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BELOW Finding Lawrence of Arabia’s war: Bristol University’s Nick Saunders, in characteristic thinking pose, surveys the terrain on site in Jordan. Lawrence of Arabia’s war The Great Arab Revolt Project The Great Arab Revolt Project E L S R A I Aqaba JORDAN Ma'an GARP Mudawwara SAUDI ARABIA j e c t P ro l t Re vo ra b Are at i nte r b u r n / G WS a u n d e rs / J o h n i ck l d r y / N l i B a : A I M AG E S In 2006, here in the pages of CWA, we launched our Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP). With the project newly completed, the results have been game-changing – despite the fact that, in many ways, we have been pursuing the archaeology of the invisible. For many years I accepted Christopher Hawkes’ famous ‘ladder of inference’ without question. The basic idea, if you recall, is that archaeological evidence allows much to be said about technology and technique, less about economic life more generally, still less about social With the CWA-backed Great Arab Revolt Project at an end after ten years’ work on the deserts of southern Jordan, we asked Co-director Neil Faulkner – also Editor of our sister magazine Military History Monthly – for some concluding thoughts. organisation, and not much at all about beliefs, values, and ideas. The ladder has attracted growing criticism. Many archaeologists now reject it outright. I am one of them. Not the least reason is my experience of nine seasons in the desert. GARP – a Bristol University project that I co-directed with Nick Saunders and David Thorpe – was run from the outset as a multi-disciplinary investigation of a multi-dimensional conflict. We put a team of about 30 archaeologists and volunteers into the field for two weeks each autumn, working mainly along a BELOW A loophole in the breastwork wall of a Late Ottoman redoubt on the Batn Al-Ghoul escarpment. The redoubt overlooks the Hijaz Railway. Every sector of the line was under observation from an Ottoman post in 1917-1918. 44 CURRENTWORLDARCHAEOLOGY Issue 78

JORDAN 120km stretch of the former Hijaz Railway between Maan and Mudawwara (the latter now on the Jordanian–Saudi border). The archaeology comprised fortified railway stations, hilltop redoubts, blockhouses, campsites, and scatters of expended munitions, discarded military equipment, and the detritus of everyday army life: evidence of the Ottoman counterinsurgency effort between 1916 and 1918. Occasionally, too, we caught a glimpse of the shadowy enemy, the Bedouin guerrillas and British demolition experts, weapon specialists, and liaison officers who supported them. Holistic approach Using archive sources, satellite imagery, and ground reconnaissance – mainly the work of GARP landscape archaeologist John Winterburn – we plotted the sites spread across the desert wilderness. Some we then investigated in detail, clearing wind-blown sand from breastworks and tent-rings, digging out trenches and machine-gun posts, drawing and Occasionally we caught a glimpse of the shadowy enemy, Bedouin and British. photographing loopholed blockhouses. Thus, bit by bit, we built a picture of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’s war’. We never made a virtue of separating observation from interpretation. We debated the meaning of what we were seeing as we went along, and working hypotheses became the basis for new lines of investigation. Archaeology is not a linear process: it is a holistic one involving a feedback loop where material (the imprints in the landscape), method (the way we sample and recover data), and meaning (the interpretation) – I call them ‘the three Ms’ – constantly interact. Or they should do. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that Hawkes’ ladder of inference does not begin to describe what we did. I want to illustrate this by offering some ‘big picture’ conclusions. Let me start by picking up my somewhat tongue-in-cheek opening reference to ‘the archaeology of the invisible’. What I have in mind is the razor-sharp contrast between the archaeological imprint of the Ottoman occupation and that of the Bedouin insurgency. Asymmetrical evidence The Ottoman Army was a highly visible presence in the landscape, and that is reflected in the material evidence that survives – the blockhouses and redoubts, the trenches and breastworks, the campsites, and, of course, the railway itself. The occupation forces were essentially static – they lacked the resources to mount an active counter-insurgency – remaining pinned to the 1,300km-long Hijaz Railway, the all-important supply line running from Damascus to Medina: thus the strong archaeological traces. www.world-archaeology.com LEFT & ABOVE The archaeological imprint of an Arab tribal army. About a dozen complexes of stone alignments representing enclosures, pathways, and tents were surveyed along some two kilometres of wadi at Wuheida. Diagnostic metalwork confirmed that it was the camping ground of Prince Feisal’s Northern Arab Army (though the button shown here implies that the site was previously occupied by the enemy). A contemporary photograph that appears to show the site surfaced later. CURRENTWORLDARCHAEOLOGY 45

Page Text

BELOW Finding Lawrence of Arabia’s war: Bristol University’s Nick Saunders, in characteristic thinking pose, surveys the terrain on site in Jordan.

Lawrence of Arabia’s war

The Great Arab Revolt Project

The Great Arab Revolt Project

E L

S R A

I

Aqaba

JORDAN

Ma'an

GARP

Mudawwara

SAUDI ARABIA

j e c t

P ro l t

Re vo ra b

Are at i nte r b u r n / G

WS a u n d e rs / J o h n i ck l d r y / N

l i B a

: A

I M AG E S

In 2006, here in the pages of CWA, we launched our Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP). With the project newly completed, the results have been game-changing – despite the fact that, in many ways, we have been pursuing the archaeology of the invisible.

For many years I accepted Christopher Hawkes’ famous ‘ladder of inference’ without question. The basic idea, if you recall, is that archaeological evidence allows much to be said about technology and technique, less about economic life more generally, still less about social

With the CWA-backed Great Arab Revolt Project at an end after ten years’ work on the deserts of southern Jordan, we asked Co-director Neil Faulkner – also Editor of our sister magazine Military History Monthly – for some concluding thoughts.

organisation, and not much at all about beliefs, values, and ideas. The ladder has attracted growing criticism. Many archaeologists now reject it outright. I am one of them. Not the least reason is my experience of nine seasons in the desert.

GARP – a Bristol University project that I co-directed with Nick Saunders and David Thorpe – was run from the outset as a multi-disciplinary investigation of a multi-dimensional conflict. We put a team of about 30 archaeologists and volunteers into the field for two weeks each autumn, working mainly along a

BELOW A loophole in the breastwork wall of a Late Ottoman redoubt on the Batn Al-Ghoul escarpment. The redoubt overlooks the Hijaz Railway. Every sector of the line was under observation from an Ottoman post in 1917-1918.

44

CURRENTWORLDARCHAEOLOGY

Issue 78

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