in Germany. He is grateful for the encouragement and support he has received from archaeologist and ACOR Board member Bethany Walker who is on the faculty of the Annemarie Schimmel College for Mamluk studies at Bonn.
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Zakariya’s long affiliation with ACOR began during his days as a master’s student at Yarmouk, when he worked part time as an assistant in the ACOR Library, answering questions for patrons, re-shelving books, and performing myriad other tasks. ACOR Librarian Carmen “Humi” Ayoubi remembers how Zakariya’s command of English improved dramatically during those years, as he interacted with ACOR scholars and had the opportunity to read many books and articles in English. Similarly, he began to study German with Margret Koenen, wife of University of Michigan  professor Ludwig Koenen who was in residence at ACOR in 2000 and 2002 working with the Petra Papyri. Zakariya also often accompanied former ACOR Director Pierre Bikai to downtown Amman where they would buy Arabic-language books to expand the library’s collection.

Over the years, Zakariya’s research has also been supported through ACOR’s fellowship program.  He was among the first Jordanians to be awarded the Kenneth W. Russell Fellowship, which supported his M.A. field research at Yarmouk University in 2001, and in 2002 he received a travel grant from the Joukowsky Family Foundation to deliver a paper at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). He received the ACOR Travel Scholarship to attend the annual ASOR conference again in 2011, and most recently, in 2014, was awarded the Kenneth W. Russell Fellowship for a second time to support an archaeological survey of the Wadi Hasa region of southern Jordan.

In a recent interview, Zakariya reflected on what he has learned during the course of his long academic journey through Jordan’s archaeology. For one, he would like to change the way archaeology is taught in Jordan, which he believes all too often emphasizes rote memorization rather than active involvement in field work. But in explaining the latter, he points out the relative dearth of Jordanian projects featured in the pages of the Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, as opposed to the wealth of information available about sites excavated and published by long-running foreign projects.

Zakariya also hopes to help build public awareness of the importance of Jordan’s rich cultural heritage. It is unfortunate, he says, that ordinary people have many misconceptions about ancient remains that often lead to their intentional destruction. A notable example is how treasure hunters in rural communities often search for imagined “Ottoman gold” they believe is buried at nearby archaeological sites. Given the highly destructive nature of such activities, Zakariya believes professional Jordanian archaeologists should play a stronger role in rectifying misconceptions about archaeology and thereby help preserve Jordan’s heritage for future generations.

“We should be producing qualified and competent archaeologists in Jordan who can oversee everything that is required to run a field project, raise money, give lectures, and supervise publications. I hope in the future to see Jordanian teams leading excavations and supported by Jordanian money.”

Written by Sarah Harpending, ACOR Assistant Director

The post Faces of Jordan’s Archaeology – Zakariya Na’imat appeared first on ACOR Jordan.