Digital Signature Grant Proposal Made Easy

Signature travel plan

hello everyone uh thank you very much for joining us at this acor lecture uh just a note at the top to everybody that we are recording this lecture and so if anybody comes in with questions later uh please please do keep that in mind and in fact we are live streaming right now through facebook eventually this lecture will make its way up to our youtube channel um and so we'll be excited to to be able to offer that to everybody later as well now before we get started with our feature presentation tonight from dr clark i just want to share a few items of news related to acor in general for those who don't know me my name is pierce paul kriesman and it's truly my pleasure to serve as the director of acor you can see on the screen here we have our lecture series of course all of our lectures right now are going to be online and basically in this kind of kind of form and capacity our next lecture will be on february 16th then one on march 16th and then on april 20th that will be delivered in arabic with some translation support so we hope you'll join us for those in the future as well thank you again for joining us here this evening a couple of items of news and notes we've had since our last lecture we've had several new published materials and i want to make everybody aware of those published online through our web page you can go to this at the address at the bottom of the screen we've had a new booklet a new book the next issue of archaeology in jordan which has 53 reports about all of the works all over jordan from 2018 and 19 it's really some remarkable things and news about the archaeology that's happening in the country we're very excited to bring all of these things to you and we have a a great number of articles in our insights program photo essay about petra from the renowned photographer and author jane taylor and we have started a new series called ask a scholar so we're excited to share all of these things and bring all of these things to you you can find them through our webpage as i mentioned this lecture will go up on our youtube channel but our youtube channel is another resource that we're pleased to make available to everyone and we've expanded its content considerably the last several months as you may know the fall is time for many of the conferences for the scholars in our field to gather and present uh their most current findings the three major conferences this past fall since our last uh since our last lecture in gathering together asor mila and mesa we're very fortunate to have brought some of that content to our to the acor uh youtube page and to link through to other publicly available content from those uh from those conferences and so we hope that you'll go and find those on our youtube channel if you want to keep up to date on all of these things of course the best way to do it is to subscribe and you'll receive the latest notifications on updates now one final bit of news just to remind everybody that fellowship applications are live and they are due february 1st we encourage you all to check out our fellowships page on the web page and look through and see if there's something how you have projects in mind that you'd like to to pursue we'd really like to hear from you and and see some see some some new and interesting projects and support you as best we and so please don't hesitate to look that up we also note that on our youtube page we now have a tutorial in arabic that is a step-by-step uh a step-by-step guide on how to do the applications for anybody who might want a little bit of extra support in doing so now it is my pleasure to introduce our distinguished speaker this evening dr douglas clark the director of the center for near eastern archaeology at la sierra university who earned his doctorate from vanderbilt university and previously served as a professor of old testament and archaeology a dean and a gaggle of other things that if we just mentioned all the things he did we'd never get to the lecture and if my research is correct doug you've been conducting fieldwork and excavating in jordan since 1973 correct so co-director of mramp dr clark please take us away for the evening thank you pierce paul for that fine introduction um it is a a distinct privilege and pleasure of mine and of my co-directors they will be appearing later in the program i'll spend about 35 minutes in the presentation they will each have something to say after that you'll see them and then we will open it up for q and a i want to say how much a privilege and an honor it is to be part of a community of stakeholders a community of partners who are committed to preserving the past in jordan preserving the cultural heritage of the kingdom of jordan and to providing for financial security with um with cultural heritage developing cultural heritage so that tourism can increase that's a present concern and all of this to ensure a sustainable future for cultural heritage so it is just a privilege to be part of that a couple of notes before we begin i am in situ at the center for near eastern archaeology at la sierra university in riverside california seated next to one of my best friends who is one of about 70 of these large storage jars called collard pithoy that were excavated at telula mary from actually from one building and this one is as i say representative of a host of them it comes from the late late bronze age slash early early iron age so around 1200 bc and has been a long time friend and a great indicator of life and life ways in the past i also need to add one note about my way of disclaimer actually we have been working with this community of partners and we'll show you something about that in a slide coming up but we have been working for years now on this project and some of us for decades in the country of jordan and we will you will see some things that we've accomplished that we've been able to do uh through these partnerships but we also have dreams and we're fairly bold when it comes to dreaming dreams and many of these will need to be reviewed and will need to be approved so especially when we come toward the end of the presentation we're thinking about the future we're thinking about where we would like to go remember that this is not the final word we are so pleased to work with partners who can help us secure something that will be meaningful in the context of jordan in the future what i'd like to do is share this slide with several logos actually these are our partners but there are more that belong here i just thought of one last evening of another partner that should be on this list it will