Showing posts with label Conferences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conferences. Show all posts

Monday, 13 July 2015

Conference: ASTENE 11th Biennial Conference 17-20 July 2015, Exeter

The Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) will be holding its 11th Biennial Conference this month.

David Kennedy will be presenting in the first session 'Archive Discoveries-journeys and records' on Friday 17th July on the topic of 'Travellers to Petra in 1857'.

The available catalogues of known visitors to Petra for 1857 list just one party – consisting of a single person – J. R. Roth. Murray’s Handbook, however – published for the first time in 1858, reports that many western travellers had gone there in 1857 but been faced with violence and robbery. The author of ‘Murray’ – J. L. Porter who was resident in Damascus for a decade (1849-59), provides no further detail. Research has revealed further published accounts of travellers, several major unpublished ones and references to yet more otherwise unknown travellers. It is clear several parties visited Petra in 1857 - including one of the largest ever; a total of at least 57 westerners including three women and several notable characters. We now have quite detailed evidence of their experiences: one was shot and his cook killed, one died at Aqaba en route and another died soon after leaving Petra. All complained of the violent reception they met at Petra, and almost all were effectively driven away after just a night or two. It had not always been like that and the apparent decline in visitors after 1857 would have been a serious loss of income for escorts and guides. Closer examination suggests possible explanations.

Don Boyer will also be presenting a paper, 'Guilty or innocent? The Buckingham v. Bankes libel trial of 1826' on Sunday July 19th in Session 8: Archive discoveries – personalities and experiences part 2.

For the full programme and more information on ASTENE, please see their website: http://www.astene.org.uk/2015-conference/

Thursday, 9 July 2015

Conference: The Palestine Exploration Fund is 150 Years Old

The Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF) was one of those marvellous 19th century initiatives designed to support and promote exploration in a world being shrunk by hugely increased means of travel. Its publications continue still in the form of the Palestine Exploration Quarterly (PEQ) but the spate of publications in the 19th century can all still be read freely and provide marvellous insights into what was being tackled.

Central to PEF research were its expeditions to survey Jerusalem, Western Palestine and later Eastern Palestine. The last of these was undertaken by two men seconded from the Royal Engineers in 1867 (Lt. Warren) and 1881 (Capt. Conder) respectively. Both published extensive reports, including photographs and numerous drawings and a map made by careful triangulation survey. The area surveyed was essentially the hinterland of what was once the Roman city of Philadelphia (modern Amman).

The landscapes seen by the PEF surveyors included hundreds of archaeological sites. Most have been damaged extensively and many totally destroyed. The reason is the steep and rapid rise in population. Like its neighbours, Jordan’s population has grown under the influence of modern medicine lowering infant mortality and extending life expectancy. Like its neighbours it has received waves of refugees but unlike its neighbours, the numbers in Jordan are far higher. The result is an increase of c. 2400% between the 1940s and today. The impact on Jordan’s archaeological heritage has been especially catastrophic in the region in which most of the population lives – the northwest and precisely Amman and its hinterland.

Last Friday (3 July 2015) the PEF organised a one-day conference in conjunction with the British Museum on “Crisis through the Ages” to celebrate its anniversary. About 250 people met in the BM to hear 6 lectures on various periods from early Prehistory to the end of the Ottoman rule in 1918. The entire programme can still be seen on the PEF web site.

My own contribution - “Losing the Rural Landscape of Roman Philadelphia”, relied extensively on the ways in which a range of sources – published and unpublished, may help define and record what was once there and may yet be salvaged. Especially useful are aerial photographs, the earliest of which for the Philadelphia region are those taken by German, Australian and British pilots in 1918. And now we are flying again in a programme of Aerial Archaeology which began in 1997- the photos from which are part of the c. 90,000 on our APAAME site:https://www.flickr.com/APAAME/collections

Prof. David Kennedy's presentation 'Losing the Rural Landscape of Roman Philadelphia' for the Palestine Exploration Fund 150 Anniversary Conference 'Crisis through the Ages' at the British Museum, 3 July 2015. Photograph: Andrea Zerbini
PEF plans to publish written versions of the lectures from the conference. My contribution is part of wider research for a book in preparation – The Hinterland of Roman Philadelphia.

