A Pleasant Diversion

I have spent the last few days sulking over the loss of my grant, freaking out about what I am going to be doing this summer, and pondering where the hell I am going to live next year (since my roommates found a replacement, thinking I would be in Egypt). Not only do I like to get what I want, I LIKE TO HAVE A PLAN. So I have "not been in a good way," as they say.

Yesterday was a brief interlude, however. Yo, J, W, and I headed off to Ghor as-Safi, a fertile, fly-filled, and very hot region at the very southeast corner of the Dead Sea. The area is extremely poor, and populated by people of sub-Saharan African descent brought over in Ottoman times as slaves to work in the sugar factories. Just north of this region, however, are two really interesting archaeological sites, Numeira and Bab edh-Dhra.

First, we visited the ruins of Numeira, which is a 0.5 hectare walled settlement dating from the Early Bronze Age (3500 to 2000 BCE). It is bordered by a steep plateau to the east, the industrial salt ponds of the Dead Sea to the west, and the Arab Potash Company to the south. When we arrived, we saw that quite a bit of Numeira has fallen down the side of a steep hill into the Wadi (often water builds up within the plateau and then comes gushing out with great force, taking much with it). In addition, the main gate of the town had fully collapsed in an earthquake, and during the excavation of the site, the team found two bodies crushed underneath it (they had been taken away by the time we arrived, of course). Some creative Bedouins have also rearranged some of the artifacts into remarkable pieces of modern art. Here are some pictures of Numeira:

Numeira was excavated from 1979 to 1983. However, during the initial excavation, the data on groundstones found at the site was not fully recorded. As such, the University of Notre Dame is involved in continued analysis of the groundstones at the site, and the task fell to Yo yesterday to take photographs, give coordinates, and provide descriptions of the groundstones. I was the notetaker, Yo provided the descriptions, W did the mapping/coordinates, and J was the photographer.

Here is Yo standing by some groundstones. You can see the salt ponds in the background.


A groundstone is basically a stone that serves a specific function, such as for grinding wheat or providing a hinge to a door. We found four types of groundstones yesterday: mortars, grinding slabs, hand stones, and pivot stones. Here is a picture of a mortar.


After a very nice picnic, we drove over to the second site, Bab edh-Dhra, which is also part of the University of Notre Dame project, but we didn't have to do any work there.


This site is broken into several pieces. We first visited the town, which is also perched on the side of a wadi. Bab edh-Dhra is famous for its pottery, which is a brilliant orange-red and often has blood-red ink upon it. I was surprised to see pottery fragments littering the entire area of the town. Here is a picture of the wadi upon which Bab edh-Dhra is located. As you can imagine, this area can become quite flooded.


But the Wadi also leads to a town, which seems to be making good use of all that water.


We then walked across the street, where a seemingly endless mass burial site is located. Yo says that a lot of the graves here were secondary burials. So basically the inhabitants of Bab edh-Dhra allowed their dead to simmer for awhile, either there or somewhere else, then moved the bones elsewhere. The book on the excavation of Bab edh-Dhra claims that in from Early Bronze 1B to IV "earlier burials were moved to the rear with resultant disarticulation (so this book uses the word "bone pile" quite frequently)." This wasn't the sole burial practice, however. The normal practice in Early Bronze 1A was to put a bunch of bodies in one tomb, then seal it for good... I guess this means that alot of people died at once, or they just left it open until it was full! there were also some individual graves found.

This was the most amazing part of the day. The site has been looted EXTENSIVELY, as you can see from all of the holes marking the landscape in this picture:


The looters seem to be looking for jewelry, figurines, and fully intact pots, and have little regard for anything else they may find in the graves (i.e. human remains). So each of these holes is surrounded by a pile of debris consisting of human bones and broken pots. It's amazing. You can just walk in there and pick around in it all. Here is a pile of human remains:


Here I am holding a large bit of skull that I found.


It was very odd to look at inside of the skull of somebody who lived here over 5000 years ago, but the land here is so arid that it desiccates pretty much anything that gets placed in the ground. I'm not sure how I feel about the looting. It's obviously painful for an archaeologist to look at. As a political scientist, I suppose it should also be painful for me to look at, since it signifies either a complete failure of the state to extend protection over these sites, or else a political obligation to allow locals to pillage their past. On the other hand, these bones are 5000 years old; these people no longer have to feed their families. In fact, they have no worries at all. This is not the case for the current round of locals.It should be noted, however, that the locals actually make very little money off of the artifacts they that loot. The retailers that they sell them to, who in turn sell the artifacts to collectors and tourists, are the ones who really make bank on it.

We then went to the PPNA site for 'Dhra, which I did not find very interesting because there was nothing to pick through and nothing to climb on. J was very keen on it, though, because there were a lot of cores leftover from making blades (a process called "flinting"). While everyone else had fun with the cores, I took some pictures of the mountains and the wildlife!




After that, we headed to the Dead Sea Panorama, which recently opened.


They have a great view and a full bar. I decided that I could definitely re-locate my office from ACOR to the balcony at the Dead Sea Panorama. This place is great; one thing that Jordan lacks is al fresco dining. This is a bit strange, given that the country is so picturesque, but we figure it might be some "sort of predisposition against having any kind of fun in public whatsoever." Let's just say that public spaces do not abound here.


Since I try to avoid the sauce when I am in a bad mood, I stuck with Bitter Lemon, which is my new drink of choice. I don't like sweet drinks, but I like carbonation and I like flavor; Bitter Lemon is THE ANSWER and I drink like 4 cans of it a day. I have become a bit of an expert in the various types, and will do a posting on it someday. In the mean time, Schweppes should give me a ring if they want a new photo for their ad campaign. All I want in return is a continuous supply of Bitter Lemon delivered to my door when I return to the States.


It was a great day. Tromping around makes me feel like a kid again! Thanks, Yo! We missed you, Mo!