The Millennium Shrimp

Food is always one of the highlights of travelling to Jordan. The first night here, we ate at the hotel restaurant beside the pool. I had the Shish Tawook, grilled, marinated chicken, along with a cucumber and tomato salad. They have a specific name for it but I don’t remember it. I think they washed the vegetables in salt water, the dish was fairly salty. We also had Baba Ganoosh and Humoos and plenty of freshly baked pita bread. Dinner at ACOR was a lamb meatball in a tomato sauce served over rice, and baked zucchini. At the Pizza shop I went with the Kebab, which was served with a traditional unleavened flat bread.

We’re always scouting out the cheapest places to buy bottled water. At the hotel a 1 ½ liter bottle of water costs JD 1.00 (roughly $1.40 US). Across the street at the liquor store it costs 50 piastres (JD 0.5). The dig is buying water from a local supplier for JD 1.00 per 20 L. I drank 2 1 ½ liter bottles of water yesterday, in addition to several glasses of water with each meal. The water we were served at dinner last night tasted funny so I switched to a diet coke.

You have to be extremely careful with the tap water in Jordan. Locals will drink it, but they’ve grown up with it and don’t get sick from it. D’Angelo and Suzanne were reminiscing about their experience with securing access to clean water in the mid-eighties, when they used to camp on site. At one point they were told that water pipes had been laid out to the area from Dirban (the nearest town) and so people were using that to brush their teeth and take showers. Turns out the pipes hadn’t been hooked up to the Dirban water supply, so the water they were getting was straight from the Wadi. Several people got violently ill (from using un-boiled water to brush their teeth and take showers) and had to be taken to the hospital. The tap water in town is relatively safer, but it’s still not something you want to drink.

Which reminds me: what’s the best way to tell you’re in a Christian neighborhood in Jordan? The presence of liquor stores. Sort of an interesting contrast to the US. Jordanian Christians (predominantly Roman Catholic and Orthodox) traditionally operate the distilleries, wineries, and breweries as well as stores and restaurants that sell wine, beer and liquor. Since it is an Islamic country, there are no such things as bars and you’re not allowed to drink alcohol outside of restaurants and private residences.

Wednesday, May 29^th. Got up around 6 am local time, head down to the lobby to use the wireless network and check email. Today we’re headed to Amman (the capital) and ACOR (the American Center for Oriental Research). ACOR is sort of the mothership for American archaeologists working in Jordan. They help with coordinating logistics, cash, rent out equipment, and provide storage space for ongoing projects like KI. They also have a really good cook and great coffee. Mostly, the first couple of days is mainly about paperwork, getting dig permits, getting the camp set up (we have to order water deliveries, figuring out sleeping arrangements for 30 odd people), and figuring out what equipment we still have from last season, what we need to rent from ACOR, all that good stuff. We also have to re-establish the grid, which won’t be happening until we get official permission to dig from the government.

We took a cab to Amman in the morning. The cab driver spent a great deal of time yelling into a cell phone while driving. But, it was actually a fairly sedate experience, compared to what Amanda has said about cab drivers in Equador. Amman is a fascinating city, mainly because it’s so westernized. Driving into town along the highway, you’re visually bombarded with advertizing for KFC, Hardees, Popeye’s, and half a dozen other American fast food restaurants. There was also a latino restaurant, Pollo something or other, that I didn’t remember from 2004. To me, the most interesting part is that you see restaurants like Popeye’s, which you don’t really see much outside of the southeastern United States, not just McDonalds.

We had dinner (lunch, but the main meal of the day) at ACOR and then got back to Madaba around late afternoon 3:30-ish. I took a nap until around 5 pm and then went downstairs to see if I could figure out how to configure the hotel’s wireless network. For supper we went to Haret Jdodna, or as Iskanderites usually call it, “the pizza shop.” The name in Arabic means something along the lines of “court of our ancestors” or something like that. It’s in the courtyard of an old stone house from the early settlement period (1880s-1890s).

So, I’m writing this about midnight, Jordanian time, on May 29, 2007. My computer still thinks it’s 5:00 pm. I’ll try to post this early tomorrow morning before we leave for Amman. The trip over was largely uneventful. D’Angelo got his GPS confiscated in Customs, because he didn’t have a letter from the Department of Antiquities saying that he was allowed to have one. He’s brought it in a number of times, but this time they confiscated it. We’ll have to see if we can get a letter from the Department tomorrow. Unfortunately, the director of the DOA is still in DC at the Jordanian archaeology conference that George Washington University hosted last week. Our Mudira (i.e., Suzanne, the dig’s director), was there as well, but left early to depart with the advance team.

The advance team meet up in Chicago was fairly random. Suzanne gave me a call while I was surfing the net at the food court next to the security checkpoint. Turns out she and Jesse Long had were sitting in the food court, too. So we spent most of Monday afternoon in the airport waiting. Paul met up with us as we were waiting in line to check in at Royal Jordanian and Jim D’Angelo appeared a few minutes before we were supposed to board.

The hardest part of the flight was the layover in Detroit. Evidently, they combine the Detroit and Chicago stops in one flight. As seems to be the norm, the flight out from Detroit was heavily loaded with mothers and children. Royal Jordanian flights are always heavily loaded with Arabs and Arab-Americans travelling to visit family for the summer. The one little girl in front of us was excited about landing in Amman. She clapped and yelled, “one more country to go.” She was going to Syria to visit her grandparents.

After the flight, the most difficult problem was finding all of our luggage. There’s always a mess of baggage handlers trying to do it for you (for a tip), but they don’t know what your baggage looks like, so it’s generally easier to do it yourself. All they’re doing is reading the tags to match up with what you have. Speaking of luggage, I have to admit that I was a little skeptical of checking my baggage through to Amman from Akron-Canton, but it seemed to work.

