Hello Everyone,
Things are going well and we are making progress. Today I decided to take a 360 degree series of pictures, so you can see what it is like to stand on the site in the morning. I stood just to the west of the gate area. In the diagram above I was standing just to the left of the yellow area looking at Area B.
Photo 1 of the 360 series: the gate area. Here you can see that we are digging on the left side of the gate complex.
Photo 2 of the 360 series: Area B. You can see the work in Linda Perkins and Dr. Ninow's square with the valley called the Fajj in the background. (This was the square with burial featured yesterday.)
Photo 3 of the 360 series: You can see the tumble of rocks inside the fortress. Note the ridge in the background with forts and towers on the high points. If you look carefully in the upper right hand corner you can see our surveyor at work.
Photo 4 of the 360 series: Look northwest towards Area A
Photo 5 of the 360 series: Looking west across the rock tumble inside the fortress, as you can see we have many stones that we have to deal with as we walk around the site, and as we excavate.
Photo 6 of the 360 series: Looking southwest you can see the outer wall of the fortress and sandy plains beyond.
Photo 7 of the 360 series: You can see one of the surveyors tripods set up over a benchmark on the left.
Photo 8 of the 360 series: Looking southeast, on the horizon is the town of Mahay. Closer in on the left you can see the sift piles for the sifting operation for Area B.
Photo 9 of the 360 series: Looking east-southeast you can see the outline of the fortress wall. You can also see in the distance a green tank of water. Our workers use this their source of drinking water.
Photo 10 of the 360 series: Looking east at the gate area again
Here is our surveyor Paul Mabry at the transit with his survey crew shooting points for a topographic map of the region around the site. That is Wilbur Reid in the distance at the center of the photo with Ralph Carnathan on the lower right.
This a view to the north, notice the line of hills along the horizon, on the highest points of those hills are forts and towers. The valley to the east of Mudaybi was major route for trade and military activities. Our fortress and this line of towers and forts helped to guard access to this route.
Here is a closer view of one of the large forts to the north of Mudaybi.
Here is Dr. Jerry Mattingly this morning, giving instruction and encouragement in Area A.
This is one of the nicely preserved Iron Age rooms in Area D, note the nicely paved floor this room.
Here John Mark Wade uses a builders level in Area D to take levels in Area D.
Holding the stadia rod for John Mark is the representative from the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, Khalid Tahranna.
Here you can see the buses that take us to the site each day. The small building is where our guard sleeps. You can see some of our equipment in the area just outside the building.
Wilbur Reid and Ralph Carnathan, in adding to their surveying duties, help solve all of our "engineering" problems. Wilbur is tightening the bolts on our guffas (rubber buckets made from old tires)
Our work is hard on our equipment so it often needs repair.
You can see that Dr. Ted Carruth and Melissa Spong are making progress on their square outside the gate. They have uncovered a large bench adjacent to the gate tower.
Here Dr. Jerry Mattingly (left) is helping out in Dr. Don Garner's square in Area A.
Here you can see how Abu Hajar (Father of the Rocks) earned his nickname. He takes aim at a large stone in Dr. Mike Van Zant's square.
He hits the stone dead on and cracks it in three swings.
Here Abu Hajar (on the left) and Salah (one of our drivers) cut up the "second breakfast" watermelon at 9:30 this morning. Waiting for their slices are Paul Mabry on the left and Ralph Carnathan on the right.
This is the crew from Area A, one of our workers on the left, Emily Saunders, Abu Hajar, anf Dr. Mike Van Zant.
Time to get some sleep. Tomorrow is payday for the workers. We will end work an hour early so we can travel to Petra for an overnight trip. I am not sure if I will be able to post a blog tomorrow but I will try.
Remember can always access the blog at http://krp2009.blogspot.com and you can email me at wineland@kcu.edu
John Wineland
Karak, Jordan
