another whirlwind moabite week

The first thing you should all know before you read about all the activities of the past week is that most of them occurred in weather that was often 51 degrees, 44 degrees in the shade. The trick to not dying? Move very, very slowly, and drink water constantly, every five minutes or so. Then it's no problem, believe it or not.

Alright, let's begin at the beginning and come up to today.

Something I forgot to add to the last post regarding out trip to Amman (see the previous post for details): I forgot to mention that we also went to the King Hussein Mosque. I really enjoy the architecture and feel of mosques, and have visited quite a few in different places in the world, but this one stood out, not for the architecture (though it was certainly beautiful), but because of the covering that was provided. Most mosques require that all visitors dress conservatively, namely long pants and long-sleeved shirts for men and women, and a head covering for women, but this is the first mosque I have visited where they required that all the women wear full robes with little hoods. Though I know it is an inappropriate comparison, it was like we were at a black-tie KKK cross-burning. No guff. Not to mention that mine was very restrictive for my long strides, and could have used a slit right up the side. Again, inappropriate, but very accurate.

The work week went well and, work wise, we are making terrific headway and I hope to be able to close excavations in the Iron Age section of this part of the Tell for good in about a week, not including mapping, cleaning, etc. The pits are getting much too deep, and I am a bit worried about the safety of the students and, to be honest, myself. The balks are almost 10m tall in places, and are kind of sketchy. And, the access and egress is wobbly at best, attested by my fall down the boulder stairs last week, a stairs which I kindly donated a chunk of my shin and shoulder to. I'm nothing if not a giver.

Alright, here it is, the information you have all been waiting for: The Wedding. On Thursday afternoon, we decided to skip lab and head to the wedding of the brother of a close Jordanian friend. All us female staff (five in total) got dolled up in glitz (the four others) and an electric blue tube top (me), then layered conservative covers over top and headed to the compound of the family of the groom. As soon as we arrived we were ushered onto one of three fringe-laden buses to head to a town about 20 minutes' drive away to collect and primped and frightened-looking bride. The procession to her house, I should mention, included about thirty additional cars of family members, and paid not a whit of attention to stop lights, emergency vehicles, or other cars. It did, however, care a lot that we made a lot of noise and clapped until our hands were numb. Good anthropologists that we are, we obliged.

Once at the bride's house, all the women went into a small room where the music and drums continued. The bride was sitting ramrod straight on a giant green-upholstered chair at the front of the room. Eventually, after a very hot 15 minutes, her male family members came in and "gave her away", by giving her kisses and gold jewelry. Then, we were all ushered outside again, where handguns were fired off in celebration (they scared the bejeesus out of me, I won't lie, especially when they were about one metre from my left ear and unexpected), and we all jumped back into the vehicles for the procession back to and through Madaba to the compound that we started at.

Once back there, the women were all immediately herded up to the tented roof, past the tent in the yard where all the men and a live band were. Up on the roof, the real fun began. We all stripped down to our super-fantastic-Jordanian-style outfits and got to dancing to the huge ghetto blaster that had been hauled up to the roof by some unfortunate young male family member. The dance floor consisted of the area not being taken up by the 200 or so women and children on the roof, mostly in front of the bride (who had managed to arrive just before us, complete with green chair, which whizzed by our bus en-route, precariously balanced in the back of a small Mitsubishi pick-up, held in place by two young males, who were attached to the outside of the pick-up garbage-man-style), and along the space cleared through the crowd as the aisle to the bride. An 11-year old girl immediately spotted my super sweet Western dance moves and showed me, in no uncertain terms, how to really wiggle my hips and twist my wrists, much to the delight of the viewers watching the giant white woman in the electric blue tube top trying to dance.

Eventually, after a couple of hours of dancing with the students (who all came) and staff and locals, the groom and his male family members came up to take the terrified-looking bride away. The mad rush for coats and head scarves was unlike anything I have ever seen before when the men came up, and saw me still dancing in my tube top, with some of our male workers who had come up, until I remembered to cover up and my friend gave me my cardigan. It brouught a mixture of amused and annoyed looks from some of the women, but the guys didn't seem to notice, so no harm, no foul.

With the bride gone, the party quickly dwindled in size, and we headed home to have a couple of beers on the patio.

The following day, Friday, I drove to Amman to get some groceries for all at the local Safeway, which was a field trip in itself, then headed to meet the groom and bride for a big Jordanian mensif lunch, at which the bride looked much more happy and relieved. The rest of the afternoon was spent smoking argileh and relaxing until about 23h30, when I headed to the airport to pick up the last of the staff members to arrive - now we are complete!

On Saturday, we headed to Pella (a great site down in the Jordan valley with evidence of almost every occupation phase for the region), Jerash (a huge Roman site about 2 hours north of Amman, which has a huge music festival every summer), and the castle of Ajloun, built by Saladin's nephew. I visited all the same sites except for Pella last year, and they were just as amazign this year. Pella was incredibly hot, but it is buiilt around a natural spring, so we saw some much-missed greenery and grass. There is also an amzing rest house there, overlooking the valley, where we went for some cold drinks. It was an extremely hot day (uncomfortable by 09h00).

Back at work, on Monday, I went to the nearby town of Ma'in to survey. It was a great break from site and really enjoyable, as I love to survey. We found a few cisterns and carved bedrock, which is what we have mostly been finding out that way, along with a ton of pottery from several occupation phases.

This weekend, we head to Petra, Aqaba, and Wadi Rum for our mid-season (already!) long weekend. We're all really excited...Petra is definitely one of my happy places. I'll post photos next week, so come back and check them out...