Today I thought I would just highlight some of the activities of the day with some pictures. Above is a picture of some of the crew just after our "second breakfast" which most days is very tasty watermelon. Every day at 9:30 we stop for about a half an hour to eat and rest before continuing our work. From left to right is Dr. Jerry Mattingly, Salah Slaihat one of our bus drivers, Emily Saunders a student from Carson Newman College, Hussein Al-Ababdeh our other driver, and one of our local workers.
This Dr. Friedbert Ninow who is excavating the gate area at Mudaybi. He teaches at the Theologische Hochschule Friedensau in Germany. Friedbert has worked for many years in the northern part of Karak at a site called Balua.
Today on our way back to Karak after working at the site we stopped to see a large herd of camels. The men watching over the camels told us that were brought to Jordan from Saudi Arabia and the far southern parts of Jordan to graze on thistles, some of these plants have many long sharp thorns. Notice on the right is a baby camel.
Our survey crew is working on a topographic map of the area surrounding the site. Here they are fixing one of the survey prisms to the top of a stadia rod. On the left is our surveyor, Paul Mabry from South Puget Sound Community College and one of our survey crew Wilbur Reid from Johnson Bible College.
This is Area D, hard at work this morning, excavating their squares. In the foreground on the left is KRP veteran Dr. Gerald Keown of Garner-Webb University, in the middle is one of the local workman, and on the right is Dr. Miriam Perkins of Emmanuel School of Religion. In the distance standing is John Mark Wade also of Emmanuel School of Religion and also in the distance standing on the right is Hadassah Penwell a student at Johnson Bible College.
This morning Dr. Gerald Keown, of Garner-Webb University demonstrates for the local workers how to use the shift properly. We carry all of the excavated soil in rubber buckets called guffas (one is visible on the lower right) to the shifts (one shift per square) here the workers seperate any artifacts from the soil and rocks.
Tomorrow we end our first full week of excavating. We have had good weather so far with highs about 95 or so but tomorrow it will be hotter maybe 40 degrees Celsius which is about 104 F.
I want to welcome several new readers to the blog, you can read all of the postings anytime at http://krp2009.blogspot.com If you need to send me a message you can do so at wineland@kcu.edu Let me know if you would like to be added to the email list. If you are on this list you automatically receive each post as an email.
It is late once again so I better end for now, there is alot of fireworks going off right now but I am not sure which holiday is being celebrated.
John Wineland
Karak, Jordan
