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Monday, April 28, 2008

Jordan Desert Castles - Qasr Amra

Our next stop on the "Desert Castle Tour" is the site of Qasr Amra. Built early in the 8th century AD, this "castle" (as you can see....it really isn't a castle at all) is in a relatively poor state of preservation - but enough survives to give you a sense of what its function was.

Built by the Umayyad Caliph Walid I - Qasr Amra was apparently used as a "pleasure palace" - or as a hunting lodge. Basically an early Islamic "man-cave". For those of you who don't know what a "man-cave" is - here is a link to a modern day example. Here is MY "man-cave" that I will be missing while I am away.


The complex at Qasr Amra had a bath complex alongside a large central triple-domed room. It is this central room that is the most interesting because it is covered in frescos depicting hunting scenes and even naked women! The sad part about Qasr Amra is the significant damage that has been done to the frescos over the years - particularly grafitti defacing many of the human and animal figures depicted.

Qasr Amra was added to UNESCO's World Heritage list in 1985 which has proven vital to the conservation and preservation efforts of this beautiful building complex. I am sure I will get a chance to revisit this site at some point this summer.


Friday, April 25, 2008

Jordan Desert Castles - Qasr Kharaneh

This is the first of several brief notes regarding the local archaeology of the region I'll be working in this summer. I don't know if I'll have time to visit all of the sites I'll be listing here - but I'll give it the old "college try" as they say.

I thought I would start with Qasr Kharaneh as it is located directly to the north of where we will be working. You'll undoubtedly see more of this stucture as the summer progresses as we'll be going by this site on a daily basis.

I first visited this site back in 2000 when I did the "Desert Castle Tour" (as it is commonly referred to) with my wife, Tara, and a couple of friends (you know who you are - can we ever forget the "Osama Special" I had rented?). If I recall correctly - Tara never made it into the castle because the heat (and the long day - this was one of our last stops) had finally caught up with her - but I digress.

Qasr Kharaneh, or Kharaneh Castle is an Umayyad period building constructed around the 6th C. AD. There are many opinions on the function and use of this building and I am not going to bore you with the details - other than to say - while the building certainly looks like a castle - there are those who say it was just a glorified caravanserai (I can't say that word!) or that it was just a meeting place for Umayyad chief "mucky-mucks" to chat about business - an Umayyad "Camp David" if you will. Either way - its a cool structure, well preserved. Going inside the Qasr is like stepping back in time and you can just imagine all the goings on in the central courtyard. I hope to get a chance to spend some time inside the castle so I can take a bunch of pictures - who knows...maybe I'll even get to do some KAP of the building!

Kids Playing Cricket

So I thought I would take a moment and update you all on the progress of my KAP (remember, that stands for Kite Aerial Photography) experiment in getting ready for heading to Jordan. I am getting a bit better at guiding the kite around - though for this launch (this past Tuesday) I was without any "helpers" (which explains the absence of anyone but myself in the picture to the left) which made things more difficult. The saying "many hands makes light work" is definately true for KAP.

Anyways - I also learned that in order for my pictures to turn out better I need to keep my back to the sun and have a lot of wind. Seems obvious now...but at the time I really thought it wouldn't matter that much. I experimented with attaching the rig higher on the line, lower on the line - putting the camera at various angles and so on. All produced a variety of photos from really good....to really bad. Thank goodness for digital photography. In the course of about 1 hour I shot over 1000 photos...of which only about 10 were really usable. That should give you some idea of the ratio we are working with.

So - getting to the topic of this post "Kids Playing Cricket"...I am fortunate to live across the street from one of the only parks in Mississauga that has a Cricket Pitch. Given the dominant cultural group in my neighbourhood - this is not suprising. Every Sunday afternoon during the summer, this pitch gets used extensively for all-day Cricket matches. This is a great thing. I don't know much about Cricket - but any sport that breaks for tea halfway through can't be all that bad! I even like the clothes they wear! Very civilized.

While I was out doing my KAP stuff, there were a bunch of kids (and a Dad I think) come out to the pitch to practice their skills. It was a great opportunity for me to "document" Cricket activities at what I am now calling the "Churchill Meadows Pitch".