In Arabic “khirbet iskander” means the “ruins of Alexander,” reflecting the traditional belief in the area that the site was somehow tied in with Alexander the Great and his military campaigns, although archaeological survey work in the early twentieth century clearly established that the site’s terminal occupation was in the Bronze Age.

Suzanne Richard, the director of excavations, has been digging at Khirbet Iskander since the early 1980s, uncovering one of the most important settlement sites from the Early Bronze IV period (EB IV), roughly 2350-2000 BC. The site’s significance, however, is potentially much greater than just shedding light on post-urban sedentary populations in the EB IV. It is also uniquely qualified to examine the evolution of an Early Bronze I period village into an Early Bronze II/III city giving us a window onto the process of urbanization and deurbanization in the time periods between 3500 and 2000 BC.

The first phase of excavations at the site uncovered an Early Bronze Age IV period (EB IV) “gateway” in the southeast corner of the mound. The second phase of excavations has focused on the northwest corner of the mound where excavations in 2004 revealed clear evidence of an Early Bronze III period occupation below the EB IV site. Additionally, work during the 1987 season and by others clearly show that the site was occupied as early as the Early Bronze I period.

I participated in the 2004 excavations and have also been helping with converting the CAD drawings into data usable in Geographic Information System (GIS) software. This season I’ll be going along with the advance team to help set up the grid again and establish a new site datum. I’ll also possibly be doing some more digging if time permits.

My flight is departing Akron-Canton at 12:30 tomorrow and arriving in Chicago at 1:30, local time. The advance team is flying out of Chicago at 8:00 pm local time and will be arriving at 6:10 pm, local time on May 29th in Amman, which should be around 11:00 am in Ohio.
I’ve posted a clock on the sidebar that shows the current time in Amman, Jordan.

Well, two more days before I leave for Jordan! I’m going to be working on a dig at Khirbet Iskander, an Early Bronze Age city located along the King’s Highway, the principle north-south artery on the East Bank. The Highway dates back to Bronze Age, and the same route is still largely followed by the modern Jordanian highway.

The flight over leaves at 8:00 pm from Chicago and we’ll be arriving in Amman around 6:30 pm local time. So, we basically loose a day in transit. In some ways it’s a lot easier than flying to Europe. By the time you get off the plane you’re ready to sleep and it’s almost time to go to bed anyways. And then you wake up at 4 am, which is when we usually get started anyways.

This time I’ll be going over with the advance team to help prep the site and get things ready to work before the students and the rest of the team arrive at the end of the week.

So, about now, you’re probably wondering, “What is a Millennium Shrimp” and why did he call his blog “The Millennium Shrimp” ?

The short answer: Well, Instapundit was already taken.

The longer answer?

The title is essentially an homage to ” millennium hand and shrimp” a famous phrase from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. According to net lore, the phrase was arrived at by Pratchett feeding the lyrics to the They Might Be Giants’ song “Particle Man” into a random text generating program along with a Chinese restaurant menu.

That and I found this really cool image of a shrimp-like creature from antartica on this Wired article about Linnaeus and his system of binomial nomenclature. The rest of the background image I got from stock xchng, a free stock photo web site. I believe it’s an area of County Cork, Ireland.

Carry your towel with you today, in memory of Douglas Adams.

To quote from the Guide:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have…any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with

The 2007 Khirbet Iskander Expedition is staying at the Mariam Hotel in the city of Madaba (biblical Medeba). Madaba lies about 30 km south of Amman along the 5,000 y.o. King’s Highway. The modern city dates from 1880 when 90 Arab Christian families from the city of Kerak reoccupied the ancient site. While they were building permanent dwellings recycling the ruins of the Byzantine period city, the Byzantine period mosaics for which the town is famous were initially discovered. The most famous of these is the Map Mosaic, which is found in the Orthodox Church of St. George. The town’s population is around 55,000 people and it is the administrative capital for the area south of Amman.

History

Although the modern city is relatively young, there is evidence for human habitation of the site dating back to the Early Bronze Age (3200-1950 bc). The plains of Madaba are mentioned in the book of Joshua (13:9) in connection with describing the eastern, transjordanian portion of the promised land. The conquest of the plains of Madaba are mentioned in Numbers (Chapters 21 & 30) when describing the towns of the Amorites conquered by the Israelites. It is also mentioned in the Mesha Stele, which can be seen in the Jordan Archaeological Museum. This stone records the achievements of Mesha, the King of Moab in the mid-Ninth Century bc, who revolted against the Kingdom of Israel after the death of Ahab and provides an alternate view of the battle with Israel recorded 2 Kings 3:4-27.

During the Hellenistic period, Madaba was part of the Nabataean kingdom (the nation that built Petra), but along with the rest of that kingdom, passed into direct Roman control during the reign of the Emperor Trajan (98–117 ad). It would remain under the control of the Romans until the Arab conquest in the Seventh Century ad. During the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods, Madaba was a flourishing provincial town. The first mention of a Christian community in the town dates from the Council of Chalcedon (451 ad) when the Metropolitan Archbishop of Bostra (the provincial capital), also signs the Acts of the Council on behalf of Gaiano, the bishop of the Medabeni. Ancient Madaba’s cultural apex was probably reached in the sixth century, when wealth was lavished on mosaics for churches, and all manner of public and private buildings in the city. The city’s decline came with the sacking of the city by a Persian army in 614 ad and it was entirely abandoned in the Early Omayyad period after the Earthquake of 747 ad.