YEMEN UPDATE
YEMEN
REVIEWS
- The Archaeology of
Jordan and Beyond:
- Essays in Honor of
James Sauer
- Edited by Lawrence E. Stager,
Joseph A. Greene, and Michael D. Coogan. Harvard Semitic Museum
Publications Studies in the Archaeology and History of the Levant
1, 2000. xvi+529 pp.
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- Yemen Update 43
(2001)
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- Reviewed by Joy
McCorriston
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- Reading this volume has been an armchair
passage through the last 20 years of Near Eastern archaeology in
Jordan, Yemen and beyond. Jim Sauer knew and influenced every one
of the contributors, many of them now "great names" in Near
Eastern scholarship and each of them the source of new insight.
There is much to like in this volume, handsomely produced and
carefully edited to offer synthetic prose and impeccable form
while retaining individual styles and varying tone. With a deeply
appreciated and much missed Jim Sauer as the focus, the rest of
the volume makes sense, despite the diversity of geographic,
substantive, and methodological offerings.
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- As many know, Sauer's longest attachment
in the Near East was his tenure as resident director at the
American Center for Oriental Research (ACOR) in Jordan. Yet as
ASOR (American Schools of Oriental Research) President, he later
became engaged in projects elsewhere, including his patronage
leadership of the first American archaeological expedition to
return to Yemen since Wendell Phillips' team at Marib in the
1950s. Sauer relied on field directors Michael Toplyn and Jeffrey
Blakeley to coordinate survey and stratigraphic probes for the
American Foundation for the Study of Man in the Wadi Jubah. One of
several valuable results of this project was the strengthened
evidence for a "high" chronology that dates earliest Qatabanean
and Sabean societies from the 2nd millennium BC; another has been
Jim's commitment to training Yemeni scholars alongside the
Jordanian and Egyptian students contributing to the present
volume. It was through Abdu Othman Ghaleb's (now a professor at
Sana'a University) dissertation research that the first evidence
of Bronze Age antecedents to Iron Age farming could be documented
in the Wadi Jubah region. In addition, Sauer's involvement in
Yemen archaeology helped catalyze new American archaeological
research in Yemen, and it is paean to his role that three of the
volume contributors wrote chapters on Southern Arabia.
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- John Huehnegard's chapter on previously
unpublished Old South Arabian inscriptions documents 13 stone
fragments that have languished among 200 purchased objects
(acquired 1935-36) in the Harvard Semitic Museum. I am not
qualified to comment on the readings and translations provided,
but I note with great interest the evidence for corporate
ownership of an irrigation canal (HSM 1935.1.8) and its
implications for land rights and agricultural production in early
Arabian societies. Interdisciplinary work on such topics must
build on firm disciplinary foundations like this contribution. A
respected Russian colleague once expressed frank incredulity at my
own focus on societies lacking writing, for he said, "the research
only interests [him] with a combination of epigraphy,
anthropology, and archaeology." We are much indebted to the
patient labors of epigraphers whose seemingly unenviable task
seems often (to the unwitting) a deliberation of how things were
said rather than what they say. Without their careful efforts, we
would be solely dependent on the silent stones of archaeological
monuments, at times a frustrating enterprise.
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- George Mendenhall discusses the role of
prophesy in ancient Israelite contexts and compares it to the
contemporary role of poetry in Yemeni tribal society. Mendenhall's
musings have been heavily influenced by Steven Caton's book on
Yemeni poetics & politics (Peaks of Yemen I Summon.
University of California Berkeley Press, 1990), credited for its
inspirational role in Mendenhall's paper. In his introduction,
Mendenhall rightly cautions against the Orientalist idea of a
truncated Near Eastern history, one that effectively terminates
with a dark age (i.e., a historical period long uninvestigated by
Western scholars) from the Arab conquest to the 20th century. Yet
to my surprise, the paper strays into equally ill-conceived
intellectual terrain as Mendenhall embraces a notion of
fossilized, living-Bible traditions in the highlands of Yemen.
("Virtually every page of [Caton's] book illustrates what
life in Palestine was like before the establishment of the
monarchy ca. 1020 BCE"). The brevity of the article foreshortens
what deserves a lengthier and potentially highly interesting
treatment of the processes of continuity, change, and diffusion in
cultural traditions of prophets and poets. In his brief
conclusion, Mendenhall suggests that Yemen's highland traditions
stem from direct continuities&emdash;language movements (ergo
population movements?)&emdash;between the Eastern Mediterranean
and Yemen at the end of the Bronze Age. According to Mendenhall,
the Yemeni poetic traditions therefore are "archaic phenomena" and
demonstrate an earlier existence of parallel prophetics in ancient
Israel. Most Yemenis would wisely reject this interpretation, and
current archaeological evidence of substantial Bronze Age settled
communities and exchange networks in the Yemeni highlands has
weakened interpretations of incursive Iron Age populations
bringing civilization to Yemen from the north. Indeed, recent
studies suggest greater connections with Africa and substantial
autochthonic cultural development in prehistoric Yemen.
