Karak Resthouse as seen from Karak Castle

The Rest House where the team is staying as seen from high atop the castle wall. You can see our yellow school buses parked out front. Note the dry moat with the modern walkway to the castle in the lower part of the picture. Also look on the upper left of the photo to see the Dead Sea in the distance. (remember you can click on the picture to enlarge it.)

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

C-N at KRP

The Carson-Newman College (Jefferson City, TN) Crew, Emily Saunders, a history major and Bonner Scholar from Bluefield WV and Dr. Don Garner, Professor of Religion.
In the distance behind them you can see the dark basalt stones of the ruins of Khirbet Mudaybi, our excavation site.
Carson-Newman College is a charter member of the Karak Resources Project Consortium. For more information on the project see www.vkrp.org

Johnson Bible College (Knoxville, TN) Crew with our drivers at Mudaybi.
From left to right Wilbur Reid, Ralph Carnathan, Hadassah Penwell, Hussein al-Ababdeh, Melissa Spong, Dr. Jerry Mattingly (KRP Director), and Salah Slaihat, in the background the dark stone (basalt) marks the ruins of the excavation site.

Setting up the Excavation

The Wadi Hasa (Biblical Zered) marks the traditional boundary between Edom and Moab

Greetings from Karak,

Everyone is doing well.

We have been working hard to get our camp up and running. That has been especially challenging this season. We have had supplies stored in Amman at a warehouse, since our last season ended in 2001. We could not find some of that material we left and some of it was no longer usable. So we have had to go out replace these supplies here.

Also, if you have been following the blog then you might remember that we used our "second bag" to ship back artifacts & supplies to Jordan during our flight from the US. This plan ran into trouble when luggage for 5 from our group did not show up in Amman. The main reason for this was confusion over our plane tickets. It was not easy to get our bags checked through to Amman when we arrived at the airport on the day we departed. Also 9 of the 12 did not get the boarding pass for London-Amman portion. Then we arrived in London they informed us that our tickets were canceled. It was a long process but finally got everyone on the plane. This confusion led to bags being delayed.

I am happy to report that all the baggage arrived today in Karak. But we still have not been reunited with the boxes of artifacts we carried over. We have hit red tape from the Customs people and we had to left the boxes with them at the airport. But I think we can work through it soon.

We have been eating well, it turns out that the place we eat is a regular tourist stop for tour buses coming to see the castle. They leave Amman in the morning and come south to Karak then visit the castle eat lunch and then many drive on south to Petra. Also some tourist come north from Petra and visit then head on to Amman. Anyway it is buffet style and the food is great. I mentioned before we eat in an Ottoman period buliding that once was a hospital. Tonight we had grilled lamb and shish kebab, grilled onions and tomatos, with fries. They cooked it outside for us on the patio, where we ate overlooking the castle wall. I am amazed by this because it feels so far more like a tour group than a dig crew.

This is a major change from the past but of course no one is complaining. I suspect that those new to the dig do not realize how good they have it.

Tomorrow is a free day. We will visit the site and then other sites. We will visit the Wadi Hasa, which is called the Zered River in the bible. It has a large dam built there since 2001 so I am eager to see it. Then we travel on to a Nabatean temple at Dhat Ras and the ancient graveyard of Mahi.

I need to get some rest so that is all for now.

Remember the entire blog is posted at krp2009.blogspot.com

John Wineland
Karak, Jordan

Seeing Old Friends

Abu Muhammad, John, and Abu Khalid

Karak Castle: one of the finest examples of a Crusader castle anywhere in the world and the best preserved one in Jordan

Greetings Everyone,

It has been a busy, but good, day here. Everyone is fine but I think all of us are tired. Tomorrow we will go to the site and get all of the dig equipment into storage on the site and then begin to clean up eight years of debris from our old squares. After that it is back to camp so we can get things organized and ready for excavation.

We do have wireless in the Rest House and this old computer seems to be working fine. So that will make for much easier posting of the blog.

We are living about 100 feet from the walls of the castle (seen above). From the window of our room, tonight, we can see the lights of Jerusalem across the Dead Sea Rift valley.

We will eat lunch and dinner, each day, in a restored Ottoman building that once was used as a hospital. It is also right next to the castle. Tonight we ate dinner outside with a view of the castle wall. The only thing that separated us from the castle was the dry moat. Several arrow slits in wall were easdy to spot because they shine large lights on the walls of the castle.

We will get to enjoy this view of the castle each day, especially at lunch and dinner time.

Since I am so tired I better close. I will write more tomorrow.

John Wineland
Karak, Jordan