The Bedouin

                Students are a nigh-endless font of labour, but there just aren’t enough of us here to dig and haul away all the dirt at a reasonable pace. For that task, we have some of the local Bedouin. 

                In Jordan, Bedouin form up to 40% of the population. Within the cities, open spaces are left where they can camp and graze their livestock. Out in the country, they have semi-permanent settlements, often composed of tents and cobbled-together shacks made from whatever was available. It is not uncommon to see a Bedouin herder walking his goats across the street to get to better grazing land. They are a tribal people, and things can get sticky if the site employs too many from one family and not enough from another.

                The Bedouin who help out at the dig site have been working with the team for quite some years. Only the men come up to haul guffahs (baskets made from bolted-together sections of tire) but both boys and girls are allowed up on the tell to bring their fathers, brothers, and cousins second breakfast around 9:00 in the morning.

                Despite the language barrier—most of us know little Arabic, and they know little English—they manage to make wisecracks, banter with the men, ask the women if they have babies yet (and if not, would they like some?) and praise or chastise us for properly filling or overfilling the guffahs. The little Arabic we know allows us to communicate in a similar manner, and humour makes it through the cracks. There are joking requests to toss pottery (or other archaeologists) into the wadi ("fukar al wadi" or "Steve al wadi," for instance), but they know better than to toss the pottery. The jury is still out on the archaeologists. 

      Sometimes, language isn't needed at all; one of them was building a rather phallic monument this afternoon, using objects found in a nearby square.

                Our square’s Bedouin is Mifla (on the right, seen here with one of his relations). Adults and children alike love having their picture taken.

                One of the families has hereditary near-deafness, and so a type of sign-language has developed among the Bedouin near the tell. (At the time of writing, I am unaware of whether or not it is used outside that area.)  One fellow doesn‘t seem to care that he can hardly hear himself, let alone anything else. He takes the goats out onto a low hill, and shouts incoherently at the top of his lungs. We have no idea what he’s up to, but he seems to be having a great time.

                The braying of their donkeys and the raucous crowing of the roosters makes the morning a lively place at the tell as the sun rises. The goats don’t usually get obnoxious until a more reasonable hour.

                The camp is a ramshackle collection of livestock, mismatched tents, and buildings, but it has a single modern amenity: spotted by one of my co-excavators, there is, sitting on a stack of rocks next to one of the tents, a satellite dish.