continue to grow it includes a number of universities you can see the uh universities of the co-directors and the department of antiquities um there are several players from italy from uh jordan from the u.s um down on the in the center of the second row from the bottom is mimar the institute that is the mataba institute for mosaic art and restoration they have been great partners we meet there for most of our workshops and training sessions and then on the bottom the supporting staff of usaid of acor and shep sustainable cultural heritage through engagement of local communities project along with the u.s embassy and the department of state and outlets that they have in the country so just a short look here and we will be moving fairly quickly through these slides so buckle your seat belts but i do want to pause and thank a number of entities some of these are governmental some of them are institutional you'll notice the very first one which gave us a start was the harris grant from asor the american society um of overseas research is the new name then you'll see a couple from usa decor ship ambassadors grant italian outlets um my c um and then cesar there's another one that is from uh from italy so there are a number of um resources that have been made available to us through those partners here are the three four account right here are the four co-directors um andrea falcaro marta dandreas suzanne richard and myself and in this next image the left upper picture our in-country coordinator who is the director of museums and awareness at the department of antiquities office in amman you can also see the teams are small teams from 7 from 16 and 17 and then a bit larger team from 18. this one includes a group of people doing consolidation you'll see a picture here where my cursor is franco giorili who is a master restorer and consolidator and he is the one who has erected and has a team working on the uh the scaffolding that you see in the back you'll see another picture of it soon as well we have set out in mrap um on the basis of a strategic plan the strategic plan is is built around sustainability but it's also built around community the components preserve cultural heritage in whatever ways we can preserve cultural heritage and there are a lot of them we could talk about them another one is to link what we do and to link cultural heritage to a community's history that is extremely easy to do in madaba because it is a an historical site and archaeological site and the people who live there many of them are descendants of people who created the land the last layer of archaeology a link between cultural heritage and the economy so that tourism can be increased and so that job opportunities are enlarged and then all of this whether it's culturally socially or economically sustainable sustainable into the future based on community engagement making cultural heritage a public asset so that we own it and so that it's owned locally to protect the past to ensure something economic for the for the present and then sustainable in the future communities of stakeholders this is a very brief listing of a long long list of some of our partners you'll see that there are different categories different types of communities some of them are regional some of them are national or international some of them are professional religious educational and then some of the examples listed on the right it is this group it is this community or these communities of stakeholders that make possible what we do that make possible bold dreams that make possible bold advances and steps forward which can make our project sustainable long into the future this is the group these are the people these are the partners that matter and i have a couple of slides these will go rapidly but they do represent the collaboration history beginning in 2006 when then director general of the department of antiquities dr fawaz al-khreisha asked that we upgrade the facilities that we train the staff and that we digitize the records well that led over time to a much bolder dream repurposing the current museum and building a new one in a more central location as you will see and then you will see all kinds of things that are happening here about midway on the page a little bit below that studio strategy architectural firm in rome one of our great partners been with us from the beginning website development with imagine technologies in our man engagement of university students that is one of our as one of our favorite pieces is working with university students and local elementary and so on and then we've got some activities of clearing and excavation training courses workshops consolidation in 2019 we formed a memorandum of understanding with the department of antiquities it took a while to put together but it was the right thing to do and it has been extremely helpful and we're so appreciative to the department for their help we have a new map and timeline you'll see that and uh in turn interpretive signage a lot of work in the current museum working now with the ambassador's fund for cultural preservation protection and the cultural antiquities task force of the department of state the u.s government and then some workshops an artifact handling one a pottery of jordan training workshop you notice that we've achieved non-profit status in the u.s we have our own 501c3 and donations will go to that a number of things that we're looking forward to in the future that have been built on what you see here i want to call special attention to the advisory council near the bottom this is a group of people representing the department representing local tourism representing local business people representing educational people that is our sounding board for moving ahead and then finally we are working with several people you see them listed there on a new grant application for um uh expanding what we're doing with virtual tours and other matters storytelling and so on that will be expanded to include the wider region so i now have uh six folders uh three of them are on site and three of them are online we have been divided because of covid between on-site and online and it's really quite surprising to us that with our good staff our great staff in matava a lot is still happening on site even though we're not there it's a terrific group of people so onsite first of all the archaeological park west and you can see it labeled there in the center of the picture and in the bold rectangle the site for the new museum built over ruins from the end of the 19th century we'll talk more about that when we get there the important thing here is the heritage trail this