tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638Sat, 05 Oct 2024 02:11:10 +0000jordanACORMadaba burnt palaceNational Galleryabu Kharazarchaeologyartcanawatmixed mediamosaicsnabateanspaintingpalestinereligious tourism mt nebo madaba research JordanromanssculpturesiasuweidasyriaThe travels of the da Costa Reidel familyhttp://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Lukas Benno)Blogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-9154479153002549773Tue, 14 Dec 2010 22:16:00 +00002010-12-15T10:36:44.940+11:00Various members of the Social Club have asked for the record to be straightened, so it is true that Rose and I appointed people to offices. However, Dino, Anya, Carrie, Mouna and Matt chose their own titles, with, I think it is reasonable to say, considerable flair.I also neglected to illustrate an important, although short-term resident, Dr Peter Edwell, normally a lecturer at Macquarie http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/12/corrigenda-arsc.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-4611568258450470855Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:23:00 +00002010-12-14T04:12:23.167+11:00At the risk of sounding pretentious, I unilaterally declared myself the President of the newly formed, unconsitutional, completely unrepresentative, and pretty silly, ACOR Residents' Social Club. Rose offered to be Secretary, due to her several year's experience in administration. We then inducted other residents into the Club, allowing everyone to choose their own office.Since both Rose and I http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/12/acor-residents-social-club.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-6174805880769778481Mon, 13 Dec 2010 10:02:00 +00002010-12-13T21:40:05.406+11:00Well, I'm so behind with my blogging that I'm abandoning chronology as an organizing principle, and going for stream of consciousness. The last few days we've had very cold howling winds, bringing most of the dirt of Wadi Rum into my room - and my lungs. I snapped these shots on Saturday as I was going to the wonderful Dr Yang for my regular massage and acupuncture treatment. The sky looked like http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/12/december-in-amman.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-6973368994242583677Thu, 18 Nov 2010 21:35:00 +00002010-11-19T09:24:50.608+11:00I can't seem to work out how to arrange my text with my pictures, so please bear with me. Although I only had a short time at Baalbek, and mainly shot technical pictures, I think my last post didn't really do justice to the joint, so here are more photos, hopefully with captions in the right place:This is Carrie Swan, taller than me, measuring a column drum on its side, as mentioned before. I of http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/11/baalbek-part-2.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-2660700724645707540Thu, 11 Nov 2010 14:00:00 +00002010-11-12T04:10:39.701+11:00Don't tell anyone, but I've been teaching about Baalbek for years without ever going there. So I was very happy when Stephen Bourke said he is good friends with Bettina Fischer-Genz of the DAI, who lives in Beirut, and who was going with her team to Baalbek. We made contact and it turned out that the week I was planning to visit Pierre-Marie was also the best week to visit the Germans in Baalbek.http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/11/baalbek.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-8082147217964972831Thu, 11 Nov 2010 10:17:00 +00002010-11-12T01:00:24.913+11:00Well, that was weird. Blogger stopped me putting up any more photos on that last blog - perhaps it recognized that I was up way past my bed-time. Or it was some simple error, and I was too tired to work it out.So here are more photos from that day-trip with Pierre-Marie:The Syrians have discovered a red plastic, and now every house has water tanks made from this very bright red. I'm in two minds http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/11/hauran-part-2.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-5725826412304976571Tue, 09 Nov 2010 22:25:00 +00002010-11-10T10:46:01.277+11:00canawatmosaicsnabateansromanssiasuweidasyriaOn my last day visiting Pierre-Marie, he kindly took me on a tour of the Hauran district north of Bosra. This is still the lava country, all around the Jebel Druze. And indeed, north of Bosra, one rapidly arrives in Druze country. All the younger women have their hair uncovered, there are 5-pointed, coloured rosettes everywhere, older ladies wear only plain black dresses and have elaborate whitehttp://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/11/hauran.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-7511379945412311759Sun, 31 Oct 2010 09:41:00 +00002010-10-31T22:58:42.999+11:00What happened to October? I have been remiss on blogging so hope to remedy that over the next couple of days with updates. First we'll start with my trip to Syria.This was timed to match 3 events: Pierre-Marie Blanc, an old friend who I never manage to be in the same country as, was coming back to Syria from France for 3 weeks to study his pottery from excavations in Bosra. He is, after many http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/10/bosra.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-3323895195941401670Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:59:00 +00002010-10-14T01:30:26.798+11:00abu KharazMadaba burnt palacepalestineOther social activities and intellectual endeavours I have been doing:1. The Australian Embassy Social Club party/fundraiser for the King Hussein Cancer Center 16th September. Apparently getting on the list for these parties, once a month, is one of the hottest tickets in town - unless you are in with the Royal Family - because the booze is cheap, the barmen unprofessionally liberal handed, and http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/10/bits-and-pieces.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-4858427768603495263Wed, 13 Oct 2010 12:52:00 +00002010-10-14T01:38:45.903+11:00Actually, Rose and Kate and Paula and Carrie and Niki Get Cheap Shirts and a bit of Kulcha part 2.Paula Kouki is a Finnish researcher who was here for a few weeks (the Jabal Haroun project got sideswiped by an unexpected refusal from the al-Waqf new Minister, even though the team has never worked near the weli (shrine/mosque) and has been working for over a decade without any issues ....), Carriehttp://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/10/rose-and-kate-get-kulcha-part-2.