Into the Ghost-land

This chapter describes the arrival of the Great Arab Revolt Project (GARP) archaeologists at the derelict Hejaz Railway—GARP’s main study area—which snakes across the deserts and wadis of southern Jordan, from the medieval town of Ma’an to the Bedouin settlement of Mudawwara near the border with Saudi Arabia. There was an enchantment of the senses in finding traces of the world’s first global industrialized conflict alongside those of deep prehistory, churned together it seems by the advent of modern guerrilla warfare, where time is built into the relationship between metal and rust. The sand itself has been touched, blown, and sifted by history, from Nabatean spice traders to Hajj pilgrims, from Ottoman Turkish troops to the Bedouin. Each of these experienced the desert in their own way, and like others in distant parts of the world, brought their own magical thinking to bear on their surroundings. Indeed, the empty desert is anything but, and the ruins of the Arab Revolt emerge from it as a unique heritage of the modern world.