The camera boom

July 27 – Friday

It is now Saturday morning and because we have no organized tour this weekend I have the opportunity to catch up on some writing.  Many of the students and staff have taken off on their own self-guided tours of sites in Jordan, the favorites being Wadi Rum in the southern desert or Aqaba, the beach resort on the Red Sea and Jordan’s only access to the ocean.  It will be hot for them – I heard that last week in Aqaba the temperature was 50 deg C, or over 120 deg F.  It is reasonably pleasant here in Amman so I am happy just staying put and working on my computer.

 I missed working on the blog yesterday afternoon and evening because I was visiting a physician colleague, Jane Kawar who had spent a brief period working with me at Loma Linda a few years ago.  Jane invited me to her home for a meal with her family.  Jane is from a Palestinian Christian family that came to Jordan as refugees in the upheaval when Israel was created in 1946, and she is now a successful member of the medical staff of a large rehabilitation center at The King Hussein Medical Center.  She had said on the phone that she would prepare a simple and light meal but that turned out to be a blithesome understatement.  When we arrived at her home the table was already set, and her daughter Laura and a sister immediately brought out platter after platter of food until the table groaned with the weight and I groaned at the sight. 

The hospitality of Jordanians is legendary and Jane obviously wanted to preserve this noble tradition.  After piling my plate twice with scrumptious Arabic food my unsparing host sat us down on easy chairs around a large coffee table loaded with large platters of fruit – figs, pears, cherries, grapes, peaches and melon.  After working our way through that out came the dessert – a large chocolate-hazelnut mousse cake plus a Ramadan special, some katayefs, little pastries with either cheese or walnuts inside, all soaked in sugary syrup.  It was a memorable evening.  One of Jane’s sons, Fadi, is in the third year of a six-year medical school program at a university in Amman, and we had a good time chatting about his future career plans.

I know that I am in for another feast tonight.  Dr Al-Worikat who is the medical director of the Rehabilitation Center at the King Hussein Medical Center, and Jane’s boss, has invited me to his home to join him for breakfast – he is a devout Muslim and having fasted all day during Ramadan, Muslims traditionally lay out a huge feast when they break their fast after sundown.  I have decided to skip lunch as a strategy to ensure that I will be an agreeable guest around his table tonight.  Dr Al Worikat is a general in the Royal Armed Services of Jordan, and he has arranged for his private car and a driver to call for me this evening.

At the dig I have continued to be impressed with the great attention paid to record-keeping by all of the supervisors.  They record the GPS coordinates of the key items in each square, and where and what is found and at what depth.  Everything is photographed and the photographs are supplemented by detailed drawings of the walls, the balks and any other notable architectural elements.  But a couple of days ago Dr Clark introduced us to a new device to assist in achieving accuracy in their records All of the precise readings of depth are taken with a GPS through measurements read with the equipment held vertical.  So to maintain an accurate measure of what is happening all over the field they need overhead, birds eye photographs.  To accomplish that, the archeologists have purchased a huge telescoping aluminum boom that can scan over the whole field.  A camera is attached to the end of the boom and that takes multiple photographs with the shutter triggered electronically as the boom carries it is d over the field.

Dr Clark loading the camera onto the end of the boom 

The boom is fixed to a large tripod and a team of men operate it by holding the end down and swiveling it across the field.