DLK
Oxford, 9 July 2015

You can follow the Palestine Exploration Fund through their Blog: http://www.pef.org.uk/blog/ or on their Twitter account @PalExFund

Tuesday, 13 January 2015

Goodbye 2014

What a year it has been!

6 flights of aerial reconnaissance as part of the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan Project 2014
9,522 aerial photographs taken as part of the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan Project 2014
3,216 slides/film digitised
17,344 images cataloged and uploaded to our Flickr archive

Conferences attended:
Presentations:
Publications:
Submissions:
  • David Kennedy and Rebecca Banks, 'The Khatt Shebib in Jordan: from air and space', Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie
  • David L. Kennedy and Brett D. Hirsch, 'Prime Suspect: William Cowper Prime in the Holy Land and the identity of 'An American' in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1858', Palestine Exploration Quarterly
  • David Kennedy, Rebecca Banks and Matthew Dalton, 'Kites in Saudi Arabia'

Monday, 23 June 2014

Conferences: ICAANE IX - round-up

This is a regular International Conference on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, held in Warsaw in 2011, due to be in Vienna next time, but this year in Basel, Switzerland.

After Registration at Universität Basel on afternoon of Sunday 8th June, we were off to a fast start the next day with plenary lectures followed by four and half days of several simultaneous lectures on various parts and periods of the ANE. Sometimes hard to get from one place to another in time.

As the name implies, ICAANE is mainly devoted to pre-Classical archaeology, though there were several interesting lectures on Petra and the Nabataeans. Also of interest was a (disturbing) 3-hour session on Syria. Don Boyer gave a very informative and superbly professional (as you would expect) talk on his research on the water supply of Roman Gerasa which got a good reception and useful questions and comments.

I would not normally have gone to ICAANE which seldom gives much attention to the Roman Near East. This year, however, Dr. Ueli Brunner (Department of Geography, University of Zurich) – who gave a lecture in UWA about 18 months ago on his work in Yemen, had organised a Workshop on Kites. So I gave a lecture on Kites in the Harret Khaybar of west-central Saudi Arabia. The plan is to publish all these Kites papers as a book – a quick and high-profile publication will stimulate new research.

As always, a good reason for attending is for those conversations and contacts that grease the academic research engine. People you seldom see are right there for days and there is the opportunity to talk at length.

The University and Half-Canton of Basel each laid on a very pleasant reception and Dr Brunner took the Kites group for dinner in a delightful restaurant-pub in the back streets of Kleinbasel.

The weather was HOT – c. 35 every day. But Basel is delightful – 200 years of peace and neutrality is obviously a Good Thing. A little sight-seeing took us all at times to the Rhine where a recreation was to get into the river stream with clothes in an inflated backpack and let the current drift you downstream.

The Boyers and Kennedys joined up one afternoon to take the (free) public transport 12 km east to visit the superb ruins of the Roman city of Augusta Raurica, just outside modern August. You may remember a lecture to the Roman Archaeology Group of Perth on this town by Martina Müller a few years ago. More on this site later.



