Two phases to the ballroom

July 31 – Tuesday

Our attention turned again to the ballroom today.  Almost all of the fallen debris has now been removed but the archeologists have pointed out a vexing problem.  There appears to be two levels for the floor, about 12 inches apart, and they think that the house had two distinct phases.  I photographed the side balk and reproduce that here for you.  It clearly shows the distinct layers of material.  On top is the layer of boulders that formed part of the wall of the Iron Age 2 house that was built over the earlier Iron Age 1 house.  Below the stones is the obvious layer of mud brick that tumbled into the space and then below that, black ash.  On the right side of the photo the balk appears to show two distinct layers of ash.  Although it is not easy to visualize in the photo, the level of the floor on the left side of the photo is higher than that on the right, and you will notice a hole in the center of the floor in this area.  When this hole was explored it revealed a small cavity with another level below it.  The single layer of stones coming towards you at the bottom probably represents  a simple new installation after the earthquake.

The balk on one side of the ballroom

In other areas at Umayri there are clear signs pointing to several earthquakes in the past.  Some of the destruction at other 1200 BC locations appears to be the result of earthquake activity, and if that is the case then our Iron Age 1 House would have been affected and an earthquake could have caused the unusual situation in the ballroom.  Assuming that an earthquake damaged the house initially, it would have been quickly repaired to give a second floor level just above the first one.  The archeologists are therefore calling this a two-phase building, one before and one immediately after an earthquake.  So that has slowed up our clean up at the floor level in this room in our house. 

Besides the floor question our appreciation of the overall room space was impeded by two balks that traversed and divided the room.  We needed to take down those two balks to fully expose the room to provide an easily understood perspective.  As I have explained earlier the balks are laid out by the archeologists on the surface of the ground before they start the initial excavation, and are always aligned by the compass north-south and east-west.  As the excavation proceeds the walls of the buried buildings that become exposed almost never align with the balks, and as the excavation continues the balks are usually taken down to properly reveal the overall architecture of the buildings.   Over the last two days we had almost completely taken down one balk and I have a photo of this balk in the final stages of removal.  There is still some residual mud brick material at the far end, and the bottom ash layer still has to be removed.  You can easily notice the stone wall on the right disappearing into the balk.  It is part of the Iron Age 1 house structure.

The side balk almost completely taken down.

As we go about our work, digging and scraping away, our field supervisor, Stephanie, keeps a close eye on everything and frequently calls the senior archeologists over to consult and interpret what we are exposing.  It truly is a fascinating process.  For more background about the site and the project in general there is an informative web site that you might like to check.  Google – madabaplainsproject and click on Umayri.  There is a good bit of background information you can read.  At the Umayri page click on News, then Jordan update.  In the first line of Jordan update click on weekly reports to get an update on what is happening now in the 2012 season.  Doug Clark has asked some of us to write impressions of the dig and I forwarded him my description of the Balk Walk – he has said that he will include it in the next edition.   

Two interesting Finds

July 30 – Monday

We have one more week of digging at Umaryi and then the last day or so will be clean-up and preparing the various sites for final photographs.  There has been good progress on the Iron Age 1 house that has been the focus of my team, but last Friday and today we have been working on the removal of a balk that traversed one of its rooms.  A balk is one meter wide and about 2 meters deep so it contains a great deal of dirt, mud brick and other rubble.  It is not surprising therefore that we have filled, carried and sifted over 800 guffahs in the last two days of work.  The conservative weight of a guffah filled with dirt would be at least 20 pounds, so that means 100 guffahs amount to about one ton.  At a rough estimate we shifted 8 tons of dirt and that does not take into account the dozens of large bounders that weigh anywhere up to 200 pounds.

The Balk Walk

There was only a minor amount of pottery in the balk and nothing of real interest, but as several other members of the team were cleaning out the floor of the ballroom two very interesting objects were found.  One is a completely intact oil lamp that had some features that intrigued the archeologists.  By the Greek period, lamps were being made in a mold with a rather small opening at the top and usually with some decoration.  This lamp was plain and was made by hand without any decoration and had a rather large opening at the top.  These features would place it before the Greek era, in the Iron Age 2 period. 

The Iron Age 2 lamp

Another very interesting find was the broken handle of a pottery jar, notable because it showed a distinct seal towards the top of the handle.  The experts who can interpret these seals immediately recognized the seal as Egyptian from the time of Ramesses 4, and was further evidence of the trade which must have occurred along this route from Egypt through to Damascus and Mesopotamia 

  Pottery jar handle with an Egyptian seal

Visit to Petra

July 21 - Visit to Petra

July 29 - I have finally been able to out together a few reactions to our visit to Petra last weekend.

