Program

Morning session:
Israel and Palestine

10:00 - 10:30
Mordechai Haiman (Israel Antiquities Authority): Bedouin Ethno-archaeology and Ancient Desert Eco-systems

10:30 - 11:00
Shimon Gibson (independent scholar): Archaeological Surveys of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Methodologies and Chronologies, Motives and Preconceived Ideas

11:00 - 11:30
Mohammed Ghoshe (Al-Quds University): Architectural history of Ottoman Jerusalem. A New study according to unpublished endowments

11:30 - 12:00
Timothy Harrison (Department of Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto): The resettlement of Madaba in the Late Ottoman Period

Afternoon session:
Jordan and general topics

1:15 - 1:45
Oystein LaBianca (Andrews University) and Adam Fenner (Stanford University): The Parochialization of the Ottoman Great Tradition in Central Transjordan--the View from Hesban.

1:45 - 2:15
Eveline van der Steen (independent scholar): Ottoman society and tribal power structures: the view from Ha'il.

2:15 - 2:45
Anna de Vincenz: Clay Tobacco Pipes

2:45
General disscussion

Abstracts

Mordechai Haiman : Bedouin Ethno-archaeology and Ancient Desert Eco-systems

The Negev and Sinai are the domain of Bedouins who are engaged in pastoralism and agriculture, but highly dependent on permanent external sources for their living. The role of the Bedouin as a desert society was well studied, however mainly from the sociological and anthropological aspects. The potential of studying the remains of abandoned Bedouin camps was recognized in the past by Palmer, Musil, Woolly and Lawrence and others. In the framework of the Archaeological Survey of Israel, abundant data connected to Bedouin activity was collected by many surveyors. For example, they mapped hundreds of tent camps, cemeteries, sheikh tombs, storage-caves, small fruits plantations and tracks of agricultural plots. Given this data the question to be asked is to what extant the study of Bedouin remains can be use as a model for ancient settlement in the desert.

This presentation will focus on three aspects of Bedouin Ethno-archaeological studies in the harsh desert areas:
1. Cycles of Bedouin immigration in and out of the desert - demonstrating a non stable population.
2. Bedouin remains reflecting stages of settlement, also identified in ancient sites: nomadic, spontaneous settlement and permanent settlement.
3. Bedouin eco-system in the harsh desert as an edge of food-chain and not as food producers exploiting the impossible environment for agriculture and pastoralism

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Shimon Gibson: Archaeological Surveys of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries: Methodologies and Chronologies, Motives and Preconceived Ideas

In the mid-nineteenth century a shift occurred in terms of the methods that were used by scholars for understanding the history of the Syria-Palestine region and the elucidation of the biblical writings in particular. Prior to this the field of biblical interpretation was dominated by the uneven writings of travelers and pilgrims in which accounts of their explorations in the southern Levant were provided. Much of the information collated was made while traveling along pre-determined routes, under the supervision of local guides, and with the purpose of visiting sites that were primarily of biblical interest. The culmination of all this was the detailed work made by Robinson and Van de Velde, among others. However, the first systematic overall mapping of the country, with a regional investigation of monuments and sites possessing visible architectural remains from different periods, began with the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund and undoubtedly one of the greatest achievements of that time was the "Survey of Western Palestine" of the 1870s. I shall also be discussing the Survey of Eastern Palestine of 1881, the Arabah Survey of 1883-84, the 1885-86 surveys east of the Jordan by Schumacher, and the Wilderness of Zion Survey of 1913-14. The lecture traces the development of survey archaeology through to the end of the 1940s and concentrates on the field methodologies employed (how surveyors undertook their work), the chronological systems available(what means of dating was used), and ends with a brief discussion about the motives of the surveyors in doing their work in the first place(e.g. self-promotion, spying activities) and preconceived ideas they may have held (e.g. religious ideas, racism towards the "natives") and how this would have effected their archaeological
interpretations. The lecture will be illustrated with material derived from the archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund in London.

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Mohammed Ghoshe: Architectural history of Ottoman Jerusalem. A New study according to unpublished endowments

This lecture serves as an introduction to the unknown architectural Monuments of the old city of Jerusalem in the Ottoman period specially the 16th and the 17th centuries.
The lecture consists of a historical summary of Jerusalem in the Ottoman period, followed by a presentation of unknown and unpublished documents from the Islamic Law Court records which give us a great deal about the 16th and the 17th centuries monuments inside Jerusalem.
The most important type of this documents is the endowments (Waqfiyyat) which can give us future details about the architectural history of Ottoman public monuments such as the simple houses and stores, in addition to the Sultanic projects such as the water fountains, Mosques, Zawiyya`s, Tikkiyyah`s and other sites.
Every endowment contained a specific building date with other details such as founder, location of monument, cost of building, and architectural descriptions.
In my lecture, I will present endowment documents for some major monuments inside Jerusalem in addition to its modern pictures and plans. From these documents we can know the specific date for every site in Jerusalem especially the sites which were not documented yet in the published books, because there are many sites in Jerusalem that can not be dated closely from the building inscriptions or the historical books.

