School Day in Kharaneh

On Wednesday June 10 we had a very eventful day on site. We hosted an archaeological field day for a local school in North Azraq, which meant that we had thirty-five 6 and 7-year-olds on site for the morning to tell them all about prehistory, the site, our work there, and to do a little excavating. Alison Damick and our Rep, Ahmad Lash, did some fantastic organising and we had a very successful day.


The kids came out onto the site, had a little introduction to the work, took a tour of the site, practiced being archaeologists and excavating in a small grid we set up just off-site and salted with some flints and bone, and drew some pictures of the work here (I’ll scan them and post them soon). The kids were so bright and enthusiastic about our work and it was really fun to have them there for the day. They also enjoyed a picnic lunch there (for those who have been or seem pics, we did set up a big tent for them), and we gave them each certificates for participating in the North Azraq School Archaeological Field Day. It was really good fun and something we will continue to do!











To all of you "pros" out there - please ignore the prehistorical inaccuracies of the "attire" being worn here. (note - no Gazelles were harmed in the production of this photo!)

Kharaneh IV 2009 - Week Four

Well, Week 4 has already started very well! Today we are back at site after a bit of a chaotic weekend – half the crew went to Umm Qais and Umm al-Jimal for a lovely day of touring Roman sites. The rest of us went to Madaba, which was largely relaxing, except for poor Chris, who suffered from some tummy bug and had to make a trip to the hospital overnight. All is well now and he is well again, but we will have to test all his food for him first, just in case!

Anyways, we had a very good first day on site and in the lab. In Area A we came down on the surface in a few new squares and have now achieved some very nice horizontal exposure of the surface. However, Area B had the big excitement of the day (ok, excitement if you are really into prehistoric archaeology, otherwise, maybe not so much). On Thursday, we uncovered, documented, and excavated an Early EP hearth – which was exciting in and of itself (they are still quite rare to find). Today, while cleaning up around the hearth and attempting to continue excavating these squares, we discovered another possible hearth underneath and, in fact, are now beginning to be able to sort out a number of grey, dark brown, and black stains in this area that seem to be a series of overlapping hearths, each new one placed slightly offset from the one before so that over time the hearths appear to migrate to the southeast.













In the lower of the exposed hearths currently being excavated we discovered two very large chunks of charred material which turned out to be completely burned, but still articulated, gazelle horn cores sticking straight up from the fire! As we discovered last year, things are really happening in Area B, but it will also take us quite a long time and painstaking excavation to sort out.

In the lab Sam, who is working on the shell from Kharaneh for her Masters dissertation, discovered that a) the 2 mm fraction from flotation is full of dentalium shell beads and b) the 1 mm fraction from flotation in certain contexts of Area B is full of fish bones. These are very small bones from very small fish (likely the Kill fish – the only endemic fish to Azraq) that were either brought to the site from Azraq or from a nearby lake. More on this as it develops…

Excavation of the first hearth in Area B has been taking some time this week – the preservation is amazing and the hearth material is really full of charcoal and other burnt material. In order to fully expose and remove the hearth sediments with minimal disturbance (it gets quite windy on site and the hearth sediments are quite amenable to blowing away), we had a crack team of Toby, Danielle, Jen E and myself stay out one afternoon to deal with it. It was a long and hot afternoon, but extremely rewarding. Aside from the hearth excavation, adjacent to it we excavated the complete and fully articulated four paws of a small canid (just paws, nothing else?). The preservation was absolutely amazing – many of the foot bones for each foot remained attached when excavated! In addition, later this week in Area B, Toby and Alison were working on our deep trench continuing from last year and discovered several nice bone tools and another well-preserved hearth.

In Area A, Danielle and her crew have been continuing to expose and map a compact surface, a feat complicated by the continued appearance of enigmatic brown circular stains in the sediment that contain high densities of burnt flint and bone in their fill. We are just now exposing, mapping, and excavating them and hope to be able to solve their mystery soon.

In Area C (actually, I’m not sure if I have mentioned Area C before, but it is a new exploratory square in between Areas A and B where we are trying to connect up the stratigraphy between the two main areas), we have spent most of this week excavating virtually sterile deposits (well, sterile for Kharaneh)! We have hit a couple of distinct clay layers that contain almost no bone or lithics, and the bone that is present is mostly turtle carapace. It is possible that we have hit lake deposits, but only time and lab work (and Matt) will tell…

This week we were also very happy to have Leslie and Phil visit us again, even if only briefly, to take a little tour of some local sites. And, on Tuesday night we had a little party at the dig house with our neighbours – the team of April Nowell, Carlos Cordova, and Michael Bisson, who were just finishing up their work on some Middle Palaeolithic sites in the North Azraq Druze Marsh. Ismael worked his wonders with the BBQ and baked us a cake to help celebrate their end-of-season (we still have two weeks to go, but are always looking for a reason to celebrate!).

Well, now it is the mid-dig break (a little late, I know). About a third of our crew have headed down to Petra for the break, a few have headed over to Jerusalem, and I am headed up north to Ziqlab to catch up with everyone there. Now, we are off to relax for a few days…

Kharaneh IV 2009 - Week Three

Well actually, the beginning of week 3 was the last day of our Azraq Workshop, during which the crew had a lab day again. Sunday was our first day back at site with a full crew (including us) and it was back to digging as usual. Actually, a full crew is about 12 people. We are divided into a field crew and a lab crew daily, partly because there is only so many people we can accommodate in the field to excavate at one time with so many contiguous units open at one time, and partly because we need people back at the field lab every day working on the material we collected the day before. So, now that we are digging good deposits everywhere, we are doing virtually 100% flotation (washing the excavated material through very fine meshes to collect the fine (and floating) bits of plant material that will help us reconstruct the ancient vegetation at the site and what foods the people living there may have eaten or used). We are getting a lot of charcoal from the site, which when identified will tell us about what types of trees were growing nearby and being used by people for fuel.

The excavations are also now going really well. In Area A, we have exposed the compact surface is all but a few excavation squares. In these other squares, quite interesting things are coming up so that it is taking longer than planned to get them down to the compact surface. The first of these interesting things is and area that Pat and Abby have been excavating that contains a large circular concentration of ashy silts with large chunks of charcoal. The other is an area that Chris has been excavating that contains several post-holes. These likely indicate the remains of either a structure or some related installation, such as a stand over a hearth for cooking. In any case, post-holes are extremely rare in the Epipalaeolithic period and we are quite happy to be able to confirm that those reported by Muheisen while excavating there in the 1980’s do continue at the same elevation and alignment from his old trench. As a side note, we just want to point out that Chris has been wearing his hat while excavating and he had not been sunburned once!

In Area B things are, of course, much more complicated. Steve has finally sorted out and excavated several weird pit features and disturbed areas to the north.

While in the south, Rowena, Jen E and Caroline have come down on a very nice occupation surface in one part of the trench and, by yesterday, a very nice hearth to the south.

It is now Friday and I am by the side of the pool as a write this, enjoying the high life in Madaba. Kevin, Isaac and Seiji and have come down from Ziqlab too. Now, back to relaxing…enjoy the pics!

Here are some pics taken from Azraq Workshop mentioned in the last post. The first six pictures where taken by Barbara Porter (ACOR).