The 6th campaign of the Danish-German Northwest Quarter Project at Jerash started 25 July. The project is headed by Professor Achim Lichtenberger, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and Professor Rubina Raja, Aarhus University. The team this year consists of approximately 40 students as well as specialists from a range of fields. 

The trenches were set up on 25 July, and the initial work consisted of removing large stones in and around the trench areas in order to lay out this year’s six trenches, S, T, U, V, W and X. The first days of excavating and removing topsoil soon revealed large amounts of stone collapse from the earthquake of AD 749 in three out of the six trenches. Removing these after documentation is hard work, and the amounts of finds between and beneath the collapsed stones vary a lot between the trenches. The first weeks of field work also led to extensions in some of the trenches, since interesting features soon appeared, e.g. Trench V, which started out as a square of 5x5 meters, had an extension of 6x6 meters added to include what appears to be a colonnaded entrance.

The first couple of days in the field did not produce much work for the registration, since not much ceramics or other finds were found in the rubble and topsoil. However, after the first days of work, the situation changed, and the registration has had plenty to do since then.

So far, the registration has been working on refining and expanding the typologies, mainly of cooking pots and storage jars/basins in connection to the “Ceramics in Context” project. We expect to find more material that can contribute to this work, as soon as we get through the top soil in the trenches.

Friday 4 August to Saturday 6 August was a long weekend, which for many of the team members was spent in Amman or Petra. The work continued from Sunday morning when all team members were back in Jerash.

Read more

Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project: http://projects.au.dk/Internationaljerashexcavation/ 

Ceramics in Context: http://projects.au.dk/ceramics-in-context/ 

Das Nordwestviertel von Gerasa (Jordanien), Institut für Archäologische Wissenschaften, Ruhr-Universität Bochum): http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/archaeologie/index.html.de