Friday in Jordan

Greetings Everyone,

We had a good day today. After breakfast, we headed towards the site but first we stopped to pick up the rest of the material. It has been stored in a small storage area in a village near Mudaybi called Umm Hamat.

As we approached the site we stopped for an overview photo (that is where the pictures of the JBC crew and C-N crew were taken). Then we drove on to the site to unload the supplies and have a chance to determine where we should set up a shift for each square. The shift process enables us to retrieve all or nearly all of the artifacts from the square. Also it makes it easier to keep the material that we find in each square (pottery, bones, metal, etc) separated from the other squares.

We then constructed our outhouse at the site, we call it the Harold.

These rather mundane tasks are both quite important activities that needed to be completed before we begin our excavation work earlier Sunday morning.

I suppose I should explain our work schedule here in Jordan. Jordan now has developed a "weekend" style of work week. What I mean of course is the idea that people should get 2 days off at the end of each week. Of course since this is an Islamic country their work week is set up differently. I like to think of it this way, here in Jordan, Thursdays are like Fridays, Fridays are like Sundays, and Sundays are like Mondays, that means that Saturdays are like Saturdays at home. Fridays are the special days of Islamic prayer in Jordan, so normally stores are closed and people do not normally work.

We have found that it works out best for us to adopt the local work week while we are here. So on Fridays and Saturdays we do not work. That gives us a chance to rest, wash laundry, get some paper work done, and visit nearby archaeological sites.

Today we visited Muhay which has a long history but what is most visible today are the ruins of an abandoned Ottoman village. We saw the ruins of church and houses here. We also visited Dhat Ras (for more on Dhat Ras see http://www.vkrp.org/studies/historical/dhat-ras/

Dhat Ras is a well preserved Roman/Nabatean temple.When we returned we welcomed two additional members of our team. Tim Snow our dig photographer from Northern Virginia and Paul Mabry, from Washington State our surveyor.

We enjoyed another good lunch and then did some chores around camp.

Tomorrow we will visit the castle here in Karak, do some laundry, and make final preparations for an early start on Sunday.

Remember you can see the entire blog at http://krp2009.blogspot.com
John Wineland
Karak, Jordan