-DLK

Friday, 2 May 2014

Conference: 9th ICAANE Basel, Switzerland, June 9-13, 2014


Icaane LogoThe 9th biannual International Conference on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East is coming up in June of this year. The Conference is being hosted by the University of Basel (Kollegiengebäude der Universität Basel)

You can find all the information you need on the conference website: http://9icaane.unibas.ch/

We will be presenting Kites in Saudi Arabia in the 1st session of the workshop Desert Kites - Archaeological Facts, Distribution and Function.
Abstract: Although it has long been known that Kites were to be found in Saudi Arabia, it is only very recently that the availability of high-resolution imagery on Google Earth and Bing Maps has enabled researchers to identify them far more widely and in greater numbers than previously believed. In particular, imagery for the areas around Khaybar and Al-Hiyat revealed over 200. Now the high-resolution imagery has been extended more widely and a fuller picture can be formed. The Kites are varied in size and shape but many are of a distinctive, angular form not found elsewhere in ‘Arabia’. With an increased data set, greater familiarity with the wide variety of other, probably contemporary, stone-built structures in the region, and with the geological and vegetational environment, there is an opportunity to offer a more detailed analysis and interpretation than previously done by Kennedy and Bishop.

You can download the full list of workshops complete with abstracts here: http://9icaane.unibas.ch/ICAANE2014workshopsprovisional.pdf

Conference: Big Work for Small Planes – Using UAVs and Kites for Archaeology, Berlin, May 23-24, 2014

TOPOI house Dahlem in Berlin will be hosting a symposium organised by the ArchaeoLandscapes Europe Project (ArcLand) and the Berlin Free University Excellence Cluster Topoi on the use of UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) for archaeology and cultural heritage.


The program has been released, you can find it here: https://community.topoi.org/de/web/uav-2014/programm

We are looking forward to the presentations and hope to see you there.

Conference: Green Arabia, Oxford April 2-4, 2014

http://www.palaeodeserts.com/?page_id=2874
In April 2014, the University of Oxford and Paleodeserts Project hosted an international conference called ‘Green Arabia’. It was sponsored by the Saudi government, launched by HRH Prince Sultan Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (President of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, a former air force pilot and Space Shuttle astronaut) and Prof. Ali Ghabban (Director General of the Department of Antiquities). The entire proceedings were under the auspices of a significant recent development, ‘The King Abdullah Heritage Initiative’.

What has this all got to do with Roman or Aerial Archaeology, or Remote Sensing for that matter? Saudi Arabia is huge – over 2 million km2, but its archaeology is barely known to the wider world and the vast majority of its sites are uncatalogued. A large part of the country – the Hedjaz in the northwest, was once part of the Nabataean kingdom and of the Roman province of Arabia (largely modern Jordan). There are superb Nabataean sites in the Hejaz (especially Mada’in Saleh) and there have been important excavations there in recent years. Several Latin inscriptions from the kingdom attest to the Roman presences, especially that from the island of Farasan at the far south of the Red Sea.

The present initiative to open up archaeological research in Saudi Arabia is a welcome development.

You can see the opening remarks by HRH The Prince of Wales and HRH Prince Saltan Bin Salman on the Paleodeserts' website: http://www.palaeodeserts.com/?page_id=2874, where you will also find the conference details and abstracts.

Friday, 19 July 2013

Conferences: ARAM Decapolis-History and Archaeology 29-31 July

The ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies Conference on The Decapolis: History and Archaeology is held this year at The Oriental Institute, Pusey Lane, Oxford from the 29-31 July and will host a wide variety of speakers including many colleagues and friends.

You may recall from our last blog that David Kennedy spent some time in Princeton last month with the Achaeological Archive of Brünnow and von Domaszewski. If you wish to know more, David will be presenting on Monday, July 29 16:30 on what they did and didn't have to say about the Decapolis cities.

