ASOR AWARDS TWO HARRIS GRANTS OF $5,000 TO AFFILIATED EXCAVATION PROJECTS

Successful Harris Grant Projects for the 2016 Field Season

The Madaba Archaeological Park West in downtown Madaba, Jordan, including the Burnt Palace and Byzantine Mosaics, the Roman Road, and the Ottoman Building. Directed by Douglas R. Clark, Suzanne Richard, Andrea Polcaro, and Marta D’Andrea.

The 2016 pilot fieldwork season will investigate the area as well as to do preliminary restoration of monuments from the Roman through Ottoman periods in the Madaba Archaeological Park West in Madaba, Jordan.  This pilot season is an essential first step in an approved proposal with the Department of Antiquities, Jordan to move the Madaba Museum and make it an integral part of the stunning array of churches and monuments within the Archaeological Park in the heart of the city. The plan to revitalize the area envisions a multifaceted /multi-functional space that will showcase the cultural heritage of Jordan, enhance the economy of the city by attracting visitors, and, especially, exemplify engagement between archaeologists and local communities. The project focuses on a) the partially excavated Burnt Palace whose floors are some of the rarest 6th century Byzantine mosaics, including iconographic motifs typical of domestic units not related to church decorations; b) the 2nd-3rd c Roman cardum; and, c) one of the best examples of a traditional 19thc Ottoman period complex with 12 rooms.

As directors of Archaeological Expeditions in Jordan (Madaba Plains Project-‘Umayri, Khirbat Iskandar, Jebel al-Muttawwaq), Clark, Richard, D’Andrea, and Polcaro conceived this international project in community archaeology, i.e., archaeology as a common, public asset, to be used for public education through collaborative projects. It is a combined American, Italian, and Jordanian commitment to the construction of new exhibition wings and the new set-up for the archaeological exhibitions from regional archaeological projects, realized within and integral to the rich heritage of monuments from the Roman – Ottoman periods. Briefly, the plans drawn up creatively integrate exhibition space with passageways among the monuments, innovatively use augmented reality and virtual reality in exhibition to enhance visitor interaction with the past, and create a model of exhibition itinerary, plant designs, and a communication system flexible and adaptable enough to be a model for other regional museums in Jordan. The plan envisions partnerships with universities and private organizations, including educational support in Museum Studies from American universities, etc. In a period when cultural heritage is in danger, this project seeks to raise awareness of cultural and archaeological assets among the local communities, to train local specialists through cooperative research, and to enhance tourism as an important economic boost to the region.

The Omrit Settlement Excavation Project, Horvat Omrit, Israel. Directed by Jennifer Gates-Foster.

The Omrit Settlement Project will document and publish pottery from critical deposits at the Late Roman and Byzantine site of Omrit in Northern Israel. Specifically, the grant funds will be used during the 2016 field season to support: 1) the restoration and drawing of vessels from a significant 2-3rd century deposit; 2) the drawing of key types documented from the Late Roman deposits; and 3) the petrographic analysis of regional fabrics common at the site. The results of this research, to be published in an article and in a comprehensive catalog of pottery from the site, further our research goal of articulating the ceramic assemblages for the site’s major periods of occupation and enabling comparative work with contemporary settlements in the Upper Galilee.

The Omrit Settlement Excavation Project focuses on the archaeological remains from Omrit and its immediate hinterlands through an examination of the communities living at the site over the broad span of its history, which stretches from the Hellenistic into the Ottoman era. During the 4th-5th centuries CE, major changes in the religious character of communities in the Galilee took place along with alterations in settlement morphologies and agricultural practices. At Omrit, the remains of a large domestic and agricultural complex, which also contains a significant number of Christian artifacts, has the potential to contribute much to our knowledge of how these transformations looked in practice, and give us new insights into how Late Roman/Byzantine cultic topography responded to the remains of a monumental Roman Temple (Nelson 2015) in the landscape. One of our goals has been to fully articulate the character, function and depositional history of this Late Roman complex and to assess the relationship between it and earlier phases associated with the flourishing of the pagan temple.

Key to that endeavor has been a critical focus on rigorous methods of recovering and documenting the pottery recovered from the excavations, which has the potential both to date the most important occupation phases and to offer new information about the economic and political networks that connected Omrit to the Late Roman world. Careful work with the pottery excavated over the last two seasons has begun to yield exciting results. For example, Late Roman (4-6th c AD) Omrit is connected primarily to supply networks extending from the Syrian coast, Cyprus and the Aegean with a significant reliance on locally-produced wares, some of which are not well-documented at any other sites in the region.  The almost complete absence of cooking wares and storage jar types (such as Kefar Hanaya and Gaza amphora) common only a few kilometers to the south show that the economy of the site is oriented strongly to the north and biased towards regional producers, especially the wares made in the Golan. One of our main questions at this stage is how to contextualize this observation. Some forms recovered at the site, including a ceramic polycandelon, have very few parallels and deserve special attention on account of their form, function and fabric.