trail goes from visitor center to saint george's church and actually a couple of other places in matava and it's right along that trail that hundreds of thousands in a typical year hundreds of thousands of tourists make their way to these various places we will be on that trail and that's one of the reasons it was chosen another is that the department of antiquities already owned it so that's helpful that's extremely helpful especially in downtown historic matava this will be it's a late 20th century building it will be the entry hall welcome hall for the museum complex the doors are open here which is really very rare the opening used currently is off to the left to give an idea of some progress at any rate excavations were done here in the 1980s and the 1990s but abandonment until 2016 left the site looking like this which is rather discouraging but after a season or two we could make it look like this which was really remarkable to happen but we had great team a great team of excavators and people clearing this allowed us to transform what was weeds and actually a lot of trees in here too into the settlement i'll say something more about the settlement from the late 19th century most of buildings one two and then courtyard three those are from the 1880s what's on the right side of that line are from a bit later we're still utilizing those buildings that will be part of the ground floor of the museum this is a practice that happens in europe especially in italy where architectural remains archaeological remains are actually protected as the ground floor of new museum buildings and so in this particular picture one sees the scaffolding in the middle for the ongoing wall consolidation an important achievement in this picture starling carter part of the shep team and her husband jawad hijazi designed this a great team as they put it together and help helped us think about where we wanted to put things this map is well map and descriptive table is going to be it is posted i'll show it a picture in a minute in hard copy it's two meters wide and you can see here it's in arabic and english it is color coded um it also lists some detail about each site uh in english and in arabic and also the the kilometer uh distance the range away from mataba because we want to communicate that this is a regional museum and we want to make sure that people when they come to the regional museum will have instructions on how to get to ameri kiribati atarus diban kirbut etc uh the next um part of this the next component which will be mounted is mounted uh below the map is this timeline eric and english color coded again and then on the right hand side same color coding and names but now you have qr codes those qr codes are on the hard copy map and people can come and can drill down in a couple of steps for more information about the sites and this picture most of you will have seen for the first time ever because this was mounted this map that we just talked about and described was mounted i think about three weeks ago maybe four but uh recently and it is right on the entryway so that people coming in from the left will be able to look at that they can use their smartphones to drill down for more information about these sites and so on i'm going to say something more about this when we come to the website development another folder of on-site activity in madaba in general the first image shows the very first meeting of the mramp advisory council this is the group with representation from the government from local tourism from businesses and it is the group that we look to that is our sounding board we met once in person in march we've met a timer two remotely but that didn't work too well because i think of bandwidth problems and so now i send a report every month or every two months this lecture is the december and january report for the advisory council great group of people extremely enthusiastic and we'll see where that takes us businesses another group of our partners and stakeholders throughout madaba in the historic district yusuf sawalha in the lower right is one of the descendants of 90 plus christian families who moved to madaba from carack in the 1880s so he's one of the offspring of basically three tribal groups but several family entities and his he's extremely interesting to talk to because he has all of this history and he fills us in tells us the stories that we wouldn't get uh elsewhere another individual who is a part of this i'll show you in a moment um we are excavating the house of his grandparents uh on the left building number two he lives in the picture on the right where the arrow is in the through the windows of that apartment and he is dr khalid owen who is a terrific human brain human being who whom you will hear in a moment uh as he is one of our storytellers for our virtual tours great person great contributions to what we do as are so many people in jordan in fact what's exciting about this lecture for me is that although i can't see all of you i know that so many of my friends are there and i wish i could give a shout out to all of you and to former colleagues as well but we'll have to do that through a different format several workshops that have been accomplished over the years of of mrap's activity in mataba conservation mosaics walls you'll notice on the lower right school children visiting watching this process we are totally committed to the fact that training school children to appreciate their cultural heritage is the way even if it's generational to get to the place of sustainability for cultural heritage an artifact photography training course jillian logee at the left in the upper picture is the instructor from calgary alberta canada again one of the joys of our lives is working with students there is a group of architectural students in who became interns for us from the american university of manitoba which is about four or five kilometers south of madaba on the desert highway terrific students absolutely top of their class and they have provided reports that even stunned our architects in rome i mean they're just great people we've also had students architecture students from hashemite university from the university university of jordan and so it's been exciting to be part of this student enthusiasm and energy as we've put their thoughts and their suggestions into our process the official launch of this project was on the 17th of may in 2017 about 200 people gathered for this event which is really quite exciting and involved heads of well embassy personnel from the u.s and italy and others governmental and regional and local municipality a workshop for local contractors