About the Lecture:

Archaeological and cultural heritage sites in Jordan and the Middle East are under increasing threat from urban expansion, development, and, in the worst cases, deliberate, willful destruction. Now more than ever it is important to preserve and make available the photographs and images that document the region’s ever changing sites and landscapes. Thanks to new funding provided through the U.S. Department of Education and other organizations, the ACOR Library has initiated new archival efforts to digitize archival images.  The initiative currently focuses on specific collections, including the donated collections of esteemed photographers Jane Taylor and Rami Khouri, and the recently donated photo archive of the ‘Aqaba-Ma’an Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey (1980–1990) in Wadi Ramm, directed by the late William Jobling of the University of Sydney.

About the Lecturer:

Glenn J. Corbett is ACOR Associate Director and directs the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management (TWLCRM) Initiative in Petra. He received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern archaeology from the University of Chicago, where his research focused on the epigraphic and archaeological remains of pre-Islamic Arabia. With ACOR Librarian Carmen Ayoubi, he serves as project leader for the ACOR Library Photographic Archive project.

The subject matter of this video lecture was partially developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education. However, this subject matter does not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

The post Archaeology in the Attic — An ACOR Video Lecture by Dr. Glenn Corbett appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

Dr. Barbara A. Porter, ACOR Director
Dr. Glenn J. Corbett, ACOR Associate Director

Wednesday 27 April 2016 at 6:00pm
Reception to Follow

About the Lecture:

This presentation will reflect on the history of ACOR, which is a non-profit institution dedicated to promoting research and publication in archaeology, anthropology, history, languages, and other aspects of Near Eastern Studies. Since its establishment in 1968, ACOR has undertaken many major and minor projects in Jordan, including archaeological ones in cooperation with the Department of Antiquities and the Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities. Some of the projects will be highlighted as well as other activities that help fulfill its mission “to advance knowledge of Jordan past and present.” Since the late 1980s, some projects have been funded by USAID (United States Agency for International Development), including the recent USAID Sustainable Cultural Heritage through Engagement of Local Communities Project (SCHEP). The second half of this presentation will touch on SCHEP activities, and Glenn Corbett will speak about new educational and outreach initiatives being launched by ACOR’s Temple of the Winged Lions project in Petra.

About the Lecturers:

Barbara A. Porter has been the ACOR Director since April 2006 when she succeeded Pierre Bikai. To mark her 10th anniversary she will present jointly with Glenn Corbett on ACOR’s role in helping preserve and present Jordan’s heritage. She completed her Ph.D. at Columbia University (2001) on Old Syrian Popular Style Cylinder Seals and recently published an article on the subject in the journal Iraq. However for the most part since moving to Jordan, the focus of her efforts have centered around ACOR. Her first year in Jordan included organizing the 10th International Conference on the History & Archaeology of Jordan (ICHAJ) which took place in Washington D.C. in May 2007 at George Washington University. She looks forward to ICHAJ 13 which will take place in Amman from 21 to 26 May. In the years prior to moving to Jordan she lived in New York City and was on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Ancient Near Eastern Art and Egyptian Art) and taught at New York University. She also led tours for 10 years around the Middle East.

Glenn J. Corbett is ACOR Associate Director and co-directs the Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management (TWLCRM) Initiative in Petra. He received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern archaeology from the University of Chicago, where his research focused on the epigraphic and archaeological remains of pre-Islamic Arabia. Since 2005, he has also directed the Wadi Hafir Petroglyph Survey in Wadi Ramm. A summary of his research appeared on the ACOR Blog (www.acorjordan.wordpress.com) in 2015.
Together they are part of the editorial team for the “Archaeology in Jordan” newsletter that appears in the Archaeological Institute of America’s American Journal of Archaeology (AJA) every other year. They are currently preparing the newsletter entries for the October 2016 issue.

The post “Perspectives on ACOR’s Role” by Dr. Barbara A. Porter & Dr. Glenn J. Corbett appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

This story initially appeared in the ACOR Newsletter, Summer 2014, Volume 26.1. To read the entire newsletter, or any of ACOR’s previous newsletters, please visit the ACOR website.

Wandering through the breathtaking scenery of the Hisma desert in southern Jordan—the region popularly known as Wadi Ramm—one often stumbles across the inscribed messages of the ancient peoples who inhabited this remote corner of North Arabia some two thousand years ago. Carved on the innumerable boulders and rock faces of this towering, wind-swept landscape, these inscriptions—termed “Thamudic E”or“Hismaic” by scholars—are striking reminders that human culture can survive and thrive in even the remotest settings.

