Blogs from the Field
Tall Hisban, Jordan - Excavation Season 2021
Tall Hisban, Jordan - Excavation Season 2018
Week One
(24-29 June 2018)
Weekend 1
Weekend 2
Amman
Week Two
(30 June-5 July 2018)
Weekend 3
Qusair-amra
Week Three
(8–12 July 2018)
Weekend 4
Tall Hisban, Jordan - Excavation Season 2016
Week One
(15-21 May 2016)
The Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg launched its third Mamluk archaeological field school this week, in partnership with Andrews and Missouri State Universities in the U.S. The three-week field school is designed as an ASK summer school to train Mamluk scholars in material culture methods, to further the research of current ASK fellows, and to promote the study of the Mamluk period among archaeologists. It takes place at Tall Hisban in central Jordan, the flagship Mamluk-era site in the country. With a well-preserved Citadel of the 14th century and the contemporary village, the site is uniquely suited for the study of the Mamluks’ exercise of power on the frontier and of the contours of rural life, which are otherwise poorly documented in period texts.
Our 12-member team joined our American colleagues (17 in number) at “camp” at a hotel in Madaba last Friday. Excavation began last Sunday, during the onslaught of an unseasonable heatwave, which lasted for two days. The heat didn’t hamper our enthusiasm, and the 2016 season got off to a great start this week.
Excavation this year continues work of the last two seasons in portions of the Mamluk-era village located on the slopes of the tell and in the shadows of the Citadel. Several farmhouses of the Mamluk and Ottoman periods are under investigation. They are well-preserved, one-room structures with shared courtyards and cisterns, and heavily plastered floors and walls (some even painted!). Our goals for this season are to reach foundation trenches and be able to date the original construction of these buildings (which largely reuse earlier buildings), map the physical layout of the village and identify neighborhoods and the pathways connecting them, and to document the spatial patterning of artifacts in each farmhouse in order to better understand the structure of the medieval Islamic household and the activities of daily life. Our integrated environmental research continues, as well, and our archaeobotanist, Annette Hansen, who helped us teach our Spring School on environmental methods, has joined us again this season. The mapping of the village this year is aided by multiple methods of low altitude photography, including boom shots, panorama photography, and 3-D modelling, combined with previous drone photography and GIS. We are also attempting to correlate the complex subterranean structures with the standing buildings on the same maps. This year we launch the newly developed, full-scale Filemaker template for our field recording on IPads, which was demoed last season.
Noteworthy finds of this week were the discovery of a subterranean vaulted passageway on the northern slope, apparently leading into the Citadel; some very fine fragments of luster-painted and enameled glass from one of the farmhouses (and NOT the Citadel); more ceramic evidence of the elusive 16th century; and imported pottery of the Ayyubid and early Mamluk eras, a period that is not well known or documented archaeologically in the region.
Last weekend’s excursion included walking, hiking, and bus tours of Byzantine sites and other sites on the Madaba Plains (the town of Madaba, Mt. Nebo, Umm al-Rasas, Dhiban, Machaerus fortress, and Khirbat Ataruz). This weekend we visit the Decapolis cities and other sites in northern Jordan (the city and Citadel of Amman, the Baq’ah Valley, ʿAjlun Castle, Gadara/Umm Qeis, Pella, Tell Deir ʿAllah, and the Jordan Valley.
Our academic schedule this week consisted of a joint evening lecture by myself and Sten LaBianca on the scientific goals of the season and our ongoing community outreach and heritage management efforts, as well as a workshop on technical drawing of objects. Two hours each afternoon are spent working with pottery, with my giving impromptu lessons on Mamluk ceramics at the pottery reading table.
We were visited in the field by three tour groups (one from Canada), numerous governmental officials, and colleagues from the Department of Antiquities, who have been extremely supportive of our research focus on the Mamluk period.
Submitted by Bethany Walker, Director of Excavations
22 May 2016
Aufstellung der Siebe vor Arbeitsbeginn
Besichtigung von Umm Ar-Rasas
Blick von Tall Hisban zu den Lichtern von Jerusalem
Entnahme von Bodenproben zur archaeobotanischen Analyse
Inspektion von Tall Hisban in der Morgendämmerung
Kamera in luftiger Höhe für Übersichtsbilder
Photomast für Übersichtsbilder
Prof. Bethany Walker mit den Teilnehmern auf der Spitze von Tall Hisban
Prof. Bethany Walker zeigt den Teilnehmern Tall Hisban
Sonnenuntergang am Mount Nebo
Vollmond ueber Tall Hisban
Week Two (22-28 May 2016)
Life is unpredictable. In twenty years of working in Jordan, only once have I seen rain during our late spring/early summer field seasons, and never anything like this. Monday and Tuesday were unseasonable cold, and Tuesday we were actually “rained out”, forcing us to close an hour and a half early and return to camp. The dark skies made for some incredible photography opportunities, though, which are featured here.
