Umm el-Jimal

From June 15 to July 10, 1992, Dr. Bert de Vries, from Calvin College, directed fieldwork at Umm el-Jimal. His staff included a faculty member, Dr. Rick Sherrod and eight students from Ambassador College, a student from Calvin College, and a student from Germany. Mrs. Sally de Vries was project administrator, and architect Amjad al-Bataineh the representative of the Department of Antiquities. Deepest appreciation goes to the Ambassador Foundation and to the Calvin College Alumni Association for financial support and the Department of Antiquities for logistical support and cooperation.

The season's goals included precise mapping, architectural drawing of selected buildings, extensive photography on the ground, and low level aerial photography with cameras suspended from a balloon. The purposes of these recording activities were to provide illustrations and photos for excavation publication currently under preparation and to provide detailed plans and maps for a major excavation season to take place in 1993.

The surveyors made precise control measurements on the Late Roman fort using an electronic distance meter. This fort is an approximately 100 x 100 m structure on the east side of Umm el-Jimal that was built ca. A. D. 300, and already lay in ruins when the Byzantine town was flourishing in the 5th-6th centuries. They also laid out a triangulation grid for mapping controls in the Early Roman-Late Roman village. This is a site about 500 x 300 m. in size, just to the east of the standing Byzantine ruins.

The team of archaeological architects did detailed study of four building complexes. These included House 119, a simple domestic structure with two well preserved stables with interesting rows of mangers. This house is located at the entry to Umm el-Jimal, and is an ideal candidate for conversion into a rest house or visitors' center.

House 49, which includes the so-called Nabatæan Temple, the object of clearing by the Department of Antiquities, was also carefully measured and drawn. It is important not only because it incorporated an earlier public building into this domestic environment, but also because it contains an L-shaped stable arrangement with a plan that provided the standard structural core for several other Byzantine houses on the site. The larger room was used to house untethered animals; it has a cubicle-like bathroom stall built into its northeast corner. The other room is long and narrow with a row of mangers running down the side connecting it to the first room. Here, animals could be tethered one per stall. The whole arrangement indicates careful attention was given to the sheltering of animals. The doors of the rooms opened onto a central courtyard, where exterior stairs give access to upper rooms where animal fodder was stored and the human residents slept.

House 35, located in the same quarter, was studied to compare the building methods of the 5th/6th century Byzantine inhabitants to those of their Druze successors ca. 1925. The great room of this house is preserved to ceiling level. Its corbeled roof was supported on a wonderfully finished central arch that allowed the ceiling to soar over five meters above the floor. A second room had an intact ceiling supported on the walls and an arch built by the Druze. This arch was relatively low slung, and constructed of vari-sized reused building blocks, aligned on the entry-side of the room. Although the makeup of this arch and the associated corbel-beam roofing system was much more irregular than its Byzantine predecessor, it is clear that the Druze of the twentieth century had adopted the Roman-Byzantine building system with great expertise. Thanks to them, many houses at Umm el-Jimal have been preserved remarkably in their ancient style.

The highest wall of the Praetorium with the bit of remaining gable roof at the southwest corner of the atrium has long been in extremely precarious condition. While the Department of Antiquities cleared previously excavated rooms, the project team systematically numbered all the stones in the walls that are threatened by collapse. All threatened walls were then drawn and photographed. As soon as a crane and other equipment become available, the affected masonry can be dismantled and reconstructed under the supervision of a restoration architect by master stone masons.

A highlight of the season was the aerial photography done by balloon. Two specialists, Dr. Wilson and Mrs. Ellie Myers were brought with their equipment from Greece in a joint effort in which three other projects participated. The Myers do low altitude aerial photography by suspending cameras from a balloon, with the shutter trigger and film advance operated by remote radio control. The cameras are suspended from a gimbal which keeps the lenses pointed straight down no matter what the pitch of the balloon may be. This guarantees views directly below the balloon in a plain level with the surface.

In the site of the earlier village photographs were taken from heights of 100 and 225 meters. From these heights the photographs will show every stone of this badly destroyed area. Because the surveyor's triangulation grid can be located on the photographs, it will be possible to produce scale maps of distinguishable features, such as exposed wall lines, in preparation for the coming excavation. The Late Roman Castellum was photographed at 300 m. in order to have the entire structure appear in a single photo from which a scale plan may be produced using the ground control measurements.

The tall buildings of Byzantine Umm el-Jimal were photographed in five sections from a height of three hundred meters. Then a Hasselblad camera with a wide angle lens was raised to 600 and 700 m. to take the whole site in a single photograph.

This balloon photography is a first for Jordan. It is expected that this method of remote sensing will add significant data to both that gathered on the ground and that available from overflights by aeroplanes and satellites.

Both the clearing by the Department of Antiquities and the close examination of specific buildings resulted in the discovery of a number of inscriptions and decorative stones. Recording these was a major component of the project. Over fifty inscriptions and five decorative fragments were drawn and photographed. Most of these inscriptions were tombstones in Greek using the formula: X (son or daughter) of Y of the age Z. Two were Nabatæan.

All the buildings studied were photographed in detail, and illustrative sketches were made to supplement precise plans and elevations.

The result of this season's work will greatly aid the publication process. Plans are being made for major excavation.

The project staff consisted of Ambassador College professor Dr. Ricky Sherrod and students Tania Hobbs, Irene Hart, Maria Murray, Hervé Irion, Edwin Orogo, Jason Yeats, Matt Gus, Rob Wilken; German high school student Gregor Alpers; Calvin College professor Bert de Vries and student Jana Sharpe; project administrator Sally de Vries and Department of Antiquities representative Amjad al-Bataineh.

The month of fieldwork was followed by a two week study tour for staff and students. Jordanian archaeological sites contemporary with Umm el-Jimal were studied under the general theme of "Roman Arabia."