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-5848076758868987147Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:00:00 +00002010-09-25T05:14:19.649+10:00I've been having Arabic tutoring twice a week, but am now a victim of my own success. Over the last 20 odd years, I've picked up a bit of Arabic (I'm quite useful on the repair of wheelbarrows), but it is all pretty dodgy dig arabic. Verbs are only employed in the imperative ("Give me the bucket", "Go away, boy!" "Stop!!" "Drink tea!") with only occasional phrases learnt holus bolus ("shemet howahttp://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/arabic.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-5882821773396992954Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:37:00 +00002010-09-25T04:59:44.708+10:00Last Sunday I went with Feras and his cousins Bilal and Usama (Shadhi we decided was not as interested as the other two) and Carrie Swan, a Brown University doctoral student, out to Mt Nebo for another go at the tourists. This time Feras was pretty tooled up - nicely printed signs with easels, id tags for the crew, sets of questionnaires in a variety of languages (though Portuguese would have http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/religious-tourism-in-jordan-part-2.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-6176630678972116387Sat, 18 Sep 2010 19:56:00 +00002010-09-19T07:03:36.590+10:00artjordanmixed mediaNational GallerypaintingsculptureOne of the things I have been looking forward to with the Endeavour fellowship has been to have the time to get involved in the life of Amman. So today Rose Espinola (fellow Aussie Endeavour researcher, here to look into discriminatory citizenship laws for women, and intersections of sharia and international law on same) started our art gallery crawl. Barbara Porter thought we could do the http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/rose-and-kate-get-kulcha-part-1.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-2739988629418673587Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:21:00 +00002010-09-19T04:41:18.071+10:00ACOR have instituted a pottery conservation and restoration project, and Stephen Bourke sent 50-odd boxes of pottery up from Pella a couple of years ago so that Naif Zaban could restore any whole pots from the Iron Age destruction levels. 9 complete vessels and 4 partial ones have been put back together. Last Thursday Issa and Aladdin Madi and me had the task of transporting the restored pots, http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/quality-removals.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-6611043290282151624Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:22:00 +00002010-09-15T23:35:49.126+10:00One of the main reasons I'm here in Jordan is to work with staff at the Jordan Museum on a project, probably called what's in the title of this blog. I say probably, because one issue is of language. In English, the technical meaning of heritage is the use of the past in the present. On the street, heritage probably has a slightly different meaning, often I think perhaps, stuff from the past (http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/jordanian-attitudes-to-archaeological.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-877127096348433124Sun, 12 Sep 2010 16:11:00 +00002010-09-13T02:26:00.106+10:00religious tourism mt nebo madaba research JordanToday I spent at Mt Nebo again, this time with Feras Orekat my student, and his three cousins, Bilal, Usama and Shadhi, for the first day of Feras' field work getting tourists to fill in his questionnaire. Unfortunately, the very closed Eid shops thwarted Feras' plans to get completely organised (how Jordanian of us!), so we arrived with about 1/3 of what we needed. But we had 100 questionnaires http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/religious-tourism-in-jordan-part-1.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-8874005227816793647Sun, 12 Sep 2010 15:54:00 +00002010-09-15T23:11:21.040+10:00Thursday in Amman was pretty busy, as in Madaba, as the final iftar of Ramadan was that night, and the Eid itself was Friday. I happened to still be up at midnight on Thursday and the University Street down below ACOR was full of traffic - I guess families who had had their iftar, and then packed the suitcases and kids in the car to drive down to Aqaba or the Dead Sea for the holidays. Apparentlyhttp://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/eerie-eid-quiet-coming-to-end.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-4879097183284611483Thu, 09 Sep 2010 09:06:00 +00002010-09-09T19:10:50.631+10:00Yesterday I had a full day at the Museum and we had a staff meeting regarding the Jordan Attitudes to Archaeology Project (I'll blog on that later once I have the photos tagged with everyone's names). But I was late, because although I thought 'Amman was full of taxis, it turns out it is full of occupied taxis. I walked down to University Street, the really big road down the hill from ACOR at http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/catching-taxis.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-6558866540267375532Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:15:00 +00002010-09-08T04:43:59.618+10:00As you may know, I am the associate supervisor for Feras Orekat, a Jordanian studying for his thesis on Religious Tourism in Jordan, at Uni Sydney. Feras is arriving in Jordan at the beginning of the Eid, but hopes to administer his questionnaire at Mt Nebo on Sunday, the last day of the Eid, when many locals are expected to be there. Because it is Ramadan and arranging these things by remote http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/mt-nebo-and-madaba.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5731234258751159638.post-4907076021727385732Sat, 04 Sep 2010 12:41:00 +00002010-09-04T23:17:41.433+10:00ACORarchaeologyjordanKate left Australia September 1After 26 hours travel, having my bottle of Bombay Sapphire confiscated at Dubai transit because the Sydney Airport Duty Free shop didn't seal the bag (!?! - may be a scam by the traders at Dubai, but note, the booze is cheaper by far there than at Sydney, and the shop was open even though it is Ramadan and Emirates wasn't serving alcohol on board the flights), http://dacostareidel.blogspot.com/2010/09/arrived-in-amman.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Kate da Costa)0