A day of Drawing, Mapping, and Photographs

There was a crescent moon over Mudaybi this morning, if you look carefully in the lower right you can see Venus.

Hello,

All is well here in Jordan. Tomorrow is our last full day in Karak. We will continue our work taking photographs, drawing, and mapping the site. Then Tuesday morning we will take a few more photos and pack everything up and head to Amman. We have to report to the Department of Antiquities and store our equipment. Then Wednesday a group of us will tour Jerash, one of the best preserved Roman cities in the Middle East.

Yesterday in the blog you saw the survey vehicle with a flat tire. One of the goals of this year's survey work, led by Dr. Karen Borstad is to find Roman roads in the Karak area. Here a Roman road which she has been investigating after Dr. John Foss discovered this road earlier this season. It is near Miller site 344 but Miller makes no mention of this feature which is bordered by large cut limestone blocks and extends for several hundred meters as far as the eye could see.

Even though Dr. Mark Green and Dr. John Foss left us a couple of weeks ago, I thought I would post a picture that they took. Here is a snake that they encountered. This is to let you know that we always have to keep our eyes open for snakes and scorpions.

Our surveyor Paul Mabry was busy today mapping our excavation area.

In Area D, John Mark Wade works with Jacob Isbell to draw a one of the squares in the area, they are using a 1 x 1 meter wooden drawing guide which has strings every 10 centimeters. When you place this over the area that you need to draw you can save a great deal time because you do not have to do so much measuring.

Here you get a better view of the drawing guide as Jake carries it.

Khalid Tarawneh measures in Area D, while Hadassah Penwell draws the wall, Emily Dew provides "moral support" during the process.

A. J. Fry draws while Dr. Randy Cloud measures the balk in Area B.

Here we look over the shoulder of Dr. Gerald Keown as he draws his square.

This is an example of a completed wall drawing from Area A.

A. J. Fry works hard on his drawing in Area B.
Dr. Mike VanZant shows us his balk drawing in Area A. He had a great amount of tumble to work through near the external wall.

Our photographer Tim Snow was working hard to day taking final photos. He he is up on our photo ladder in the gate area. Jake Isabell and A. J. Fry steady the ladder while Dr. Friedbert Ninow looks on and waits his turn on the ladder.

The gate has been cleared and cleaned and is ready for final photos.


Tim gets another angle on the gate area while Jake Isabell and A. J. Fry stablized the ladder.



Here is a picture of the gate that I took from the ladder.

Through the hard work, friendships are formed. These two students had not met before their involvement with KRP, now they are good friends. This is Emily Saunders, wearing the kafeeyah, from Carson-Newman College and Melissa Spong from Johnson Bible College.


All the hard work can wear you out, here Dr. Mike VanZant rests in his square.

Time for bed, we have one more full day at the site tomorrow.

John Wineland
Karak, Jordan