One does not often read reports in the media of archaeological surveys, and this review of the Jarash Hinterland Survey is an interesting account of the final season in October 2010. The article notes that the population of Jerash (biblical Gerasa) has doubled in the last 15 years, making the survey of field and farm, tomb and quarry, an important project. They estimate that about “10% of the archaeological sites around the city are being lost to development year upon year.”

The team faced dangers such as scorpions, shabab-ed, and nappies. But they had great success as well, identifying 203 tombs, along with numerous other ancient features.

It is all too easy to get distracted from the survey by kind offers of tea, but as always local knowledge is gained as a result. For instance, to be informed that a tomb containing about twenty sarcophagi on Abu Suwan had been used as a bomb shelter in 1973 and had subsequently been filled in leaving no visible trace represented a great result. The route of a Classical water course in the Wadi Deir – now scattered and bulldozed – was shown to us by a man who played in it as a child. An intense artefact scatter also got us excited, only to be told to our disappointment that it had been deposited by trucks moving earth from elsewhere in the preceding few months.

The article includes a video and some great photos (click one to begin a slideshow).

HT: Jack Sasson

From the AFP:

Jordan said on Monday Israel has returned 620 Early Bronze Age pottery items that were taken in the 1960s by a US archaeologist for research at a Jerusalem-based institute.
“Israel returned the items, including pots, plates and jars, in April. American archaeologist Paul W. Lapp borrowed them in the 1960s for study and research,” Fares Hmud, acting director of Jordan’s antiquities department, told the state-run Petra news agency.
“They were taken to the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem, and because of the (1967 Six-Day War), Jordan could not take the items back at that time.”
Hmud said the antiquities will be displayed at a museum in the Jordan Valley.
Jordan has said it was still trying to restore from Israel books and manuscripts dating from the first century AD after being smuggled to Israel several years ago.
It is also demanding the return of the Dead Sea Scrolls, also known as the Qumran Manuscripts, which contain some of the earliest biblical texts. The oldest documents date back to the third century BC while the latest was written in 70 AD.

Another article adds that the artifacts were discovered at Bab al-Thira’a. Though the articles do not say, it seems likely that the failure to return the objects was related to the archaeologist’s death in 1970. Paul Lapp died in a drowning accident at the age of 39, leaving behind a wife and five kids (BA 33: 60-62, via jstor).

HT: Daniel Wright