PEF event: “The Oddest Archaeologists to Visit Jerusalem.” The story of the notorious Parker expedition and the search for the Temple treasures.
Tuesday 15th November 2022 6pm The mystery surrounding the Ark of the Covenant’s location is one of the world’s greatest and most enduring. Of the quests to find the Ark, perhaps the most remarkable is the Parker expedition. Its story seems stranger than fiction and includes aristocrats, poets, psychics, secret cyphers in the Bible, a deadly curse, bribery, gun running, riots, and madness. Previously untold in its entirety, Graham Addison has uncovered many new details, which he skilfully weaves together in the amazing story of the individuals who in 1909 sailed on a private yacht bound for Jerusalem to retrieve the Ark. Find out more here
Researching Palestinian psychiatric patients at the Lebanon Hospital for Mental Diseases
By Chris Sandal-Wilson. Back in March 2020, with the Covid-19 pandemic escalating and the first national lockdown beginning in the United Kingdom, a rare piece of good news brightened my inbox: the Palestine Exploration Fund had awarded me funding to travel to Beirut to research the history of Palestinian psychiatric patients at the Lebanon Hospital for Mental Diseases in the first half of the twentieth century. In researching my first book on colonial psychiatry and mental illness in British mandate Palestine, I had been struck by the number of Palestinian families who seemed to look north across the newly drawn border to Lebanon for the treatment of mentally ill relatives. I was excited at the prospect of using the archives…
Overlooked Archaeologists of Palestine
By Loay Abu Alsaud. Our endeavour was to bring to light early contributions made to archaeology in Palestine by key Palestinians who have been overlooked by researchers. The first foreign scientific excavations took place in Palestine in the late 19th century and by the 1920s, European and American teams were arriving in Palestine, attempting to link archaeological sites to Biblical passages. They needed support personnel and recruited Palestinian men and women. Of note were three Palestinians, who became proficient at complex, skilled work and were given key onsite responsibilities, influencing the progress of archaeology in Palestine. They were Yusra (Turn 20th C–Unknown) whose surname is unknown (Al-Ḥefaweyeh or Al-Karmelyeh may be seen). Naṣr Dyab Dwekat (1917–2011) and Ibrahim Amin Asa’d…
PEF event: The Inheritance of Christ: Christian Pilgrimage in the Holy Land Before the Crusades, c.800 – c.1099
Thursday 13th October 2022 6pm Christian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the early Islamic period has received comparatively less attention than the Roman and Crusading periods in recent scholarship. Drawing upon a range of material, from excavations and graffiti, to sources in Arabic, Greek, and Latin, this talk will examine the complexity and texture of the pilgrim experience from the rise of Abbasids to the coming of the Crusades. Find out more here.
The 2022 survey at Khirbet al-Mudayna al-‘Aliya, Jordan
Diederik J. H. Halbertsma, University of Liverpool, Department of Archaeology, Classics and Egpytology. In May 2022 we conducted a survey season at the archaeological site of Khirbet al-Mudayna al-‘Aliya (KMA for short), south-central Jordan, with a small team. The site is located in the eastern part the Kerak plateau, on a promontory overlooking the Wadi al-Mukhayris. KMA is a 2.3 ha. single-period site which dates to the end of the early Iron Age period. The early Iron Age followed a cataclysmic time commonly known as the ‘Late Bronze Age collapse’ (ca. 1200 BCE), which saw the demise of great empires. The Levant, which had largely been governed by the Hittites and the Egyptians, suddenly found itself in a power vacuum.…
The Palestine Exploration Fund/Albright Institute Fellowship 2023-24
We are pleased to announce applications are open for the Palestine Exploration Fund/Albright Institute Fellowship 2023/4. This is an annual award of £3,000 to support research that requires access to the PEF archives and collection and also time spent in residence at the Albright Institute in Jerusalem. The Fellowship requires a minimum of 10 working days at the PEF in Greenwich, London, and a 1 month minimum stay at AIAR in Jerusalem. The room and half-board at the Institute ($1,200 per month) will come from the award, with the rest a flexible stipend for the other activities. This Fellowship is open to doctoral and post-doctoral researchers of all nationalities. This Fellowship is for a residential period between September and the…
Khirbat al-Mafjar Archaeological Project, Jericho, Palestine
Mahmoud Hawari. Six seasons of landscape archaeological survey and excavations (2009 – 2014) in the Khirbat al-Mafjar hinterland of ‘Hisham’s Palace’, Jericho, sponsored by Barakat Trust (2010-2014) and Council for British Research in the Levant (architectural drawings 2010), including a recent 4 days topographic survey sponsored by the PEF (March 2022), were carried out. The project, directed by myself, and with the participation of staff and students from Birzeit University, and the collaboration of staff and students from University College London (UCL), aimed to achieve better understanding of the palace in the context of its historical and cultural landscape. The first survey of the Jericho area, including Khirbat al-Mafjar, which was carried out by Warren and Conder on behalf of…
The Routledge Philip R. Davies Early Career Publication Award 2022
We are pleased to announce applications are open for the annual Routledge Philip R. Davies Early Career Publication Award 2022 which honours the memory of Professor Philip R. Davies, prior Chair of the Fund, who died suddenly and before his time in May 2018. The Award recognises his unique contribution to scholarship, his enthusiasm for academic publishing, and his desire to develop younger scholars. The award encourages early career scholars in producing original, high quality research articles. To this end, rather than a single prize, the Fund offers prizes to the winner and up to two runners up, as well as the chance to publish their articles in the PEF’s own peer-reviewed journal, the Palestine Exploration Quarterly (PEQ). The PEQ focuses…
Challenging the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment: opening access to satellite imagery over Israel and Palestine
Michael Fradley, Endangered Archaeology EAMENA Project Access to satellite imagery has enabled major advances in archaeology and other disciplines studying the Middle East and North Africa. A comparable impact had not been realised over Israel and Palestine, where U.S. restrictions known as the Kyl-Bingaman Amendment limited imagery resolution over this area. This paper will present the work of Michael Fradley and Andrea Zerbini (1984-2019) to remove these restrictions, culminating in the reduction on limits in June 2020, but also considering how structural barriers remain in place. As well as telling this slightly improbable tale, it will also reflect and celebrate the work of Andrea Zerbini who died in July 2019. Michael Fradley is a landscape archaeologist specialising in survey techniques,…
3d Printing, Digital Fidelity, and Neolithic Masks
By Chad Hill Over the last decade it has become increasingly easy to capture high quality 3d data at a variety of scales. Advances in photogrammetry and lower costs for lidar and 3d scanning make it possible for more of the world to be captured and recorded with incredible precision. It has been incredible to watch these technologies permeate the field becoming widely applied tools for documenting cultural heritage. These data are increasingly accessible across the globe. Many museums offer 3d content in their digital collections, archeologists are publishing 3d content in their data repositories or as part of publications, and 3d data platforms are hosting ever increasing quantities of 3d models of sites, structures, and artifacts that are freely…
