We arrived in Amman late on Monday night after a long delay due to an aircraft issue at Heathrow. Immigration took the usual long time for the group, each queuing up to pay our 20 Jordanian Dollars for a visa, and then we set about trying to bring our equipment case in to the country. Fortunately this season all of the paperwork was acceptable and this process only added an extra hour or so to us finally leaving for Wadi Musa, where we eventually arrived at about 4am local time. This is great news as we now have the metal detectors available for the whole of our stay, rather than the last couple of days as per last season.
Later that day we met for a snack lunch and a quick introduction and briefing session. Nick Saunders introduced the project to our group, which includes 8 new people this season as well as several who are attending for their second, third or even fourth/fifth time as volunteers. Sadly Dr Neil Faulkner is unable to be with us at present but hopes to join us soon.
In the aftenoon the group visited some of the local historical sites of interest near to Wadi Musa. These included the neolithic site at Shkarat Msaied, and also Little Petra and Beidha. Images below.
Our plan next is to do an orientation trip for the first day, visiting some of our previous dig sites and some new ones, to prepare the group for the work proper which starts on Thursday. Updates as always will be on here, provided the internet holds up (some issues last night, hence the delay in posting this)
Stay tuned for all the news on a daily basis from our ground breaking (sorry!) dig.
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