and architects on the left jihad haroon who is the lead for these projects is making a presentation for them great feedback from them and from everybody on these workshops a recent one this one in september at memar at the mosaic institute on artifact handling done by dr fatma who is at the right in the picture on the right and she is the main instructor tamara dc also the computer shows suzanne richard and me providing a taped welcome we couldn't quite get the bandwidth to work so we taped it in advance and sent it that way um we have also um well here we see their the graduates with their certificates and we see them at work in the what has been an artifact display room but has rapidly is rapidly changing into a storage facility these display cases have now been moved out and we'll watch what happens to those the outcome of this particular workshop is a manual on what to do with artifacts how to handle how to pack how to transport how to store them an english version these are 50 pages long each and an arabic version they will show up online but they will also show up on a spiral bound laminated paper um basically like a lad manual for use in jordanian archaeology museums by jordanian archaeology students and others so we think that's a great contribution that dr fatma and tamara and lillian the artist made for us in that project another workshop a dream of jihad haron and myself a pottery of jordan workshop which will also work into a manual as you'll see in a minute pottery is so important for archaeologists for any of us to understand the past to understand life ways to understand commerce to understand trade to understand chronology pottery is the bread and butter of dirt archaeologists and so we've got millions and millions and millions of these broken potsherds which can help us actually refine things quite well um when we're trying to study them to learn from them uh here is a an outline of the beginnings of the table of contents this is virtually done we have one more coming in i received the second to the last chapter last evening and then we've got one more that's coming in you'll notice that we do some background material here and then we come down in part two to the various time periods in jordan and we're learning about the forms in each of those time periods and you'll notice the um the authors through here these are the experts in these time periods i should mention that number 12 chapter 12 the hellenistic period adi babushmas was the person conducting that table talk about pottery pieces in the photo we saw earlier this also will come out with online and hard copy versions also in english and arabic and hopefully by the end of the month maybe the beginning of the next month we will have these ready for the press on site one more thing about the current museum it is located as you can see in the lower part of the image here and it's about a five to seven minute walk from the mata archeological park west there are several buildings in the in the enclosure the entry on the left and then further into the museum on the right it is this floor plan however that indicates what we hope to do ultimately our goal is to make storage and research possible at this facility which will then support the new museum in the interim however in this next slide there will be some display areas in rooms 1 and 4. store room 2 and store room 3 are currently being finished inside and we'll be putting shelving and so on and soon and then the textile storeroom on the on the right hand side so a lot of activity going on here in fact rooms one and four are virtually done and are ready for the artifacts to be installed this is what storage at the madiba storage unit very small extremely inadequate looks like before and sort of after we're moving toward a kind of a better after but given our space limitations this is what our staff has been doing also some construction pictures here of electrical changes some of the construction changes here on this wall niche air conditioning heating units in every one of these rooms that will be mounted fairly soon and then those of you who haven't been there for months will not recognize these pictures because these represent now the new display rooms which ultimately will then come back into storage space the floors which obviously had accumulated decades of of dirt from hundreds of visitors are now polished back to their original well we think it's their original state storage is going to happen we hope with shelving like this and this is currently in the citadel museum or the jordan archaeological museum in downtown on man we're learning from them how to do this and i'll say something more about that in a minute and then this is how we plan to lay out the storage units in the storerooms for the repurposing this is our team of curators amma on the right and then suha and najwa are mram employees and have been since the beginning of mram outside some of you will remember going down these treacherous stairs without a guard rail a handrail now they are all evenly spaced in height and a protective handrail as well this is a new project it's actually been underway for three or four years in the german protestant institute of archaeology which is not far from acor dr yuta um husser is the point person and she's the one that you'll see in this image who is working with suzanne richard and me in um we've been in conversation as she has developed an incredibly helpful online database for keeping track of artifacts in museums that's what it's for and we will be benefiting from all of that work soon on the left hand side before and after moving from top to bottom right hand side moving from the top to bottom before hand records to this new uh digital database and we will be as i say being part of that um the virtual museum um i'm going to show a slide here briefly or a short video some of you have seen it and we'll make sure the sound is up two minutes [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] and our gratitude to studio strategy and especially his son who is the graphics artist here they are now working on a longer one which will be more detailed and so and then a couple of plans these have not been discussed beyond just the co-directors and the architect so these are um what do you say aspirational they are we're hoping we're moving in this direction but there are some features that really i think are going to be interesting and helpful from these isometric views this is in situ this is where the block is and the community that lives around us so this will be definitely embedded in a local urban setting ground floor cafe and gift shop nicely designed here again this is how we're thinking this is where we're aiming some possibilities for exhibition space this one i like really a lot for children's education lab we're looking forward to that possibility too virtual tours something that has come about in the last several months developed especially through december and into january by this group it involves three groups of people that is involves three local groups of people there are three individuals from the american university of mataba one of our partners who are doing data capture there are three tour guides and there are six storytellers and we won't spend long on this but you will see in the picture on the right also drone activity drone recording those are spectacular photos using the drone photogrammetry along with ground level photogrammetry this is what they use in their training fairly sophisticated but this has all been done online from psyarc um in the states to our team in madaba and there is our team in the middle in the lower part hana and safe from the faculty at american university of madaba and jude who is a student there and they are all busy at work doing photogrammetry and recording thousands and thousands of photos here our here are our tour guides i'm going to give you um one brief now let's go inside the san jose church to really see what makes this church special and unique once we enter inside the church just to our right on the floor we can see a remarkable mosaic it's a beautiful mosaic flooring that is considered as a document and not just a piece of art it is the map that have guided the pilgrims coming to the holy land from all over the christian world during the byzantine my head period these are our storytellers one picture is missing abu charlie twal we adore abu charlie and we're not able to get a photo soon enough i want you to listen now to galib owen who is one of our storytellers as he tells part of my name is i was born on the site of the bird palace in madaba jordan we lived in a couple of simple one room houses built of clay and medium sized stones the area held our small clan of two brothers their wives ten children and our sheep goats cars and the horse around the buildings the ground was and still is covered with colored mosaics so some great stories to be heard all of these will be interwoven into the online virtual tours and then one more stop the website this is under development i'm going to leave actually the the place that i'm going to go to show what we are i'm saying under development because maybe that's because it always will be uh let me see where my huh where my museum went aha give me a moment sorry about this apologies i'm not sure why that isn't showing up okay give me just a second i will have this momentarily okay maybe i am there i am this is live it did get there great technology always surprises us this is the new website and as you will hear in a minute it is going live in fact it is live in fact with this lecture we we inaugurate it we launch the website and you can go on in fact we invite you to do so in either the english or the arabic version oops that skipped out can i convince you to try and share it again you know i think that got out of place sorry about that i think you're exactly right thanks here we go is that better excellent thank you thank you for catching that so sorry um in any case uh this will be in uh english as you see here and one can scoot over to the arabic version we won't take time to do it here but you can our major partners are listed in the logos below and then there are lots of possibilities on the website you can see as in these drop down menus one can find out all kinds of things about the project about the museum one can do go to initiatives exhibitions various media outlets oh the donate button there's a donate button one can see that as well and please use it as you can but i wanted just to give one picture of the madaba regional map and timeline because this is the online version of what you've seen before so here are key sites and you'll notice in the map that comes up this is the same as you saw before but it also has below it the timeline and all of these do and also the indicators again color coded of the names but you can do more with this thing you can decide that you want to see only the late bronze age sites and only the late bronze age sites are here you can go to them you can click on here get some basic information you can read more by going here and then you can actually go to websites of the various projects so in the process one is able to see a lot about the archaeology of the region through the website we're so grateful to imagine technologies and we're so grateful that we can now share it and announce that it is uh it is live so let me come right back to the powerpoint for just a moment and end with some objectives and i'll do this very quickly there are some on-site objectives and some online objectives we're kind of staying with that bifurcation with those two sides to our work so fundraising a lot that we'll be doing that is technical work uh some more consolidation we're developing narrative storylines travel permitting will be doing more work at the current museum a lot of renovation through italian support of the introductory hall and the burnt palace and other components of the archaeological park west and then online continued development we're hoping to do much much more uh with a virtual museum that is in our plans and our work and children's activities and so on we're bold we want to think bold thoughts about where we want to go in the future ultimately ending up with a real act with a real concrete museum in place so with this information i think we need to switch jackie to our co-directors and bring them on for comments that they'd like to make you'll need to unmute yourself thank you i think we've got people joining us just now uh if blossom is with us and wants to raise his hand feel free to but i'm not seeing his name currently okay and i think we're going to begin with suzanne i'm going to stop sharing so that we can see people better okay so um well i think doug covered the two ambassador grant projects very well indeed and i simply want to underscore what has been accomplished remotely the four-month digital mapping of mataba is virtually complete no pun intended we await psi arc to complete the integration of the audio with the massive photogrammetry drone data to produce 3d models in virtual tours of these wonderful heritage sites the videos will then be published on the sciarc platform as well as on our website and freely accessible very soon likewise the storage facility project i believe is an amazing success story since despite our absence from the field the facility is almost ready for the next stage of the project once the shelving and hvac equipment is installed so that new stage focuses on the artifactual collection which really will be the signature source for exhibits in the new museum the collection must be properly labeled and organized in the storerooms as well as assessed for remedial conservation i do hope that doug and i can be in jordan this summer to oversee this phase but if not on the basis of what's been accomplished remotely i am not too worried and finally just to reiterate what doug has been saying all along throughout this lecture the purpose of both projects was and is to preserve and safeguard the heritage of jordan one through a virtual record of heritage sites the other through the protection of some 14 000 artifacts from thousands of years of antiquity in the mataba region the new repository storage center conservation lab study center will all support the new museum which is the founding purpose of imran after all thank you i think andrea is going next thank you doug thank you to give me the opportunity just to spend a very few words about the italian effort in the mram project i want just to say that my university perugia university and the sapienza university with my colleagues martin andrea participate very actively and we want to thanks in particular also the italian ministry of foreign affairs for its support in the last few years from 20 2018 to 2020 in particular his support that permit us to get to bring with us in jordan italian students and specialists about archaeology and also to give out this us the opportunity and support to accomplish to some few targets inside the archaeological quest that already mentioned by douglas before i want also briefly just to told you that the italian works in madaba will uh str will be strange by the presence of another project founded by the italian agency for development the cooperation the iks that will regard the several activities inside madaba but that will participate and cooperate also with mr amp inside the archaeological park west in particular concerning activities of uh restoration of the bar palace and the activities inside the of the clinic so thank you again doug to give me this opportunity and for your lecture marta thank you thank you dragon uh and all the colleagues and i only want to add a few words on the vision of the future madaba regional archaeological museum that may complement what you already have illustrated in terms of architectural concepts and particularly as concerns the exhibits obviously all proposals will be subject to approval by local cultural authorities in jordan but we are we're working on a proposal for some sort of different uh approach uh to the museum automatic approach that might interest visitors and so we are imagining um a narrative approach that might build on a timeline and chronological presentation of the artifacts in a dedicated space of the museum but that may then develop thematically by level uh around narrative lines that might um might connect to let's say global teams uh and uh therefore we are in the process of preparing a tentative list of potential storylines to submit to and discuss with jordanian cultural authorities but in keeping with the inclusive nature of the project we would also like to have the members of the advisory board as part of this conversation because as you have already so much well shown they uh really represent the broad range of the projects stakeholders in the local community and a variety of the motherboard regions community and voices and um concluding i only want to stress that the importance of the of an operation as such at this stage of the project might be two-fold in fact on the one hand this might be a way to move forward the planning operations by discussing these ideas and the feasibility with the architectural team of the studio strategy but on the other it might also be a way to forge a connection a strong connection starting from now between the future museum and the regional side and among the regional sites by means of global teams that transcend uh space and time and so thank you for giving me the opportunity to touch upon this thank you marta um i think maybe we go back to to you pierce paul for q a if we're ready for that yes thank you all first and foremost for this presentation doug we're we're grateful for your time and all of the the the co-directors thank you for making yourselves available i know we're stretched all across the world right now and i'm just i'm grateful for technology making this all possible even though it frustrates us at times um and on that note i would actually like to start with a personal question because andrea i missed part of it due to to some skipping could you talk a little bit more about the the new the additional project i didn't catch that entirely and i want to make sure that everybody else did perhaps everybody else did and it's my connection maybe suzanne should speak to that well i i think you're talking about the ice project uh oh the the the italian or the um state department well start with the italian one because andrea mentioned it and it and i think it skipped a little and maybe it was just my connection but then i'd like to learn that's also a question that we have is more about the state one sorry thank you andre thank you thank you now just a few uh one minutes uh first of all um it is a project is a new project that started now in the end of 2020 um so it will be more active on the field in the future years um it regards uh side motion restoration and reopening some archaeological areas inside the city of madaba in order to to to open a new trail touristic trailer for the city of course the project inside these several areas will work also in the archaeological park quest and here we will do we like some activities also concerning the restoration of the mosaics of the bar palace but moreover it is important for the for the cooperation with the project the rehabilitation of the old cleaning [Music] i think we're losing a bit of contact there so so let me just summarize a couple things that i think i heard andreas say um the the arc the italian project will refurbish the entry hall right on the heritage trail also the old clinic that's early 20th century the old clinic which is early 20th century that will be turned into an introductory hall and timeline and then also the mosaics continued restoration of mosaics those are the primary oh and then um repurposing or changing of the coverings over the burnt palace thank you i just wanted to make sure we got that