Digitising our Collection - Slides

The Aerial Archaeology in Jordan project has been in action since 1997, but before that David Kennedy was visiting sites in the Near East for his own enjoyment and research. Most of the images he took on the ground were processed into slides.

Slides are a thing of the past, and not the best way to store your negatives, and it is now one of our projects to digitise this collection and add it to our online archive.

The slides I have been starting on are photographs from Syria, taken in the 1970s, and have not been stored in optimal conditions. The 35mm negatives are mounted between thin glass within a slide frame, and then stored in slide sheets in a filing cabinet. Most slides have developed a sticky, oily residue from the interaction with non-archival plastic slide sheets, small spots of mildew have started to appear on the slides, and the colour of the slides has started to degrade, developing a magenta tinge. In some cases, the glass mounting has shattered, scratching the negative.

Slide scan of rock cut tombs in Dawa, North West Syria. c.1978. The remains of the oily residue can be see along the edges of the frame. Photography: David Kennedy. Click to enlarge image.

Slide scan of Qatoura, North West Syria, c.1978. Mildew spots and scratches to the negative can be seen in the blue of the sky above the town. Photograph: David Kennedy. Click to enlarge image.

A preliminary cleaning of the slides to remove what we could of the oily residue could not clean the frame well enough to remove all traces of the residue, and this did not tackle the minor mildew problems. With advice from the State Library of WA Conservator, we will be using a 50:50 solution of Ethanol Absolute and Deionised Distilled Water to clean the slide frames and glass mounting. This same solution can be applied carefully to those negatives that have been effected by mildew - but we must be careful not to let the solution interact with the emulsion side which could cause permanent damage to the slide. The ethanol solution will evaporate quickly and leaves no residue.

Once the slides have been cleaned and scanned - we hope that we will be able to edit the images individually to correct any permanent scars such as scratches, or any traces of dust that may have come through during the scanning process. Colour correction will be used to minimise the effects of the magenta tinge.

We shall let you know of our progress. Any advice is most welcome.

Chronology: Kites and Wheels

Determining the date for an archaeological site is best determined by excavation, but relative chronologies can be determined by examination of a very simple interaction - what lies on top of something else?

In the stone built structures of the Harret al-Shaam, we have been observing what kinds of sites are most likely to overlie others.

In the Jordan section of the Harret al-Shaam it is most likely, where Wheels and Kites are located in the same area, to see a Wheel manipulating or lying over the structure of a Kite. This most often involves the wheel overlying or using the wall of the tail of a kite, but there are also examples of the structure of the head being manipulated or built over by a Wheel. This chronology suggests that Wheels are a later structure than the Kites. In turn it is possible to see Pendants and Corrals overlying Wheels.

Azraq Wheel 11 overlying tail of Kite 21; Azraq Wheel 173 overlying head of Kite 55; Safawi Pendant 4 overlying Wheel 282. Images: Google Earth. Click to enlarge.

Kites > Wheels > Pendants ≥ Corrals

A recent investigation of a group of Kites located on the Harret in Syria, however, does not follow this broad relative chronology. In a tangle involving no less than 14 Kites and 25 Wheels, four Wheels overlie sections of four Kites, while two Kites can be seen to overlie sections of two Wheels.

Ghadir al Hajj tail of Kite 7 overying Wheel 22; Kite 10 overlying Wheel 24; Wheel 25 overling Kite 11, both overlain by corrals. Images: Google Earth. Click to enlarge.

So, simply an exception to the rule? Investigation will have to continue...

Flickr Featured Sets

Over the last couple of days I have been looking through the Flickr archive and updated a few of our sets.

In 'Tracking Change' we set out to fly over a handfull of sites regularly in the course of our flying seasons to photograph the changes that are occuring, whether they be seasonal, environmental or man made. We have also included a set named 'Development Impacts' which gives examples of the kinds of human activity that are encroaching on Jordan's heritage.
Some sites that have particularly changed over recent years are:

• Yajuz: a small Roman town on the outskirts of modern day Amman
• Qasr el-Mshatta: a 'desert castle' located near Queen Alia Airport
• Jarash: one of the best preserved archaeological sites in Jordan which is the focus of ongoing excavation and reconstruction
• Azraq Shishan: the oasis of Azraq that was (and is) severly under threat from overuse of its water, but has in recent years become a nature reserve in an effort to bring life back to the dying wetlands.