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Timothy Harrison: The resettlement of Madaba in the Late Ottoman Period

The migration of Christian settlers from Karak to Madaba is one of the more celebrated of nineteenth century Transjordan. In 1880, following a dispute between the Christian al-Azeizat and the Muslim al-Sarayra over an incident involving the abduction of a female member of the al-Azeizat (although accounts diverge on the details), and accompanied by members of two other Christian tribes from Karak, the al-Azeizat began settling in Madaba, which they laid claim to with the tacit approval and support of the Ottoman authorities. Prior to this event, the primary written sources for the region consist almost solely of travelogues written by western explorers. Most notable for the Madaba Plain region is H. B. Tristram, who visited the ancient site in 1872, and produced a detailed description of its ruins and the surrounding environs (1873), which he noted were being cultivated by Beni Sakhr bedouin, or at least by their vassals and slaves. Tristram’s account provides a particularly revealing glimpse of the changing socio-political landscape of this period, prompted in part by land reforms instituted by the Ottoman government, including the shift toward sedentarization, and the increasingly contested nature of land claims that ensued. This paper will present the results of the Tall Madaba Archaeological Project’s investigations at the site, which provide an alternative source of information for this period and the opportunity for fresh insight into this formative phase in the transition to the modern era.

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Oystein LaBianca and Adam Fenner: The Parochialization of the Ottoman Great Tradition in Central Transjordan--the View from Hesban.

Our goal in this paper is to trace the process of parochialization of the Ottoman Great Tradition in Transjordan. To this end we begin by explaining what we mean by the related concepts of ‘civilization,‘great tradition’ and ‘parochialization.’ Next we attempt to specify the most salient feature of the Ottoman Great Tradition which was fervent devotion to Islam. This is followed by a discussion of universalizing agencies by means of which the tradition was transmitted throughout the empire—such as through military campaigns, Tanzimat reforms, and building projects. For insight into how the Ottoman Great Tradition impacted the daily lives of populations on the empire’s periphery we refer to archaeological data collected by the Madaba Plains Project at Hesban in Jordan and to nineteenth century accounts of travelers to the region. Although this data spans the entire period of Ottoman domination, it is most abundant for the decades that follows the Tanzimat reforms.

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Eveline van der Steen: Ottoman society and power structures: an outsider perspective.

Ottoman society, and especially late Ottoman society in the southern Levant is well known to us from several sources, both local and western. This provides us with an opportunity to analyze the power structures and social and economic relationships between the different levels of society. These power structures and social relationships were largely determined by the tribal organization of the society. The important thing is that tribalism is not an economic concept but a social one, and one that was all-pervading in society as a whole. Both the largely pastoralist societies of the Southern Jordanian Plateau and the largely independent polity of the Shammar sheikhs were part of it, and it still plays a role in present-day society. This makes it possible to suggest an explanatory model for archaeologists, based on the concept of tribal interaction. The sources used for this presentation are mainly western: Doughty, Wallin and Bell. The fact that they were strangers to the society they travelled in influenced both their perspectives and their writings, their outsider look may be a useful tool in understanding the power structures that were unique for the region.

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Anna de Vincenz: Clay Tobacco Pipes

Ottoman clay tobacco pipes, the so-called chibouks are small, very pretty items with stamped or molded miniature decorations. They are found on many archaeological sites with Ottoman occupation layers, but archaeologists have so far not paid much attention to them and thus they are found either in private collections or as finds not connected to any stratigraphy. Thus it is not surprising that detailed studies on clay tobacco pipes are rather rare and only recently archaeologists began in publishing this material. Some studies have been made on pipes from Athens (Robinson 1983 and 1985) and from Saraçhane (Hayes 1980 and 1992). The publication of pipes from Palestine is scarce they usually appear in excavation reports as single finds. Avissar has published pipes from Yokne’am (Avissar 1996) and Baram has included a study on pipes in his Ph.D. dissertation (Baram 1996). Only few pipes come from surely dated contexts such as the pipes from a shipwreck dated to the end of the 17th century (Walker 1980: pl. I), and from the Sharm-el-Sheikh shipwreck dated to the 18th century (Raban 1971; 146-155), pipes were found in graves of the 19th century in Russia (Stanceva 1972 and 1975-76)
The history of tobacco and its distribution in the Western and Eastern world are described by Robinson (1983-1985) and Matney (1997). And it should suffice to say here that the use of tobacco was common throughout the Ottoman Empire from the 17th century onwards and are thus found in archaeological excavations in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Turkey and as far as Romania. They were mainly used for tobacco smoking and examples with traces of tobacco have actually been found and others bear Turkish inscriptions with the word “dûhane” meaning tobacco (Hayes 1992). The Turkish tobacco pipe called “lüle” in Turkish or chibouk consists in a bowl of various shapes with a short stem into which the long reed or metal tube are then inserted for smoking. At the end of the reed there is the mouthpiece, which could be of amber or other semi precious stones. Robinson states that the “the part which actually touched the lips was usually of amber, although sometimes precious stones or coral were substituted” (Robinson 1985:156). The tube usually made of wood is very rarely preserved and the mouthpieces are rarely found on excavations. The bowl, which could be made of metal, wood, stone or clay is the item, which is mainly found on archaeological sites. And for obvious reasons the preferred material is clay, because wood would eventually burn, metal is hot and stone cannot be worked easily. The bowl was usually mold made in two parts, dried leather hard and then the shank opening and the bowl were carved out. Then a slip was applied to the surface and the decorations were applied. They could be carved, stamped, rouletted, incised or inlaid. It seems that some decorations were already carved into the molds. Sometimes the potter would stamp his mark such as rosettes or initials on the pipe. Only then the pipe was ready for the final firing. After that it was either left unpolished or slipped once more or polished or burnished and some pipes were even gilded. As has been said before some pipes had inscriptions in Turkish or Arabic, but an accurate study of these marks is still missing and the identification of the marks is not easy. The aim of this presentation is to show these potters’ marks and to try to give a reading of some of them. Certainly many of these seals are names.

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