Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East
Welcome to The Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East.
The Archive was established in 1978 under the patronage of Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan.
To date (2009) it consists of over 30,000 photographs and several hundred maps for several countries, mainly Jordan.
Although the archive includes aerial photographs of a number of Middle East countries, the vast majority are of Jordan. Hence the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan project (AAJ) is the principal component of the archive. To see an illustration of the archive's research value, look at this Showcase.
The Director of the Archive is Professor David Kennedy.
RECENT DEVELOPMENTSThe first batch of photographs from the project - 219 images from the 1997 flying season - has now been loaded to Flickr.
Recent publications arising from the project: The British periodical Antiquity, founded in 1927 by a pioneer in Aerial Archaeology, has just published a survey of the achievements of the project: D, Kennedy and R. Bewley, "Aerial Archaeology in Jordan", Antiquity 83 (2009): 69-81. The same periodical has also carried one of our aerial photographs as a frontispiece in each of their last five issues and includes several on their Web site. A British popular archaeological magazine has just published an article on Aerial Archaeology in Turkey: D. Kennedy, "A heavenly view of Kaunos. Flying the Aegean", Current World Archaeology 34 (2009): 37-42.
The Packard Humanities Institute has awarded the Archive a second grant, for work to be carried out during 2009.
The most recent season of flying in Jordan took place in September-November 2008. There were ten flights totalling 37 hours in the air. Some 10,000 photographs were taken and are now in process of cataloguing.
The next season – September-October 2009 – is now in preparation.
Karen Henderson has commenced research on a PhD on the prehistoric remains in the Basalt Desert of the northeast of Jordan. Karen will be building on her Honours dissertation which involved mapping similar remains around Umm el-Quttein. | CONTENTSSatellite Imagery and Google Earth
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"Wheels" near Safawi in N E Jordan. An example of a low-level oblique photograph on colour print film. Photo: R Bewley, May 1998. | |