Mendenhall's seminal work in the transformation of cultural
identity and the formation of ancient Israel has had wide and
worthy impact. I look forward to elaboration of the ideas he
raises in the Sauer volume and yet hope that he will shy from
further implication of modern, dynamic, independent Yemeni
traditions as congealed backwater relics of 4000-year-old
societies!
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- George Will also discusses Yemeni
antiquity in an attempt to establish a link between
architecturally similar temples at Amrit (Syria) and as-Sawda
(Yemen). Despite a 300 year chronological gap and a 3000 mile
interval, technical and stylistic details suggest common
inspiration. Will concludes that conservative architectural
techniques and Egyptian-inspired craftsmen can account for the
commonalities. This seems not implausible to me: the nearest
Cistercian monastery to Santa Maria di Follina (northern Italy)
lies north of the Alps and far to the west in Bebenhausen,
Germany, and both (contemporaneous, 12th-14th C AD) share the
distinctive austerity of décor engendered by Cistercian
monastic beliefs.
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- The editors arranged all papers by
alphabetical order of author, an expedient and defensible choice
with a compendium as wide-ranging as this volume. Of particular
interest to Yemen researchers will be those that touch on
connections between Yemen and the north (Khairy, Mendenhall,
Parker, Thompson, Will), a topic appropriate to the lifework of
Jim Sauer. Other papers review important problems without solution
(Bounni, Clark and London), offer new contributions in
archaeological or epigraphic data (Brown, Herr, Strange,
Whitcomb), provide new insights in ancient iconography (Bisheh,
Lapp, Leonard, Kafafi, Smith) or new reports of excavated
sequences (Blakeley, Homès-Fredericq, Joukousky). Of
particular note are several papers that reflect on changing
research approaches over the past decades (Lenzen, Meyers, Parr).
In fitting homage to Sauer's outstanding contribution to ceramic
typology, several papers offer new refinement of regional or
temporal ceramic traditions (Brown, Lapp, Richard, Schaub,
Worschech). Contributions in epigraphy (Cross, Huehnergard,
Khairy) remind the reader of Sauer's ties both to Biblical studies
and archaeology. Papers span a wide geographic spread (Yemen,
Oman, Turkey, Syria, and Palestine) despite a focus on Jordan.
Equally impressive to geographical span is the chronological
spread, with papers covering Paleolithic (Kerry and Henry,
Rollefson) through late 19th and early 20th century archaeological
practice (Dever, Miller). Perhaps most significantly, Arab
scholarship is strongly and admirably represented with fine
contributions from Sauer's colleagues, friends, and students
(Bisheh, Bounni, Hawass, Ibrahim and ElMahi, Kafafi, Toueir). This
seems fitting tribute for one who worked so hard to develop Near
Eastern archaeology.
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- In summary, there are many new ideas and
insights here. This is hardly the volume for every scholar's
bookshelf, but it does belong in every serious Near Eastern
collection. Peruse it, and admire the breadth and
depth.
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Contents
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- Tributes and
Memoirs……………………………………………………………………..
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- Portrait……………………………………………………………………………..
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- Jim Sauer and ACOR's
Springtime
- Walter E.
Rast……………………………………………………………....
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- James A. Sauer and the Development of
Archaeological Awareness in Jordan
- Raouf Sa'd
Abujaber……………………………………………………….
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- Citations from the Royal Hashemite
Court…………………………………………
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- Granting of the Citation
- H.R.H. Prince Raad Bin
Zeid……………………………………………….
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- Letters………………………………………………………………………………
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- Keith Beebe
- Adnan Hadidi
- John B. Hennessy
- Thomas R. Pickering
- Stuart Swiny
- Joan M. Undeland
- David K. Undeland
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- Publications of James A.
Sauer
- Prepared by Anthony M.
Appa……………………………………………..
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- Essays……………………………………………………………………………………….
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- A New Look at Desert
Kites………………………………………………………..
- Alison V.G. Betts and Vadim N.
Yagodin…………………………………...
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- Transjordan and Assyria
- Piotr
Bienkowski……………………………………………………………
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- An Iconographic Detail from Khirbet
al-Mafjar: The Fruit-and-Knife Motif
- Ghazi
Bisheh……………………………………………………………..
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- Petrie's Pilaster Building at Tell
el-Hesi
- Jeffrey A.
Blakely………………………………………………………….
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- The Problem of the Identification of the
City on Ras Ibn Hani, Syria
- Adnan
Bounni……………………………………………………………….
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- The Distribution of Thirteenth- to
Fifteenth-Century Glazed Wares in Transjordan: A Case Study from
the Kerak Plateau
- Robin M.
Brown…………………………………………………………….
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- Investigating Ancient Ceramic Traditions
on Both Sides of the Jordan
- Douglas R. Clark and Gloria A.
London…………………………………...