It was an eventful and productive week, weather aside. Excavations in our medieval farmhouses on the west slope produced evidence of a rather affluent village community, as well as a complicated history of demolition, in some cases, and reuse and refurbishing, in others, of Early Islamic structures in the Mamluk period. One farmhouse yielded rich information about daily life, including diet (an entire assemblage of vessels used for cooking and storage of food) and entertainment (the playing of chess, possible smoking device), all recovered from household garbage. It also, quite surprisingly, yielded a very fine flagstone floor, with parallels in Mamluk Cairo, and more beautiful imported lustered and enameled vessels from one room (beakers, perfume bottles), bearing witness to a relatively high standard of living and economic connections with larger urban markets. A large number of potential storage rooms were identified throughout the site, which will be the focus of investigations this coming week.
Archaeologists love floors and trash pits. Palaeobotanists are particularly fond of them, as they are rich contexts for the retrieval of seeds, pollen, phytoliths, and seeds for the study of diet, climate, and agriculture. This week our archaeobotanist was heavily occupied with sampling from these contexts – which have been numerous this season - and processing of the soils back at camp. We eagerly await the post-season results of her analysis and of our other environmental scientists.
Our team members from the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg participated in the large, tri-annual International Conference on the History and Archaeology of Jordan, held in Amman this week (http://www.ichaj.org/). Gül Şen gave a paper on one of her post-doc projects on Ottoman Jordan (with a focus on Hisban), Reem al-Shqour’s paper focused on her research on Mamluk khans in Jordan and their economic role, and I spoke on the emerging picture of rural society in Mamluk Jordan (putting Hisban into a regional context). Zakariya Na’imat, a doctoral student at the University of Bonn and friend of the Kolleg, also gave a paper on his PhD project on the economy of Early Islamic Syria as reflected in the so-called “desert castles” (and the site of Shuqayra al-Gharbiyya). Uni-Bonn and the Kolleg were featured quite prominently at this conference.
This weekend took participants of the field school to the Dead Sea and the Early Islamic “desert castles” of Mshatta (the façade of which is at the Islamic Museum in Berlin), Qusayr Amra (a UNESCO World Heritage site), and Kharana, as well as the Ayyubid-era basalt fort at Azraq.
As for this week’s academic program, we had hands-on workshops on zooarchaeology and archaeobotany by Sten LaBianca and Annette Hansen, respectively, and I lectured on Mamluk culture, comparing the frontier material culture of Tall Hisban with the urban culture of the sultanate’s capital in Cairo in the 14th century.
We had many visitors to the site this week, largely the result of the influx into the country of scholars and our colleagues for the ICHAJ conference, including members of the Norwegian Embassy, the University of Florence team excavating at Shobak Castle, and my doctoral students from Uni-Bonn Zakariya Na’imat and Hussein al-Sababha.
This week was also a special one for Jordan, with the 70th anniversary of Independence Day, which we celebrated by raising Jordanian flags throughout our site and the sharing of sweets. This coming week is the important 100-year celebration of the launch of the Arab Revolt, which features so prominently in the country’s history.
We have only one more week remaining in this year’s excavation season. It will be intense, and we are excited to see the results!
Submitted by Bethany Walker, Director of Excavations
29 May 2016
Excavation team of Mamluk Houses
Harana
Jordan Independence Day at Tall Hisban 1
Jordan Independence Day at Tall Hisban 2
Lunch at Harana
On the way to the Dead Sea
Second Breakfast at the site
Sunrise at Tall Hisban 1
Sunrise at Tall Hisban 2
Visiting Mushata 1
Visiting Mushata 2
Visiting Mushata 3
Tall Hisban Excavations, 2014 Season
Reports from the Field – Week One
Following in the tradition begun years ago to post weekly “Reports from the Field”, we share with you updates on how work is progressing, how our students and staff are doing, and on what special projects they have been involved. This is the second season of Phase III excavations at Tall Hisban, begun by Andrews University in 1968. Excavations long focused on the summit of the tell, where a Mamluk-era Citadel was built on the ruins of a Byzantine basilica and a Roman temple. In 2013 we shifted our operations to the slopes of the tell and the flatlands below, where the lay of the land suggested the presence of a densely occupied settlement. This year we continue where the 2013 left off, exploring further the complex network of farmhouses, water and storage facilities, and stables that made up the village (or small town) of Hisban in the 13th and 14th centuries. We are particularly interested today in rural life on the Mamluk frontier – that is the physical and functional structure of village life, agriculture and water use, family structure and life - and the relationship between local societies and the Mamluk state.
