Fieldwork in an Increasingly Variable Climate: The Kites in Context Project 2023 Field Season

ABSTRACT

Archaeologists commonly include climatic data in their analyses of living in the past, but rarely do current weather conditions achieve mention in our professional considerations. The Kites in Context Project (KiC) focuses on a multi-scalar investigation of desert kites in the eastern badia region of Jordan. During the Neolithic (7000–5000 b.c.) period, people began building large animal traps, known as desert kites, across a wide swath of southwestern Asia. This multi-year project is designed to provide novel insights into the chronology and function of these animal traps through an intensive study incorporating remote sensing with boots-on-the-ground excavation and survey. The 2023 season began like any other—a combination of aerial survey using drones, walking the landscape in a pedestrian survey, and excavation under sunny skies. During our 2023 field season in Jordan, we experienced dramatic, atypical weather, likely driven by climate change. In this photo essay, we present images from this surprising rain and flooding event in the Black Desert of eastern Jordan that caused us to consider on a more personal level the challenges that may have faced the hunters and herders who constructed the kites and who managed the water thousands of years ago.

KEYWORDS:

• Desert kites
• Jordan
• climate change
• drones
• Neolithic

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Dr. Fadi Bala’awi, Director General of the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, for permission and assistance in carrying out this project. We offer our many thanks to Dr. Ali Atallah Al-Hajj of the Department of Antiquities for sticking with us during the wet and dry moments. Thanks to Adam James and the photography community he has created for inspiration in continuing to incorporate film photography. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions, which greatly improved this submission. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 2122443. Finally, we are forever thankful to Omar Al-Ghayath and Omar Al-Masaeed, true friends of the Kites in Context project, who provided invaluable help during trying circumstances!

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Austin Chad Hill

Austin Chad Hill (Ph.D. 2011, University of Connecticut) is a Post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania with the Penn Paleoecology Lab. ORCID 0000-0002-8397-8105.

Yorke M. Rowan

Yorke M. Rowan (Ph.D. 1998, University of Texas at Austin) is Research Professor at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago. ORCID 0000-0002-6577-1215.

Ali Atallah Al-Hajj

Ali Atallah Al-Hajj (Ph.D. 2020, University of Jordan) is a lecturer in the Department of History, School of Arts, The University of Jordan and publications staff at the Jordanian Department of Antiquities.

Jennifer Feng

Jennifer Feng (M.S. 2023, University of Illinois. Urbana-Champaign) is a graduate student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Pennsylvania.

Joseph Harris

Joseph Harris (B.A. 2022, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is a graduate student in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago.

Blair Heidkamp

Blair Heidkamp (M.A. 2018, University of Cincinnati) is a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin.

Morag M. Kersel

Morag M. Kersel (Ph.D. 2006, University of Cambridge) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at DePaul University. ORCID 0000-0002-9254-0957.

Megan Nishida

Megan Nishida (M.Phil. 2018, University of Cambridge) is a graduate student in the Anthropology Department at the University of Notre Dame.

Amelie Schmücker

Amelie Schmücker (M.A. 2023, Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel) is a graduate student in the Institute of Pre- and Protohistoric Archaeology at Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel.