Aerial Archaeology in Jordan Project

Abstract

There is, now, the scope for developing the project dramatically. A generous grant from the Packard Humanities Institute will allow us to work on the archives and create a web site on which all our images can be displayed and searched. It will also allow us to treble the number of hours fl own and increase the associated ground exploration. Aerial Archaeology was pioneered in the Middle East in the 1920s with dramatic aerial photographs taken in Syria by the great French scholar, Pere Antoine Poidebard. His discoveries resulted in a book, now a collectors’ item, La trace de Rome dans le desert de Syrie (Paris, 1934). Despite important work in Iraq, Transjordan and Iran, there was nothing to equal Poidebard’s contribution. Collectively, a great deal was achieved in the 1920s and 30s though some countries in the region prohibited it entirely — Turkey is the obvious case. However, a new World War and independence for the countries of the region brought an end to virtually all aerial archaeology throughout the Middle East by about 1950.