Petra is a remote, ancient and dead city that holds such great archeological treasures that it has been declared one of the Seven Wonders of the World.  It is located in Southern Jordan in a valley that is completely surrounded by craggy sandstone mountains, and its only access is via a narrow cleft in the mountains called the Siq.  This dramatic gorge was initially created by an earthquake that split the mountain and formed a channel that flash floods subsequently eroded.  The Siq follows a meandering path that continues for 1200 meters (0.7 miles) through pink and yellow sandstone cliffs until it opens up into the Petra valley.  The sides of the Siq almost touch in places, at times being only 2 meters apart, and which soar 200 meters (600 feet) from the floor to the mountain top above.  Provision of fresh water for the inhabitants of Petra was a challenge, but they showed incredible ingenuity in insuring a reliable and generous supply.  Several small springs inside the valley were not adequate, and were therefore supplemented by water from a spring outside the city that flowed down an aqueduct that had been carved by carving into the side wall of the Siq, and which is still clearly visible.

A simple house in the Neolithic village of Beidha near Petra from round 7000 BC.  Notice the primitive round walls that are being reconstructed usuing simple mud for mortar.  The wooden poles held up a thatched roof.

Petra is very old.  There are signs of a Neolithic settlement in Petra, at a site called Beidha that has been reliably dated from the stone tools found and from carbon dating to around 7000 BC.  Much later the area was occupied by the Edomites, people who were descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob and who are mentioned in the Bible.  It is not clear when and how the Edomite settlement declined but Petra was eventually inhabited by a different people, the Nabataeans, a few centuries BC.  It was the Nabataeans who performed all of the carving of the mountains within the city, and it was their subsequent influence from the Greeks and Romans that prompted the classic designs of the structures so visible today.  The settlement became Christian during the Byzantine period, but that ended in the seventh century and Petra became silent except for a limited and isolated occupation by some nomadic people.  The city remained unknown to the west until it was rediscovered by a Swiss explorer in 1812, 1200 years after it had been abandoned.

Entering Petra after traversing the Siq - first view of the Treasury

As the visitor to Petra reaches the last few yards of the Siq he/she is treated to the dramatic sight of an indescribable building, the Treasury, featured in all the travel books and magazines.  This structure was carved out of the rock on the mountain-face in the first century BC.  The sensational facade is quite beautiful, designed and executed in the classic style of Greek architecture.  It appears like an inset into the vertical wall of the sandstone cliff and is clearly the most remarkable monument remaining in Petra.  Behind the striking facade is a large interior space that was carved right into the mountain and served as a tomb for a Nabataean King.

 The Treasury

From the Treasury the valley floor expands out and reveals numerous archeological gems – facades carved into the rock face, a Roman theater that originally could seat 7000 people, and many openings in the cliffs that were tombs, some decorated with highly elaborate carvings and obviously meant for Royalty.  Further down the valley are the elaborate remains of a Roman city with a colonnaded street paved with marble or limestone still quite visible today.  The street is flanked by ruins of a large market, many public buildings and a Great Temple.  Across a bridge and up a hill are the remains of a three Byzantine churches which we explored.  Some colorful mosaics that were laid on the floor of the original church are still clearly visible.

I decided to join several other hardy folks (foolhardy?) on a hike up to the High Place where the Nabataeans had created a dramatic site for religious ceremonies.  I didn’t count the number of steps up the mountain and although somebody mentioned that there were 650 it felt to me that that figure must be a serious under-count.   Right at the top of the climb, in a large flat terrace there were two tall obelisks, not raised cut stone, but upright monuments that had been left standing after the Nabataeans had chiseled away the top 15 meters of so of the mountain.  They are standing 30 meters apart and are aligned exactly east and west.  Right at the top of the mountain is a small rectangular court surrounded by cut stone benches.  It was in the court that the Nabataeans practiced some form of ritualistic worship that included animal sacrifices on an altar.  It is impossible to view the altar, the space and the extensive rock carving without asking about the religious fervor that drove those people to create these incredible features. 

The High Place showing the courtyard with an altar off to the right 

We marveled at the spectacular view from the top of the mountain and then proceeded to a different set of steps as an alternative route down the mountain.   After lunch our group decided to tackle a visit to another special place, the monastery, which however was also high on different mountain top.  I settled on a donkey ride for part of the way, and hiked the rest.  The extra effort involved in this hike was worth it.  Right at the top is another huge carved monument called the monastery that has a facade that is rather similar to the classic design of the Treasury, not as elaborate, but quite a bit larger. 

The day was hot, very hot, and the heavy physical exertion of the long walk through the valley and the two mountain hikes placed an unusual demand on the body systems designed to maintain my fluid balance.  The fluid loss from perspiration was profuse and I drank 4 and ½ liters of water during the day to try and maintain my blood volume in a reasonable state.  When I eventually returned to the hotel I was astonished to hear from Kent Bramlett our chief archeologist – he had drunk 6 and ½ liters of water during his hikes!    

But words cannot do justice to visual images at Petra.  If you cannot see this incredible place in person I recommend a stunning book called simply – Petra – by Jane Taylor that is filled with wonderful photographs and an extensive descriptive text. 

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. 

Visa renewal

July 26 – Thursday

I ran into a problem today, a relatively minor one but which required some hours to resolve.  Doug Clark announced last evening that he was taking a small group of folks to the police station to get an extension on their visas.  Every visitor that arrives at the Amman airport pays $20 Jordanian ($28 US) for a visa that is valid for one month only.   Doug and  few of the supervisors arrived in Jordan quite a bit earlier than the rest of the archaeological team and by now they needed visa renewals.  Of course I did not read the stamped note in my passport from the immigration official as I left the airport, but I am already 6 days over the one month time limit.  So I went along to the police station with the group and I was singled out for finger-printing (all 5 fingers on both hands) and asked to pay a fine before I was able to receive the new stamp in my passport with its permission to stay in the country.  For most of the others getting the extension was mostly a formality.  Don’t we all love bureaucracy!

So while that was happening my team back at Umayri was working away doing their best to remove as much of that mud brick debris from the ballroom as they could.  I worked with them from dawn until I had to leave after the second breakfast and by then we had made some good progress.  It will be more of the same tomorrow.

I thought that I should share with you a brief note about the potty arrangements at the excavation site.  There is no running water of course, so it would be improper to refer to it as a bathroom, a WC, toilet or even a loo.  In the Australian outback we would refer to a structure like ours as a dunny.  Before the archaeology team arrives at Umayri someone, presumably the Bedouin workers, digs a deep hole in the ground a little away from our dig site and covers it with a rectangular box that has a strategically placed foramen magnum in the center.  This box is then enclosed in a small, upright nylon tent about 3 feet square that is firmly staked to the ground.  It is favored with a zippered opening at the front for individual access.  It is not a pretty sight, and especially now after the zipper has broken leaving the nylon door flapping in the breeze, but it is still functional.  Everyone holds the fervent hope that they will be spared some terrible illness that would require frequent trips down the hill.  Some try to avoid it completely and restrict their fluid intake, preferring the risk of passing out from dehydration over the risk of fainting at the sight and smell of the dunny.  I will spare you a photograph of the thing.

Ramadan

July 25 - Wednesday                                                                                        

 The assignment for our team today was simply to continue to excavate the ballroom in the Iron Age 1 house, and we worked steadily at it all day.  By the time we stopped for the day our diggers, including me, had probably removed over half of the debris that had initially filled the room.  We were still in the deep mud brick layer, and not close to the bottom.  We should reach the floor in the next two or three days where we hope we will find some more interesting artifacts.  There were not too many artifacts in the layer of brick we removed today, but we did find many pieces of pottery.  In addition one member of our team found an intact oil lamp which I will photograph in the next day or so after it has been logged in and recorded.  One other item was also found – an intact small conical-shaped piece of pottery that had been used as a weight for a weaving loom. 

Textiles such as rugs, blankets, clothes and tents were woven on looms from the wool of sheep, goats and camels, but it is rare to find any of these items intact because the wool degrades over time and disappears.  However we know that weaving was an extremely important activity for people living in these ancient civilizations because it provided tents for shelter, clothes, bags for carrying things and many other articles. It has been estimated by the experts that for a family or a village the weaving of textiles filled about 50% of all working activity.

 We have had to adjust to Ramadan, the holy month in the 12 month Islamic yearly calendar.  It is the ninth month of the Islamic year, and begins, as all months do, with the first sighting of the new crescent moon in the west.  The Islamic calendar is based on 12 lunar months, each 29 or 30 days which makes the Islamic year 10 or 11 days shorter than the Gregorian calendar year we use in the west.  The Islamic calendar is used for keeping track of religious holidays and of Ramadan, but otherwise the western calendar is used here for regular daily Iife.  The shorter year means that the Islamic months drift about 10 or 11 days earlier each year compared to the Gregorian calendar.  Next year for example, Ramadan would be expected to start around July 10, while this year it started on July 20. 