Monday, April 21, 2008

Lets Go Fly a Kite

For many years I have wanted to use a kite to lift a camera into the sky and take pictures of the earth below. This is most often referred to Kite Aerial Photography or KAP for short. After doing a fair bit of research into the subject - I finally went out and purchased a camera mount (called a "rig") and a kite from a company in the States called Into The Wind Kites. There are a variety of different types of rigs you can construct - from ones that incorporate a remote control manuvering system (definately not for me!) to ones that are very basic and just hang from the kite line (definately for me!).

Friday April 19th was the first test of my KAP system, consisting of a Floform 8 kite, the KAP rig and a Nikon Coolpix L14 camera (less than $100 in case it came crashing to the earth). I live across the street from a huge park and so I have easy access to a flying zone on any given day, provided that the wind is sufficient. I don't have a wind meter - so I had to rely on my judgement - which as it turns out was bang on! If I had to guess, the wind was blowing at about 15 - 20 km/h.

Launching the kite and rig is basically a 2 person job. My wife and daughter joined me on the excursion to assist. Basically what you need to do is launch the kite as you normally would. Once the kite is up in the air about 75 feet, then you attach the rig to the kite line. My rig is usually referred to as a pendulum rig - it is configured in such a way as to allow the camera mount part to swing below the kite line, regardless of line angle (gravity....not just a good idea, its the law!). The rig allows you to position the angle the camera is shooting in any direction. For archaeological applications this can either be directly above the item of interest, or on an oblique.

Once the rig is on the line you allow the kite to slowly lift it to the desired altitude. This is the tricky part as wind gusts can be your enemy. My daughter was excellent in making sure the camera didn't come crashing down to earth, but rather into her expert hands! I set the camera to shoot video instead of taking pictures. While its fairly low resolution, it allowed me to focus on technique instead of content. Future test flights will experiment with picture taking. At any rate, you get the idea of what is possible just from the couple of pictures I have posted here. The first one is an "oblique" of the soccer field across from my house. The 2nd is an overhead shot with my daughter and I in frame for scale. So, all in all I am quite happy with my first experiment. I am hoping to use this setup in Jordan this summer to capture overhead images of not just our site (Kharaneh IV), but also Mudayna, Madaba and anywhere else they will let me "fly a kite".

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

The Archaeology Channel

In my never-ending quest for free and appropriate resources for use in class I came across a website called "The Archaeology Channel". Well, being a HUGE fan of the History Channel (r) I just had to check it out. Sure enough, I wasn't disappointed...and I don't think any of you will be either. The Archaeology Channel has links to a wide variety of "archaeology themed" videos that you can watch. Some are good.....some are cheesy.....and some are just plain B.A.D.

Anyways, I came across one that I thought would be perfect for my blog - its called "Jordan: A Historical Review" and is 15 minutes long. If you get some spare time and you want to see a bit more of what Jordan is like then I suggest you click this link and see for yourself.

http://www.archaeologychannel.org/content/video/jordan.html

It may be 15 minutes you never get back....but you'll be the better for it!

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

The Middle of Nowhere Revealed

I was thinking about this last night when my daughter asked me - "Daddy, exactly where is the middle of nowhere?". Good point! So, I thought I would put my Google Earth skills to good use and post a picture of the location of Azraq in relationship to other more well known sites (Amman, Jerusalem and Madaba of course!).

Click on the map image to see a larger version. As you can tell - the middle of nowhere actually IS a real place!

Monday, April 7, 2008

The Land Of Blog

Ok, I am not sure exactly what I am trying to say here - but, simply put - I welcome all you readers to my frist attempt at an "in the field" blog. Actually, to be honest - this is the first blog that I have ever written, so we'll have to see how it goes. I thought that blogging would be a more efficient way to communicate with all and sundry about whats going on in Jordan without having to email everyone. Ok, yes....I am lazy....but I prefer to say - I am efficient....(isn't that really the same thing?). So - while I am not yet "in the field", I wanted to get this whole thing started and "advertise" my blog so that everyone knew how to get to it, etc. I will do my best to upload pictures and so on depending on how good the internet is in Azraq. For those of you who don't know - Azraq is pretty much in the "middle of nowhere" in northern Jordan. To put it simply, Azraq is the last stop on the highway before you get to Saudi Arabia - its about a 2.5 hour drive from Amman. When you begin to see the pictures, you'll begin to understand.

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(2008) Please do not use any of the images on this site without my permission first.

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