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  • 15 July 2020·

Announcement of Winners: 2019 Routledge Philip R. Davies Early Career Researcher Publication Award

This award recognises excellent research and writing by early career scholars in the areas covered by the Palestine Exploration Quarterly. Since Prof. Philip Davies was strongly committed to mentoring early career scholars and to innovation in publishing, this award appropriately reflects two of his greatest contributions to the field. The award is funded through the generosity of Routledge/Taylor & Francis in memory of Davies and in recognition of his contribution to scholarship and to publishing during his lifetime. 2019 Winner: Dr Matthew Susnow, Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Palestine Exploration Fund is pleased to announce that Dr Matthew Susnow’s entry—‘Liminality and Canaanite Cultic Spaces: Temple Entrances, Status Transformations and Ritual in Threshold Contexts’—has been selected for the 2019 Davies Award.…
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  • 6 July 2020·

Visual Memory and Palestine Campaign

Alex Worsfold While studying for my Master’s, I worked with my University’s outreach program on extra-curricular classes for students of Secondary Schools around Kent. A particular set of sessions I ran on the Palestine front during the First World War, focusing its memory is side-lined in British education on the First World War. As with many aspects of the First World War, the advent of the Second World War inflected almost all facets of memory with altered meaning. The campaign through Egypt and Tunisia, and the famous battles of el Alamein have largely eclipsed popular cultural imagery of the First World War in the desert, which are generally are associated with the Ottoman victory at Gallipoli. The trouble I had…
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  • 17 June 2020·

Back to Black (the Desert)

A blog on the Eastern Badia Archaeological Project, Jordan Yorke M. Rowan The Eastern Badia Archaeological Project investigates two regions located in the Black Desert of Eastern Jordan, Wadi al-Qattafi and Wisad Pools. Both areas, situated along the southeastern edge of the basaltic area known as the harra, may have been more attractive in the past than the current desolate appearance would lead us to believe. Our current focus in the field are the excavation of two buildings at Wisad Pools, an area with hundreds of structures and over 400 petroglyphs. Our survey and excavations suggest that many of the collapsed buildings near the pools date to the Late Neolithic period (6,500-5,000 BC), attracting hunters and pastoralists to spend substantial…
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  • 17 June 2020·

(re-)discovering Late Neolithic sites on the Karak Plateau, Jordan

Pascal Flohr, University of Oxford, School of Archaeology In October 2019, after the first rains of the season, we headed to the Karak Plateau in Jordan to visit Late Neolithic sites I had identified by desk-based research, and find suitable areas to discover more of these sites. For one week, chipped stone and Neolithic expert Bill Finlayson and I drove around much of the plateau (Fig. 1), documenting sites (Late Neolithic and not  – as archaeologists it is difficult to ignore any ancient remains!). The Late Neolithic (from around 8500 to 7000 years ago) is a very interesting period, as it is the time when agriculture became the main form of subsistence for many people in Jordan, and for the…
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  • 17 June 2020·

Digging for Oil at Khirbet Ghozlan

Dr Jamie Fraser The site of Khirbet Um al-Ghozlan (the “Ruins of the Mother of the Gazelles”) sits on a steep knoll overlooking the stunning Wadi Rayyan in north Jordan. Most archaeologists would classify the site as a hamlet or village, as it is only 0.4 ha in size. In this respect, Khirbet Ghozlan sits comfortably with our traditional understanding of the Early Bronze IV period (2600-2000 BCE), during which people abandoned large, fortified, mounded sites and dispersed into small, undefended villages. However, Khirbet Ghozlan is remarkable for a monumental enclosure wall. Built partly as a double wall of massive, megalithic slabs, this enclosure controlled access to the Ghozlan knoll. Why defend such a tiny site? Olive oil and the…
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  • 17 June 2020·

Extreme Archaeology of the Black Desert, Jordan

Yorke Rowan, on behalf of the Eastern Badia Archaeological Project (EBAP) team Our adventures in extreme archaeology in the Black Desert of Jordan bring known expectations. We know that the long first day includes loading a Toyota Hilux and larger cargo truck; various stop offs to pick up water tanks, ice, and fuel; driving two hours off road through the rough basalt; arriving to unpack, build camp, inhale dust and flies; ending with the inevitable search for the first night’s meal. The sore limbs, chapped lips, more flies, snakes and melted ice are also all known. What was unknown during the 2018 expedition was the two days of torrential rains, wind and lightening. The soggy beginning brought on by this…
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  • 17 June 2020·

A Day in Jerusalem

Charlotte Kelsted, 2018 Last month, a generous travel grant from the Palestine Exploration Fund allowed me to carry out an introductory research trip to Palestine. My research explores the attitudes and experiences of British women (colonial wives, missionaries, teachers, nurses and others) who resided in Palestine during the British Mandate (1920-1948), focusing specifically on encounters between these British women and local Palestinian Arab and Jewish communities. I started my PhD seven months ago, and this research trip has undoubtedly been the highlight of my doctoral study thus far. After arriving into Tel Aviv late in the evening, I spent the first night of my trip at the charming Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem. The Kenyon Institute is situated on the…
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  • 17 June 2020·

A Study of Fatimid Metalwork from the Keir Collection of Islamic Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas

PEF in the Field Blog A Study of Fatimid Metalwork from the Keir Collection of Islamic Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, (June 2017) 30 June 2018 Gregory Bilotto My PhD research at SOAS University of London covers utilitarian and higher-quality metalwork produced under the Fatimids in Egypt, Ifriqiya (North Africa), and Bilad al-Sham (Levant) from the 4th-6th H/ 10th-12th CE centuries. The utilitarian objects range from buckets, pans, pots, and tools, while higher-quality objects include incense burners, lamps, lampstands, and pomanders. The Palestine Exploration Fund generously provided funding to examine several examples of these objects during June 2017 in the Keir Collection of Islamic Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas. This study was a continuation from my earlier research…
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  • 17 June 2020·

2018 Excavations at the Fortified Hilltop Site, Umm Tawabin, Ghor as-Safi, Jordan

PEF Blog Report by Alexandra Ariotti In January 2018, I undertook a second excavation season at Umm Tawabin, an impressive fortified hilltop site (880 x 450 m total area), strategically positioned above the town of Ghor as-Safi and the mouth of Wadi al-‘Hasa, overlooking the northern Wadi ‘Arabah in Jordan, and with panoramic views on all sides. Through survey (2015) and excavations (2017-2018) funded by three PEF grants, my investigation has sought to establish the occupational history of Umm Tawabin as an important link in a chain of fortifications, reinforcing the local Nabataean defence system and later the Roman limes Arabicus, and with evidence of habitation over a much broader time period. The site containsat least four buildings (Forts A-D)…
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  • 28 February 2020·

Technique Profile: Couching Embroidery

[Documentation of the British Museum’s Palestine Textile Collection: A Knowledge Exchange Fellowship] By OmarJoseph Nasser-Khoury For this blogpost I have decided to focus on one type of surface embellishment embroidery Couching (tahrir, shughul talhami) that I came across whilst working on the British Museum textile collections from Palestine. Couching is the second most prevalent decorative surface work found throughout Palestine. The technique was best developed and used in the Bethlehem and Beit Jala area, especially in the late 19th and early 20th century. It is often thought that the technique was probably inspired and developed from Ottoman couching embroidery (see Weir, 1989: 127; Kawar & Nasir, 1992: 15; Kawar, 2011: 139). In the south, in the Jerusalem and Bethlehem area…
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