Used and written primarily in what is today southern Jordan and northwestern Saudi Arabia, Hismaic is part of a family of dialects and scripts known to scholars as Ancient North Arabian. Linguistically similar to Arabic, Ancient North Arabian was written in various but closely related forms of the alphabetic script indigenous to ancient Arabia beginning sometime in the first millennium B.C. Based on clues found in the inscriptions, Hismaic seems to have been used by the tribes of the Hisma in the centuries around the turn of the era, when the Nabataean kings of Petra held economic and political sway over much of North Arabia. Several thousand such inscriptions have now been recorded, almost all of which are the simple, personal messages of local nomads and pastoralists who, in addition to leaving their names and the names of their fathers and forefathers, wrote short prayers to Nabataean and Arabian gods, mused about lost loves and departed friends, and autographed often exceptional drawings of desert life and activities, particularly scenes of camels and hunting.

Since 2005, I have directed the Wadi Hafir Petrogylph Survey, which aims to use the methods of modern survey and landscape archaeology to gain greater insight into these mysterious messages and the lives of those who left them. The Wadi Hafir is a long, narrow canyon located in the northern Hisma (about 15 km north of Diseh village) that gradually rises from the desert’s soft dune sands to the rugged heights of the Rasen-Naqab escarpment and the Ma‘an plateau. With slopes and wadis littered with endless fields of blackened sandstone boulders, the Hafir preserves thousands of Hismaic inscriptions and drawings, not to mention countless other examples of rock carvings dating from the Neolithic to the present. The Hafir was first surveyed in the 1980s by the late Australian scholar and former ACOR Annual Professor William Jobling as part of the ‘Aqaba-Ma‘an Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey (see ACOR Newsletter No. 1 [November1989], pp. 4–5). With permission from Jobling’s family to use the archive and photo records of his earlier survey, the WHPS has been, in many ways, an attempt to update, analyze, and ultimately publish the findings from Jobling’s important work. Using high-powered digital cameras, handheld GPS units, and a systematic surveying strategy, the WHPS has now recorded the precise locations of many of the inscribed stones photographed by Jobling as well as hundreds of others.

The GPS points, along with relevant information about each inscription and drawing, have also been input into a Geographical Information System (GIS) that allows site locations to be viewed over high-resolution satellite images, detailed topographic maps, and hydrological data. The resulting GIS database has proven a powerful tool not only for querying the content of the carvings, but also for analyzing and interpreting meaningful patterns within their spatial distribution. For example, locations where inscriptions tend to concentrate were mapped in relation to local rainwater runoff patterns. Though the carvings were certainly found scattered throughout the research area, close analysis shows that they often cluster in deep wadi interiors, at precisely those spots where runoff from powerful winter rains tends to drain, collect, and pool. This distribution shows that the authors of the inscriptions, much like their Nabataean contemporaries, were keenly aware of desert topography and hydrology and knew exactly where to go to find both water and pasture for their herds as well as the watering holes of the ibex, oryx, and ostrich they so frequently hunted. What is more, analyzing the content of the carvings within a GIS allows us to track the movements of individual authors, many of whom signed their names multiple times, and even discern other family members and friends who may have joined them on their travels through the wadi.

Another aspect of my research seeks to understand the various meanings the authors of the texts may have ascribed to their carved words and images. All too often these texts have been treated as little more than idle graffiti, spontaneous creations of the moment that offer only passive reflections on the lives and thoughts of those who carved them. But by studying the texts in light of archaeological, historical, literary, and poetic evidence from Nabataea and ancient Arabia, it is clear that many of these carvings were, in fact, meaningful creations that convey something of the authors’ thoughts, ideas, and experiences. In pre-Islamic Arabia, as in much of the rest of the ancient world, for example, written words were repositories of power, physical vessels that gave material reality to prayers, curses, and the eternal desire for one’s name and lineage to be remembered. Similarly, camels and hunted animals, which appear so often in the signed drawings of the Hisma, were images laden with potent symbolism related to death and the sacred. Camels, for example, in addition to being esteemed sacrifices offered to Arabian gods, were often buried with their owners to serve as mounts in the afterlife. Likewise, hunted animals like the ibex and the oryx had strong ritual associations; both were considered sacred to major deities and may also have been venerated as fellow sentient beings by the desert tribesmen who still partially depended on hunting for their subsistence.

My ongoing research in the Wadi Hafir has also allowed me to collaborate with George Bevan, professor of Classics at Queen’s University in Ontario, to establish new, state-of-the-art digital photographic methods for recording North Arabian inscriptions and carvings. These methods can produce dynamic three-dimensional representations of carved surfaces, informative re-lighting and enhancement of worn carvings, and super high-resolution images of carved stones and landscapes. Using a technique called digital photogrammetry, for example, we are able to convert scores of high-resolution images of the same stone into an incredibly lifelike 3D model that can then be viewed, manipulated, and analyzed with computer software. By using an array of digital filtering, shading, and re-lighting tools, the user can enhance or reveal details on an object’s surface that are difficult or impossible to see in standard digital photographs or even with the naked eye. Given the inherent problems of weathering, ancient vandalism, and heavy patination found among North Arabian carvings, where important details are often faint, obscured, or obliterated, photogrammetric imaging thus opens up valuable new horizons for analyzing and interpreting these remains.