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- An Ostracon in Literary Hebrew from
Horvat 'Uza
- Frank Moore
Cross…………………………………………………………
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- Nelson Glueck and the Other Half of the
Holy Land
- William G.
Dever…………………………………………………………...
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- Social and Demographic Implications of
Subadult Inhumations in the Ancient Near East
- Bruno Frohlich and Donald J.
Ortner……………………………………..
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- The Canine Conundrum of Ashkelon: A
Classic Connection?
- Baruch
Halpern…………………………………………………………….
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- Nabatean Metallurgy: Foundry and
Fraud
- Philip C.
Hammond………………………………………………………...
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- Roman Mummies Discovered at Bahria
Oasis
- Zahi
Hawass………………………………………………………………..
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- The Settlement and Fortification of Tell
al-'Umayri in Jordan during the LB/Iron I Transition
- Larry G.
Herr……………………………………………………………….
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- Excavating the First Pillar House at
Lehun (Jordan)
- Denyse
Homès-Fredricq……………………………………………………
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- Old South Arabian Inscriptions in the
Harvard Semitic Museum
- John
Huehnergard………………………………………………………….
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- Metallurgy in Oman during the Early
Islamic Period
- Moawiyah Ibrahim and Ali Tigani
ElMahi…………………………………
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- Exploring the Great Temple at Petra: The
Brown University Excavations, 1993-1996
- Martha Sharp
Joukowsky…………………………………………………..
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- A Unique PPNC Female Figurine from 'Ain
Ghazal
- Zeidan
Kafafi……………………………………………………………….
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- Conceptual Domains, Competence, and
Chaîne Opératoire in the Levantine Mousterian
- Kristopher W. Kerry and Donald O.
Henry………………………………..
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- New Nabatean Inscriptions from the 1996
Survey on the Umm el-Jimal Area
- Nabil I.
Khairy………………………………………………………….…..
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- Warfare in the Ancient Near
East
- Philip J.
King……………………………………………………………….
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- Some Byzantine Pilgrim Flasks in the
Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Bible Lands Museum
- Nancy L.
Lapp……………………………………………………………...
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- A Corpus of Bone Carvings from the
Excavation of the Esbous North Church ( Hesban, Jordan)
- John I.
Lawlor………………………………………………………………
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- Reflections on Archaeology and
Development
- C.J.
Lenzen………………………………………………………………….
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- Why a Hedgehog?
- Albert Leonard, Jr.
…………………………………………………………
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- A Moabite Fortress on Wadi al-Hasa? A
Reassessment of Khirbet al-Medeineh
- Burton
Macdonald………………………………………………………….
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- The North Wall of Aelia
Capitolina
- Jodie
Magness………………………………………………………………
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- Prophecy and Poetry in Modern
Yemen
- George E.
Mendenhall……………………………………………………...
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- Ceramics, Chronology, and Historical
Reconstruction
- Eric M.
Meyers……………………………………………………………..
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- Burckhardt-Robinson Features in
Nineteenth-Century Maps of the Kerak Plateau
- J. Maxwell
Miller…………………………………………………………...
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- The Defense of Palestine and Transjordan
from Diocletian to Heraclius
- S. Thomas
Parker…………………………………………………………...
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- Proto-Urban Jericho: The Need for
Reappraisal
- Peter J.
Parr………………………………………………………………...
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- Chronology versus Regionalism in the
Early Bronze IV: An Assemblage of Whole and Restored Vessels from
the Public Building at Khirbet Iskander
- Suzanne
Richard……………………………………………………………
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- Return to 'Ain el-Assad ( Lion Spring),
1996: Azarq Acheulian Occupation in situ
- Gary O.
Rollefson…………………………………………………………..
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- Environmental and Cultural Factors in
the Development of Settlement in a Marginal, Highland
Zone
- Mitchell S.
Rothman………………………………………………………..
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- Terminology and Typology of Carinated
Vessels of the Early Bronze Age I-II of Palestine
- R. Thomas
Schaub………………………………………………………….
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- Chancel Screens from the West Church at
Pella of the Decapolis
- Robert Houston
Smith……………………………………………………...
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- The Late Bronze Age in Northern Jordan
in the Light of the Finds at Tell el-Fukhar
- John
Strange…………………………………………………………….….
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- Some Towers in Jordan
- Henry O.
Thompson………………………………………………………...
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- "Archaeology" of the Bible and Judaism
in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages
- Jeffrey H.
Tigay……………………………………………………………..
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- Muhammad as Prophet and Mayor: City
Planning from the Perspective of the Qur'an, Hadith, and Islamic
Law Case Study: Damascus
- Kassem
Toueir……………………………………………………………...
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- Hesban, Amman, and Abbasid Archaeology
in Jordan
- Donald
Whitcomb…………………………………………………………..
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- South Arabian Architecture and Its
Relations with Egypt and Syria
- Ernest
Will………………………………………………………………….
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- Rectangular Profiled Rims from el-B_l_
': Indicators of Moabite Occupations?
- Udo
Worschech……………………………………………………………..
