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View from the Field: Lawrence's Jordan The CWA-backed dig, the Great Arab Revolt Project, is now in its second season. In November 2007, we returned to Jordan to excavate more sites associated with Lawrence of Arabia’s war against the Turks. Lisa Corti and Anna Gow were among the volunteers on the 25-person field team. This is their account. Below The only remains still standing of AqabatHijaz station on the Hijaz Railway in Southern Jordan. The rest of its fine Late Ottoman masonry has been bulldozed away in the service of a local myth – that here, and on every other Late Ottoman site, caches of wartime gold lie buried. Photo: Nick Saunders. Above Remembrance Day at Aqabat Hijaz. On the site of a First World War desert battlefield, at 11 o’clock on 11 November, GARP volunteers assemble to hear a war poem and hold a minute’s silence. Photo: Nick Saunders. 38
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Silence. The wind picks up a handful of sand and throws it against the walls of the ruined Late Ottoman railway station at Aqabat-Hijaz, in whose shade 25 archaeologists stand and reflect. It is 11 o’clock on 11 November 2007: Remembrance Day, and the last day of the second season of the Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP) in Southern Jordan. Eighty-nine years are blown away with the dust across the desert. For this is one of the places where Arab fought Turk in Lawrence of Arabia’s war, a place now being investigated by the new archaeology of modern conflict. Continuing investigations begun last season, work focused on the vast, beautiful landscape of Wadi Rutm, and on the flat-topped hill on which the Ottoman Army camped, looking down on the Hijaz Railway as it snaked its way through the sand dunes on its passage to Medina. The top of the hill is studded with circles and squares laid out in stone blocks – the weights around the edges of former military tents. Our task was total excavation to create a full record of the entire camp. The ‘tents’ were cleaned and planned by excavation teams. More tent pegs, both wooden and metal, were found. Altogether 17 standard tent-rings, 6 tent-squares, and one large tentring were documented. Many of the tent-rings had postholes in the middle, indicating bell Above A funnelshaped cutting in the rock on the edge of the Ottoman Army camp at Wadi Rutm was confirmed as a military latrine by the brown staining at its base. Photo: Nick Saunders. Jordan tents, whereas the squares did not, implying ridge tents. During our time on the plateau we managed to answer two key questions left hanging last year: where did the Ottoman soldiers cook, and where was their latrine. The ‘cook-house’ – a small rectangular pit lined with two courses of large stones – contained considerable amounts of charcoal and animal bone (thought to be sheep). The latrine, located at the north end of the hilltop well away from any of the tent-rings, had been dug inside an existing stone-circle, the base of its steeply tapering profile bearing telltale dark stains.  Highlights from the daily blog (www.garp2007.blogspot.com) Wednesday, 31 October 2007. Day 2 – Ma’an Ma’an station, a major station on the Hijaz Railway, is at the centre of a complex of hilltop trenches extending outwards from the station designed to protect it and a garrison of up to 6,000 Turkish troops in 1916-1918. The whole party went to the site for the first time today and split into teams. The metal-detectorists investigated the crenellated trench to the north of the Hill of the Birds and discovered many spent rounds at one site likely to have been a single firing site during the battle. The surveyors roved across the lower levels of the site and located the foundations of a number of new buildings/features. One digging team excavated a section of front-line firing trench and communication trench serving it. A second digging team excavated what was probably a hastily constructed support trench for the front-line firing trench at a slightly higher level. Two other digging teams worked on the southern redoubt, one excavating a short section of front-line firing trench and its serving communication trench, the other excavated a possible machine-gun emplacement.  archaeologycurrent world 27 39

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View from the Field:

Lawrence's Jordan

The CWA-backed dig, the Great Arab Revolt Project, is now in its second season. In November 2007, we returned to Jordan to excavate more sites associated with Lawrence of Arabia’s war against the Turks. Lisa Corti and Anna Gow were among the volunteers on the 25-person field team. This is their account.

Below The only remains still standing of AqabatHijaz station on the Hijaz Railway in Southern Jordan. The rest of its fine Late Ottoman masonry has been bulldozed away in the service of a local myth – that here, and on every other Late Ottoman site, caches of wartime gold lie buried. Photo: Nick Saunders.

Above Remembrance Day at Aqabat Hijaz.

On the site of a First World War desert battlefield, at 11 o’clock on 11 November, GARP volunteers assemble to hear a war poem and hold a minute’s silence.

Photo: Nick Saunders.

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