I went to visit one of the new “Wonders of the World” the other week as part of a trip around Jordan for a friend. Personally, there is little attracting me to Petra anymore – I find monumental architecture far less exciting than a flint scatter in the middle of nowhere. But first-time visitors to the country always want to see it, and it’s hard to wiggle oneself out of that trip.

The two-day visit to Petra couldn’t have come at a better time than just before the New Year: the weather was perfect for long walks through the city, not cold and with enough sunshine to freshen up my tan with a new layer of red-turned-brown. Unlike last year, there wasn’t even a threat of snow or the danger of being cut off from the world because all the roads were washed away. But if I had thought that I would be spared the inexplicable clothing decisions of Western tourists, I was quite wrong. At least there weren’t any women in shorts and tank tops, as tends to happen during the hot summer months despite warnings that such attire would really not be appropriate in Jordan.

The problem, this time around, was much more the lack of appropriate walking gear than the lack of clothes on one’s back. Petra is not a museum with linoleum floors and wheelchair ramps; in fact, if you’re in a wheelchair, tough luck, as you probably won’t even make it to the entrance gate. In many ways, despite the development of the area for tourism, Petra is still rather wild. The siq contains some stretches of the Roman cobbled street, which – like, for example, the colonnaded street in urban Jerash – is not something for high heels or weak ankles (or indeed horse carriages, but that doesn’t stop anybody from trying). And that’s the easy part of the site. While the main route through the ancient city is fairly well “paved” by thousands of feet every day, some of the most rewarding places you can see in Petra are found at the top of hundreds of stairs cut into the soft sandstone.

“950 stairs to the monastery, madame! Take a donkey up, just 20 minutes! Walk 1 hour!”

It’s not a hard walk up to the Monastery, just a little steep if you’re out of shape, and a little pressured by the faster climbers in the group and the masses of donkeys carrying fat people to the top. And it’s definitely worth it; if not for the archaeology, then certainly for the amazing views across the Wadi Arabah. But it’s not the staircase to the upper level of the museum. Every tour leader will tell you that; every guidebook will warn you about that. And yet there’s people in footwear that I wouldn’t recommend for visiting “tamed” archaeological sites anywhere.

Example:

Wearing riding boots (and see-through riding pants) when climbing – not donkey-riding – up to the Monastery.

Why?

Nobody looks twice if you’re appearing a little rough and disheveled from your long hikes around Petra. There’s no 5-star restaurants at the top of the stairs that you need to be dressed like a mannequin for. A cup of tea is 1 JD for everybody. If you fall on your ass in white trousers, which you most likely will in those boots, you’ll look like an idiot for the rest of the day, and you’re probably not going to get the red sand out for a few washes yet.

I wonder if it is a real concern to some people to distinguish themselves from the local appearances.

Example:

Handbag and a suede suit.

Why?

To be honest, I never understand the handbag thing. You automatically lose one hand because you keep having to hold on to the bag so it won’t slip off your shoulder, which means your balance is off even on level ground. And if you fall, you’ll land flat on your face because one hand alone won’t hold you up.

And a suede suit? It’s not a catwalk! It wasn’t even cold. Although there were a lot of people running around in thick ski jackets and with fleece hats and gloves while the sun was shining brightly down on them. I don’t understand that either. Just because the calendar says it’s winter doesn’t mean it’s freezing cold.

Example:

Other amusing clothing decisions include tight jeans that are bound to burst when you need to stretch a little to climb over a boulder (and look, there’s the boots again!) – although it doesn’t look like these particular people on their out ever left the main route; the always-worrying display of bare legs; and those little shoes that will fill up with sand in no time and are rather unlikely to support your ankles across terrain any rougher than the hotel carpet.

I simply don’t get it. How hard is it to pack a decent pair of walking shoes if you’re going on a tour across a massive archaeological site? Or to pack some less revealing clothes that you can actually be active in? Maybe a tour to Jordan should include a Friday-morning trip to the Abdali market to purchase some cheap second-hand clothes for the journey. It would certainly be more of a cultural experience than overnighting at the Movenpick Hotel and be bussed around everywhere without any contact to the local population.

My recent dabbling in the world of prehistoric earthquakes, far they may be from my main research interests, has at last made it possible for me to have a meaningful conversation with a number of prominent archaeologists without me feeling inferior and unable to contribute.

I went to a lecture last night introducing in very broad terms the ritual aspect of the southern Levantine Chalcolithic, a subject about which I have been embarrassingly ignorant. It was expertly presented by Dr. Yorke Rowan of Notre Dame University, who is currently a fellow at the American Centre for Oriental Research here in Amman. Although most of the evidence in the talk came from Israeli or Palestinian sites, a small number of dots were on the Jordanian site of the map. The only site of Chalcolithic date (c. 4,500 – 3,600 BC) that I have any kind of familiarity with (and by “familiarity” I mean that I have heard of it and seen a picture; I might have driven past once too) is Teleilat Ghassul, halfway up the Plateau at the very northern edge of the Dead Sea. But little has been written about it, and less has been read by me. I had a brief browse through Lovell 2001*, though, prior to the last post. Mainly because there appears to have been a significant enough earthquake in the immediate vicinity of Ghassul at around about 4,000 BC to justify the question to the Chalcolithic specialist as to whether there was any evidence in the stratigraphy of Chalcolithic sites, and I didn’t want to sound like a complete tool. As it turns out, what little mention there is of any cracks in the architecture of the site might be found only in Basil Hennessy’s records; I could certainly not see any reference in Lovell’s work. Apparently, there are good signs for at least two major earthquakes at Tall Hujayrat al-Ghuzlan, a late Chalcolithic and Bronze Age site just outside Aqaba on the Red Sea. Nobody gives any rough dates for these, although it appears that they might be quite late (and probably right in the vicinity to have caused such recognisable destruction). Publications are hard to find; the excavations are a joint German-Jordanian venture, and nobody writes anything.

Much more interestingly, it turns out, is a reference in the Migowski et al. 2004** paper to a possible (unlocated) quake at round about 7,000 BC; a time when both Gary Rollefson and Hans-Georg Gebel might have evidence for some destruction at PPNB ‘Ain Ghazal and Basta respectively. Gary mentioned how one of the sub-terranean “altar” features (basically a round stone-lined pit with a plaster ceiling, a hole in the centre and a couple of water channels feeding it) had been reconstructed at some point in a very rushed and shoddy manner after it was apparently damaged by forces stronger than a person. The interpretation of the feature as an “altar” is ambiguous; likewise the claim for “temples” or other such structures on a site like ‘Ain Ghazal. A PhD student from La Trobe who is studying Natufian art has jokingly theorised that such installations might be sewers or other sorts of plumbing. It’s almost a convincing argument; more so, at times, than a ritual interpretation. I hope I’ll be updated about this; it would be shame to have initiated such a discussion and than have it taken away from me.

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* Lovell, J. L. (2001). The late Neolithic and Chalcolithic periods in the southern Levant : new data from the site of Teleilat Ghassul, Jordan. Oxford, England: Archaeopress.

** Migowski, C., A. Agnon, R. Bookman, J.F.W. Negendank & M. Stein (2004). Recurrence pattern of Holocene earthquakes along the Dead Sea transform revealed by varve-counting and radiocarbon dating of lacustrine sediments. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 222: 301-14.