The team this year consists of 65 students from four universities (Andrews University, Missouri State University, Queen’s College in London, and our own Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of the University of Bonn), as well as staff, specialists, and workmen from Europe, the United States, and the Middle East. After many years of developing a network of environmental specialists, we were able to put together a team that includes a phytolith scientist (Sofia Laparidou – University of Texas, Austin), archaeobotanist (Annette Hanson, Groningen University, Netherlands), and zooarchaeologist (Chiara Corbino, University of Florence). We are very happy that two leading American Mamluk historians have also joined us this season, to study our coins and water systems, respectively: Warren Schultz (De Paul University) and Stuart Borsch (Assumption College). In support of our efforts to fully document our subterranean water systems, two engineers from Beuth Technical University of Applied Science in Berlin – Thomas Mewes and Henning Nitschke – are with us to do laser mapping and 3-D renderings of some of our cave complexes and the reservoir. We are fortunate to have such capable team on-site this year.
We have very specific goals this season:
► Begin to map the village plan of Mamluk Hisban
► Fully document the history of occupation and architectural style of houses in Fields O and B (by reaching foundation levels)
► Better understand the nature of storage facilities and possible stables, especially in Field M
► Stratigraphically separate Mamluk from Ottoman ceramics
► Systematic study of the site’s ancient water systems and water regime of the Mamluk period
► Study land use/agriculture of Mamluk period
► Investigate how the site functioned economically in the Mamluk period
► Create a narrative of Mamluk Hisban for public consumption
Participants have been divided into smaller working groups for specialized work to help us meet these objectives: stratigraphic excavation, mapping and 3-D imagery, low-flying aerial photography, GIS, pedestrian water survey, environmental research, numismatics, and ethnography. The working groups are working in collaborative fashion with one another, in an experimental form of transdisciplinary research. We are further developing our digital field recording this year, and will incorporate all of the data from the different working groups into a multi-disciplinary Filemaker database in Bonn.
Our brief, three-week field season got off to a brilliant start with the excavation of a house pit of the 14th century in Field B, containing a deposit of both handmade and imported glazed jars. Found together in such a context permits us to date, perhaps for the first time in Jordan, a common kind of coarse ware with some chronological precision. We will report on this important development, and describe the imported vessels, in detail at a later point.
We also made progress on developing a typology of vernacular architecture, having reached Mamluk-era floor levels in all of our houses and storage facilities. Each have preserved a rich assemblage of ceramics, metal and stone tools, and glass wares that formed the accoutrements of a village household in this period. We are also retrieving the remains of the food people consumed and the animals they raised, in extensive kitchen and refuse deposits. At such a well preserved site as this, we have the opportunity to write a history of Mamluk rural history that has not been archaeologically possible until now.
Our evening lectures are an important component of the academic program of the field school. The lecture program this year will take on a different form than in the past, with joint presentations by specialists on how collaborative research is promoting Mamluk Studies at the site of Tall Hisban. On Sunday Sten LaBianca (Andrews University) and myself discussed the ever-evolving research profile of the excavations since 1968, the ways in which archaeology and heritage management and community development initiatives complement one another, the “practical” application of our archaeological research, and the specific research goals of this season and how all of the components of the project intersect to reach those goals. Warren Schultz, a well-known Mamluk economic historian who has led research on Mamluk numismatics – and a figure long acquainted with Jordan and archaeology here - gave a lively lecture Wednesday on methods of studying coins and the meaning of our coin record at Hisban. Such information will ultimately help us to better understand the nature of the economic networks in which the site participates, how did rural markets work, local standard of living, and to what degree the rural economy was actually monetarized.
On Thursday, a film crew from Yarmouk University spent much of the work day on site doing interviews and filming our work as part of an Arabic-language documentary on the meaning of archaeological sites to local communities, and the ways the narrative of place and people has changed at Tall Hisban, in over four decades of excavations. Plans are in place to submit the documentary to al-Jazira (Arabic language version) for international broadcasting.
Our tours this weekend – which, like the lectures, are an important part of the academic program – will take field school participants to sites in northern Jordan (Jerash, Um Qeis, Ajlun, and Pella), as well as in Amman (the Amman Citadel and the historic neighborhoods of downtown).
We are off to a good start this year!