During Ramadan Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, and do not take any water, fluids of food.  There are exceptions for the elderly, for children and for those who are sick.  But the Bedouin workers who assist us at the dig have to carry on as best they can without food or fluids for the whole day.  They pace themselves and take rests to prevent too much fluid loss from perspiration and that leaves the rest of us to work quite a bit harder, including doing more of the carrying – boulders and guffahs.  I went for a short walk this evening with several of our group to have some ice-cream at a store nearby, and right after sundown the roads, normally congested with speeding traffic, were suddenly deserted.  Everyone, it seemed had gone home on cue to be ready to feast and drink beginning at sundown with their family and friends.

I read in the local Jordanian English newspaper that there is sometimes some uncertainty about just when Ramadan begins.  A very senior cleric in each country makes a declaration in advance about the start day, because the new moon is not seen on the same day in every country.  This year Ramadan started in Jordan last Friday, but in several other countries it started on Saturday.  Besides having an impact on our work, Ramadan has affected us in other ways.  The family that prepares our second breakfast and brings it to the dig at 9.15 every morning has stopped delivering the food during Ramadan.  So our kitchen is making up sandwiches for us to take with us to the dig and Kent Bramlett goes out and buys the three watermelons that we could not do without at breakfast.

We have a large herd of goats and sheep that graze on the weeds and dried thistles on the Tall and here is one of the shepherd boys with a baby goat.

We are halfway through the 2012 season’s dig.  A few of the people who joined the dig at Umayri signed up for only half the season, and today was the last day for those leaving at the mid-point.  So today we all gathered at the central location on the dig for the official group photograph, and I also had a group shot of the team working in our field.  

Our team

 

A new Balk

July 24 – Tuesday

Our senior archaeologists are urging us on to complete our primary goal - the excavation of the Iron Age 1 house.  We begin work each morning before dawn, as you can see in the photograph that I shot this morning after the crew had started digging.  The sun is just peeping over the horizon at the left of the photo.  The workers are all in the ballroom and they are going strong.  By the end of work today at lunch time they had dug up, then filled and sifted over 400 guffahs of excavated material in addition to removing dozens of boulders.  So we are making progress, but there is still about 5 feet of debris, mud bricks, rubble and rocks still to be removed before we are done.

Here is our crew beginning work on excavating the ballroom before dawn.  The workers in the team on the right are in the ballroom digging and those on the left are waiting to carry the filled guffahs to the sieves.  The ladder gives us access to the adjacent room in which I worked.  The photo was taken while I was standing on top of the balk that appears in the photo below.  The walls that we took down early in the dig would have blocked the view into the ballroom from this angle.  The Bedouin tent in the background is our welcome retreat for sandwiches and watermelon when we pause for our second breakfast at 9.30 am. 

While the main crew was clearing out the ballroom I worked with a buddy in completing the excavation of a corner of an adjacent side room.  We did complete our assignment just before lunch and here is a photograph of what we left in place - the balk.  The photo is taken from inside our small space and the camera is aimed right at the side of the balk that we had to leave in place.  The balk had to be trimmed vertically so that the successive layers of deposition could be interpreted.  In this case it is quite easy to see what has happened.  Right on top of the balk are 2 guffahs, rubber containers into which we shovel and then carry the excavated material to the sifters working the sieves.  There is a small layer of dirt on top of the balk, but just below the surface is a deep layer of tumbled and broken mud bricks, some of which can easily be seen relatively intact.  Towards the bottom the bricks have been compacted into a relatively solid mass.  Right at the bottom, not visible in this photo, is a layer of clay and ash that covered the floor. 

The new balk after we had excavated our space.  The strings are carefully aligned with the sides of the original 5 meter square.  Some of the tumbled mud bricks are clearly visible and are reasonably intact.  The balk is about 6 feet high.

 

The layer that now lies at the bottom of the space was originally the roof, but when the roof beams burned during destruction of the house, they collapsed to the floor and then the walls of mud brick toppled over on top of the burning roof.  When our excavation of this space began 4 days ago, the whole room had been completely filled with debris.  We began digging right at the surface, level with the guffahs, and dug out all of the rubble and mud bricks right down to the floor.  If we had measured the weight of the material that we had dug out of that space in 4 days it would have been multiple tons, and every ounce had to be dug, scraped and lifted to the surface.  How about that as a great way to spend a relaxing summer vacation!!  When we had finished our work we were able to simply confirm what the archaeologists already knew about what hd happened when the house was destroyed.

Tomorrow everyone gets to work together on excavating the ballroom.  No new interesting artifacts have been found other than hundreds of pieces of pottery all dating to the Iron Age 1 era plus bags and bags of lithics – pieces of flint that had been broken off and chipped into a variety of shapes for use as hand tools.  The term Neolithic, or stone age, refers to the time preceding the Bronze Age when the only tools people used were made out of stone.