In the coming years, the WHPS will continue using the latest methods and technologies to locate and redocument as many of Jobling’s sites as possible, while also working to digitize and catalogue all of the original photographs, notes, and readings contained in his survey archive. Ultimately, the results of both surveys will be published in a single comprehensive volume documenting the impressive archaeological, epigraphic, and rock art remains of the Wadi Hafir. At the same time, the GIS database of Hismaic carving locations and content will be expanded to include Jobling’s work, thereby providing scholars a robust and powerful tool for discerning the names, movements, and activities of the individuals and families who roamed the valley nearly two thousand years ago.

Written by Glenn Corbett

The post The Wadi Hafir Petroglyph Survey: Shedding New Light on Thamudic Inscriptions appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

Dr. Glenn J. Corbett, ACOR Associate Director
Firas Bqain, ACOR Administrator

Wednesday 4 March 2015 at 6:00 pm
Reception to Follow

About the Lecture:

In the winter of 1988, while surveying Wadi Shireh in the Hisma/Wadi Ramm desert of southern Jordan, the ‘Aqaba-Ma‘an Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey, directed by the late Dr. William Jobling of the University of Sydney, discovered a rare early Islamic open-air mosque (masjid) in association with several exceptional early Islamic (Kufic) inscriptions, one of which gives a date of 109 AH (AD 727/728). While a number of scholars have since commented on the site’s interesting inscriptions, there has been little discussion of the mosque within its broader archaeological context or immediate landscape setting. This lecture, in addition to discussing the site’s fascinating inscriptions, will evaluate the mosque, together with several associated buildings discovered in Shireh, in relation to similar early Islamic open-air mosques and marginal desert settlements known from the southern Levant. It will also call attention to the unfortunate destruction that has occurred at this remote desert site in recent years.

About the Lecturers:

Dr. Glenn Corbett joined ACOR as the Associate Director in 2014. He has a long work history in Jordan, including a post-doctoral NEH ACOR fellowship, a pre-doctoral CAORC-ACOR fellowship, and a CAORC multi-country fellowship. He received a Ph.D. in 2010 from the University of Chicago with a thesis examining Thamudic inscriptions in Wadi Hafir. He has a long publication record including pieces in Near Eastern Archaeology, the American Journal of Archaeology, and the Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. He previously worked as an editor for the Biblical Archaeology Society, and he maintains a website (wadihafirsurvey.info) for his ongoing research in Wadi Hafir.
Firas Bqain joined ACOR as the administrator in November 2014. Previously, he was the Events Administrator at the British Institute in Amman and he also served as assistant to the Dean for Student Affairs at the University of Jordan. He has a B.A. in Archaeology and Tourism from Mutah University, and his M.A. thesis in Archaeology from the University of Jordan was about the topic of this lecture.

The post “Traces of Early Islam in Wadi Ramm” by Dr. Glenn J. Corbett and Firas Bqain appeared first on ACOR Jordan.

Dr. Glenn J. Corbett
Director of the Wadi Hafir Petroglyph Survey, Former ACOR NEH Fellow and Independent Scholar

Wednesday 25 September at 6:00pm
Reception to Follow

About the Lecture

Dr. Glenn J. Corbett will speak about the 2,000 year-old Thamudic inscriptions and drawings in the area of Wadi Ramm and how contextual approaches, GIS analysis, and high-tech digital imaging are changing the way we understand these enigmatic desert carvings.

About the Lecturer

Glenn J. Corbett received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern archaeology from the University of Chicago, where his research focused on the epigraphic and archaeological remains of pre-Islamic Arabia. Since 2005, he has directed the Wadi Hafir Petroglyph Survey in southern Jordan with an emphasis on using GIS and other geospatial technologies to map properly and contextualize the region’s abundant epigraphic and rock art remains. He was an NEH Research Fellow at ACOR for 2011–2012 and will begin teaching Arabian archaeology and epigraphy at the University of Ha’il, KSA, in 2014.

Special Announcement

At this lecture, the Friends of Archaeology & Heritage (FOAH) will have a table in the ACOR Library where you can join up for membership for the coming year. Besides their regular lectures, they have field trips around Jordan and an annual trip abroad. Current annual membership fees are 30 JD per person, 50 JD per family, and 5 JD per student. For further details please check their website http://www.foah-jordan.co.nr/

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