Submitted by Bethany J. Walker,
Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg (Research Professor),
Director of Excavations
Photos by Daniel Redlinger
30 May 2014
Madaba, Jordan
Anna Abdul Aziz and Krystal Uzuegbu excavating the courtyard
Ayman and Bob and the jar
Discovery of the jarts in the Mamluk house pit
Henning Nitschke in the cave
morning tea under the tent
Rihab Ben Othman at the sift
Sofia Laparidou enjoying second breakfast.
Stuart Borsch calculating water-holding capacities
Sunrise at Tall Hisban
Thomas Mewes beginning survey
Village of Hisban in early morning
Walker preparing for the film crew
Reports from the Field – Week Two
One of the joys of working at Tall Hisban is to be able to study simultaneously a Mamluk frontier garrison and the local community in which it is embedded. “Trash” and “domestic life” are the themes of this week, as we have been excavating, and comparing, the refuse patterns of the Citadel and the town/village of the 14th century. A trash pit associated with the Citadel, located just outside the Citadel wall on the north slope, produced garrison garbage (crossbow bolts and spear points, horse accoutrements, coins, much glass, and animal bones – the remains of dinners high in protein). In the settlement below the castle, residents of the farmhouses disposed of trash in the courtyard outside their houses, where we recovered traces of food production and consumption, evidence of animal husbandry, and a good assemblage of jewelry. We are also getting information on domestic life: the spatial division of houses, consumption of locally-produced and imported goods (some from as far away as Egypt and the Gulf), and the arrangement of houses and cisterns in possible family groups. There is growing evidence, as well, for local production of glazed pottery, which was an important industry and one usually associated with larger towns in the Mamluk period.
Our environmental specialists sampled intensively this week from all squares, for their larger study of crop rotation, changes in water use (cycles of irrigation and dry farming), food exchanges between the Citadel and village, and changing dietary patterns. Preliminary analysis of samples are being done in the field during excavation. Low-flying aerial photography this week by lightweight devices aimed at documenting the extent of the medieval settlement (visible through wall lines) and its associated fields (through ancient terrace walls).
We are frequently visited by dignitaries and colleagues during our excavation seasons. This week we welcomed the visit of officers of the Ministry of Agriculture, who have expressed interest in our research on historical water systems. We eagerly await next week the visit of participants of the Minerva Gentner Symposium “The Mamluk Sultanate from the Perspective of Regional and World History”, which is co-sponsored by the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg.
The evening lecture series continues. In the spirit of collaborative research, we had a joint presentation and mini-round table on environmental archaeology by three of our specialists – Dr. Chiara Corbino (animal bones, University of Florence), Annette Hanson (seeds, University of Gronigen), and Sofia Laparidou (phytoliths - University of Texas-Austin). This season our specialists are residing together in the dig house and working together in an intensive fashion. The result was a brilliantly cohesive presentation on climate, land use, and diet, with a focus on the Mamluk period. This Sunday we have another joint presentation, on the site’s water systems, by Prof. Stuart Borsch (Assumption College), Ivan LaBianca (our aerial photographer), and Henning Nitschke and Thomas Mewes (engineers producing 3-D mapping of the subterranean systems).
Last weekend’s tours were all-day affairs, which took field school participants all over northern Jordan. Last Friday’s itinerary included the Roman and Decapolis cities of Jerash and Umm Qeis, as well as Ajlun Castle and Pella in the Jordan River Valley. On Saturday, the group travelled within the Balqa of central Jordan, with a morning in Amman (Amman Citadel and the historic districts of the old city), and the afternoon at the “sister” tell sites of Hisban: Tall Umeiri and Tall Jalul. This weekend combines sea and desert. Today (Friday) is being spent at the Dead Sea and the Byzantine-era baptismal site of Bethany. Tomorrow (Saturday) we visit four of the Early Islamic “desert castles” – Kharana, Amra, Azraq, and Mshatta – two of which are undergoing extensive restorations. Lectures on the current restorations (and the important discoveries associated with them, including newly found inscriptions of the Mamluk period) will be given by members of the restoration teams at Amra and Azraq.
Submitted by Bethany J. Walker,
Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg (Research Professor),
Director of Excavations
Photos by Daniel Redlinger, Annemariee Schimmel Kolleg
6 June 2014
Madaba, Jordan
Amr and his reservoir team
Anna Abdulaziz at pottery reading sporting a jar handle
Anna, Sofia, and Walker strategizing the courtyard
ASK at Hisban 2014
Bob Bates final square photos
Henning in the caves
Hisban full team 2014
Hisban hinterland
Hisban summit
Ivans aerial photography
Marly at the I-pads
Tarek Sabraa at second breakfast
Verena Ricken at pottery reading elephant ear cookpot