Brünnow and von Domaszewski in the Jordanian Decapolis.
David Kennedy, Monday, July 29 16:30pm Oriental Institute, Pusey Lane Oxford 
(Afternoon session begins at 14:30 and will be chaired by Prof. Amos Kloner of Bar Ilan University. Speakers include Dr. Kenneth Lönnqvist (University of Helsinki), Dr. Steven Bourke (Sydney University), and Prof. Ben Zion Rosenfeld (Bar Ilan University)).
Abstract: The publication by the two great German scholars of their magisterial Die Provincia Arabia (1904-9) was a landmark in research on Roman Arabia. It remains a marvellous source for an archaeological landscape now transformed by development and a testimony to energy in the field and superb research. Nevertheless, it was never a comprehensive review of the evidence with considerable weight being given to the Hauran and to Petra. The lands in between were treated unevenly and the region encompassed by of the Decapolis cities of Philadelphia, Gerasa, Pella and Gadara were relatively neglected. Research today needs to appreciate both the limitations of the publications of the German scholars and investigate for themselves the rich reports of 19th century travellers in the region. Many of the latter were know to the Germans; others have only come to light in recent years as libraries and archives are digitised and easily accessible.

The ARAM website is not yet updated but you can find out more information by contacting them at
ARAM, the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, Pusey Lane, Oxford OX1 2LE, England.
Tel. 01865-514041 Fax. 01865-516824. Email: aram@orinst.ox.ac.uk

According to information provided by ARAM, the Conference fee is £50 and can be made in person upon arrival at the venue on Monday morning. We hope to see you there.

Thursday, 18 July 2013

Since last we met...

You last heard from us in Berlin where four of our team were giving papers at ICHAJ 12 - well, things have not slowed down.

David Kennedy took a direct flight to Oxford where he spent four weeks before leaving to research in Princeton University for a month. Here are held the archaeological archives of Brünnow and Domaszewski authors of Die Provincia Arabia, one of the foremost early works on the archaeological record of the former Roman province of Arabia - well worth burrowing into if you have the chance. You can read about the archive here: http://www.princeton.edu/researchphotographs/archaeological-archives/brunnow-and-domaszewski/.

Hardly was David back in Oxford from Princeton before he was off to Aston University, Birmingham for four days for a conference held by ASTENE - the Association for the Study of Travellers to Egypt and the Near East.

Two presentations were given by the APAAME team: David presented 'More journeys and travellers to Petra, 1812-1914', and Don presented 'The relative contributions of William John Bankes and Charles Barry to the early plans of Gerasa/Jarash (Jordan): evidence from the Bankes and Barry archives'. You can find the conference abstracts and program at ASTENE: http://www.astene.org.uk/.

We learned a lot from the conference, and as ever, made useful contacts. The audience included team member Francesca Radcliffe, and an old acquaintance in Nicholas Stanley-Price whom David last met in Jerusalem in 1976 when he was staying at the British School (of which he was then Assistant Director).

David is now back in Oxford and has been joined by Rebecca.

Wednesday, 15 May 2013

ICHAJ 2013


From left: David Kennedy, Bob Bewley, Rebecca Banks, Francesca Radcliffe, and Don Boyer.
Four members of our APAAME team gave papers at the 12th ICHAJ conference in Berlin last week. Rebecca had had a lot of demands made or her time and talents in Jordan the previous month and this was her first serious international conference presentation. It went VERY well and she deserved tremendous credit for both content and presentation. She celebrated appropriately afterwards in the Tiergarten Pub … and even finished it.
– DLK

Friday, 3 May 2013

Conferences: ICHAJ 2013 Berlin

Next week, you will find a few of us in Berlin for the International Conference on the History and Archaeology of Jordan. Here is where you can find us:

Monday 6 May - Grimm Zentrum 11:30am
David Kennedy The Hinterland of Roman Philadelphia

Tuesday 7 May - Raum 3119 9:00am
Robert Bewley Heritage management and the contribution of aerial archaeology in Jordan and beyond.

Wednesday 8 May - Raum 3119 10:00am
Rebecca Banks Digitising APAAME : methodologies and tools for managing modern and historical aerial imagery of Jordan and greater Arabia in a digital environment

Thursday 9 May - Raum 3119 2:00pm
Don Boyer The ruins of Gerasa in 1816-19 : an analysis of the plan and drawing archives of William John Bankes and Charles Barry

For more information, please visit the ICHAJ website - hope to see you there!