in there but now i'll ask suzanne the same question about the next about the state project right um well what specifically i you know uh the two projects we have the two doug and i are co-pis uh the first project we got the grant in september 2019 and actually it will be drawing to a close uh this year 2021 in september and that's the repurposing of the museum the current museum at the doa making it a state-of-the-art storage facility research center and so forth um so a lot of that infrastructure work has gone on in our absence but the next stage is the important one about you know putting the collection into the storage facility and so forth so we're hoping to get that done the second project which was amazing uh that we um you know we're in discussions with the state department they even suggested it to us since we couldn't get to jordan and they said well maybe we could do something digitally you know uh you know 3d virtual reality so after many collaborations uh we came up with the project the meta digital documentation and tourism project and and that started really september it really uh got got uh going uh november december and it's it is about finished and is being put together by cyark and if but people don't know psy arc they should go to their website to see all the fantastic things they do but really uh i think it'll be a fantastic way for people to learn about jordan's heritage in the absence of being able to actually visit there but then encourage tourism in future too thank you thank you for for that additional information about the project so we've got some other questions coming in here and i want to make sure we take them as basically as best we can doug early on there was a question about volunteer opportunities and now there's a question about if and how you can involve students from the local universities in your project right we um we'll we're we're intending at least one more what we would call a small field season and that does involve university students locally we've we've typically tried to do that we also have different projects even like what suzanne was talking about in which we involved jude 12 from the american university of madaba so we do this in several in several different ways we are absolutely enamored with the quality of work that these students bring to our our shared project and in the process we want to learn from them we hope they learn from us and that we do this jointly they will own it better and so that's important we we have other academic communities in the region german jordan university we've been in conversation with them even king's academy they have been open to archaeological kinds of things we want to establish more with them and so our goal is to encourage student participation and we will have volunteer opportunities we would like to say this year this is all coveted dependent but we would like to say this year sometime that we would have another season that's dependent on a couple of other pieces in play too but hopefully so thank you uh there's a number of folks writing in saying congratulations of course they're they're very excited they're grateful for the work you're doing in the area we have a number of people on uh today who are from the area thanking you for the work you're doing and the way you're engaging the people there so i want to make sure that you all are are hearing this feedback as well we've got another note from judah who's saying to the whole team great project uh and she'd like to announce that the dog jam project will be extended for two more years until february of 2023 and is very much looking forward to continuing cooperation uh so that's exciting and exciting announcement here it's very exciting if i can make a comment um church paul yuta has been one of our really lively partners in all of this and i decided i should not announce what she did she needs to announce it she did that this has been extended and that's terrific because it means that the work that she's done and her team has done with the citadel museum what we've always called the citadel museum the jordan archaeological museum what the work that she has done for them and for their records for their uh the digitization of their artifactual records that now will become applicable to the mataba museum i've i've told her that we want to be at the top of the list when that so that that's why that extension is so helpful and meaningful to me because it means we might even get on the list it'd be great wonderful so we have a couple more questions coming in marta there's a question what are the four themes that are being considered you mentioned four themes maybe doug you you might have some insights on these two no i didn't mention the number of team i'm just saying that i've just said that i'm we are working on teams and like for example just just to try to train one is a um food systems through time might be like a theme that might connect uh sites that are occupied in different time periods uh within the region in a way that makes sense both chronologically and and i think that marta said that the timeline i mean any museum needs to have a timeline one has to know how to move through the chronology of the period that will of the periods in the country that will happen in the timeline building in the old clinic building so there will be a total immersive um chronological uh experience there so then we thought that um for the museum itself why repeat that and why not do something suggested by one of our colleagues from in in this new neh proposal i've learned a lot from sten la bianca and what he has done with anthropology and he's suggesting global history not the typical chronological history but global history themes which tie us not only to the past in unique ways with these themes but these are themes that matter for the present for instance water what about water we have we've lots of indications of how water is used in the past and water is one of the basic essentials in modern jordan jordan i think is the fos is the fourth most water poor country in the world water matters we're thinking about uh some themes um like daily life like religious life we're thinking about disruption and resilience as a theme and that could be developed in different sorts of ways so in any case those those are what we're pondering now and we actually have um a kind of an initial listing and we'll be running this by our advisory council and the department of antiquities and others in the coming weeks thank you okay so we've got a question coming in uh from katrina on facebook what's going to happen to the heritage collection at the old uh museum at the old museum