In 'Featured Sets' we hope to build a collection of sets that will act as introductions to the various site types and time periods that are evident in Jordan's archaeological landscape. Our collections so far include

• General Showcase: a selection of some of our favourite sites and photos of Jordan
• Classical Showcase: Classical (Greek and Roman period) sites in Jordan
• Kites: photographs of the various stone build structures known as Kites
• Wheels: a selection of the numerous and somewhat enigmatic circular structures known as Wheels
• Desert 'Castles': popular tourist attraction in Jordan, the scale and layout of these often impressively preserved structures is highly visible from above
• The Hejaz Railway and World War One: the archaeology of modern conflict is still clear throughout parts of Jordan. This set introduces trenches and railway remains from this period, well known for the Great Arab Revolt and exploits of T. E. Lawrence
• Biblical Sites: Jordan is the setting of many episodes from the Bible, and this set features some of the known sites mentioned in the Bible that we have visited.

If you want to see more photographs of a particular site, or we haven't featured one you are interested in, please use the search tool at the top right hand corner of Flickr's site window, being sure to select "Search APAAME's Photostream".

If you have any site types or periods that you think we should feature or photograph in future, please let us know!

Kites in Turkey

The search for Kites never seems to stop here, and we were recently rewarded with the first Kites found (as far as we know) in Turkey.

These kites were located using Google Earth. They are mostly located on small rocky outcrops. These areas of difficult terrain seems to have mostly escaped the effects of massive agricultural field clearance in the region. Ancient field systems are also visible as faint stone walls on the left of this image.

Click to enlarge image.

Historical Imagery: Qa' al Jafr Fort

What a difference 86 years can make. Qa' al Jafr, located c. 50km ENE of Ma'an in Jordan looked the picture of health in 1926 when the Royal Air Force flew over and took this magnificent photograph. A large number of bedouin tents and a small heard of camels can be seen in the landscape, dwarfed by the imposing unfinished 'palace'. The structure was built by Turkish prisoners of war under Auda Abu Tayi, a leader of the Great Arab Revolt who had settled in the region. The location took advantage of a nearby well. The structure, probably inspired by Roman, Crusader and Islamic forts, remained unfinished after his death in 1924.

Remains of Qa 'al Jafr Fort September 1926. Photograph: The National Archives, London.

Today: the outer walls are almost completely invisible and the central enclosure is crumbling rapidly. The ruinous state is surprising considering its relatively young age (under 100 years), but is also a reminder of how the physical remains of the past, even if belonging to a recent era, can decay.

Remains of Qa' al Jafr Fort, October 2011. APAAME_20111013_DLK-0228. Photographer: David Kennedy.

3D from 2D

Thanks to David Connolly at www.bajr.org, we've recently learnt about 123D Catch, a free beta software package that creates 3d models from photos taken at different angles. This software is a lot of fun to use, and we've spent the last day or so playing around with some images from our archive. Happily enough, the way we often photograph sites - spiralling around them in a helicopter - produces photos that are almost ideal source material for this software, and some of the early results of are pretty impressive, especially as we didn't have this technology in mind when we took the photos (see above: Khirbat Iskandar, an Early Bronze Age site on the King' s Highway in Jordan)! We are exploring this tool as a means of displaying detailed information about the sites we photograph to the public, as well as using the models as a research tool - they often reveal nuances of topography that we simply can't see from air (we found out that Burqu Kite 7 sits in a low valley that likely funelled animals into the Kite's head, for example). We'll be posting more of these fly-overs as we make them!

Roman Archaeology Group Free Lecture Series

Want to learn about the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? please attend the Roman Archaeology Group of Perth's free lecture series

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
3rd session

2 Illustrated Lectures

Winthrop Professor David Kennedy

Saturday 24 March

1:30pm

Social Sciences Lecture Theatre

University of Western Australia

1:30pm - Fall: Economic, Social, Environmental... and more.
2:30pm - tea break ($7 for RAG Members $10 for non-members)
3:00pm - What Happened... and Does it Matter?

Please let us know of your interest by emailing Norah Cooper.
Next lectures: Winter Lecture Series TBA.

To learn more about the Roman Archaeology Group of Perth please visit their webpage.