of the tall house suzanne you want to say something about that well if you're talking about the house with the mosaics um that remains um and well as doug was saying it's kind of complicated but um whereas originally we were going to have four rooms uh that served for storage and workspace we needed to use two of the rooms for an interim museum so um but that will hopefully be resolved when you know the italians finish their work in the clinic and we can put materials there as for the collect the mosaics we have already and doug i don't know he he was kind of showing this but he probably didn't notice there are doors new doors and and and the entrance has changed so that people can still come to the doa and get into those 12 heritage sites so they are still there that's right and we also want to make sure people are aware that we want to keep the folklore museum alive and well it will be on display through this interim and then hopefully somehow tied to the ground floor of the new museum where the traditional settlement is is located so yes we are anxious to preserve all of those including especially including the 12 houses and the mosaics that they cover wonderful thank you there are more kudos incorrect congratulations coming in and i'll make sure to forward those to you afterward i'm going to take a selfish question and ask a little bit more about the pottery manual uh can you speak more at length about this because there are just never enough pottery manuals and there's we always need more pictures and more work on these can you tell a little bit more about that yes you know if we had jihad haroon on this i mean he's the guy who for years it's just been his his life's passion to come with something that is useful within the context of jordanian pottery there are lots of good pottery volumes out there but none adapted like we think this one will be for jordanian pottery and and this will consist of these chapters you saw them listed there introduced by background material including uh sourcing of clay including typology in general uh including the economy of ceramics andre is doing that chapter has done it and then the periods all of these will have illustrations we actually are planning to be fairly limited in the use of illustrations in the hard copy we may change our minds on that because they are so helpful i think i heard you say that pierce paul but that is really what you want you want to look at something that will illustrate what you've just found in the museum and help you uh identify it and locate it chronologically so um the plan at least initially has been to expand the possibilities for the online version the same chapters perhaps expanded there but more images so we definitely want these to be again in english and in arabic we want them to be useful in a lab context where people need answers to their questions that's why we want it wonderful thank you and since i have it on good authority that acor is going to be uh publishing this i would strongly encourage you to put more images in okay more figures noted no for those of us who just aren't the experts it makes life so much better uh uh and we have uh one more question it looks like and i think we might wrap it up after that uh there's there there's a question about the visitor capacity do you have an idea what the total visitor capacity might be to the area so that it enables it to not damage the the sites by overuse essentially i don't know marta or andrea you are in closer touch with the architects might be able to respond to that let me just make one quick comment that we we work very hard to protect what is exposed uh in the park the 2nd century roman roadway the 6th century a.d martyr's church and burnt palace and then the later remains from the late 19th century so we we we try to barricade people off from getting into some of those but the capacity of the museum itself do we know anything marta any suggestions uh yes um i mean i think that the important point that you stress is that we are aware of the need to keep track and regulate the flow of tourists within uh protected activities i i guess that we we will get to to this kind of estimate once we have decided which the the thematic uh uh the narrative lines will be because we have an accurate estimate of the size for each floor but of course developing the uh will will tell us how many showcases which places and this of course will will impact on the final figure of uh potential visitors uh at once let's see so i think this is this will come after the discussion about the exhibit is over let me just one quick postscript to that the museum is being designed and it's entrances so that the main access is through the routes that we've suggested you've seen it in the video but another access route even when the park is closed if people want to use the auditorium which can be reconfigured into small meeting rooms or the terrace one can use parts of the museum coming in after hours through an opening that of course will have a guard there but in any case will make the facility useful for other cultural activities so then one can think about capacity how many can fit on that uh open terrace and so on so and then of course the um coffee shop and the uh cafe and the and the restaurant those will matter in different ways too okay thank you for that uh we've got a couple of hands up and i'm encouraging folks to submit their questions but we don't yet have them uh are the for the panelists is there anybody who'd like to add anything else before we before we point it towards wrapping up for the evening evening for me well then i want to thank you all if if there's if there's nothing else we are exceedingly grateful for everyone attending uh we're very grateful uh to to all four of you for being here with us tonight doug especially thank you so much um and to all of your colleagues we know there are a great number of them who weren't able to to join us and talk back and forth tonight but we want to acknowledge them again with a great thanks for the work y'all are doing uh down in the region and and uh the long-term vision you're really trying to bring to all of this it's fantastic that the facilities are going to be available outside of what might be normal archaeology hours uh it makes those those buildings that much more valuable to the people and community who truly live and live there and and make that space their home so again i just want to say thank you to everybody i will give the round of applause i know everybody online is clapping at the same time uh but thank you all very much for tonight uh and we hope to see everyone again soon thank you thank you take care