Al-Jafr Mummy Project Grant uri icon

abstract

  • This project focuses on the investigation of five mummies discovered in southern Jordan. I will spend 11 days in February and March (February 24 - March 6) and 12 days in June (June 12 - 24) conducting preliminary analyses of these mummies with Dr. Kenneth Nystrom of Santa Clara University. This research will be conducted at the American Center of Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan, who will also provide a dark, climatologically stable room will be used for storing the mummies. Observations made in February will include inventorying the remains and artifacts, noting the state of preservation of each mummy, cleaning any adhering soil, assessing age and sex of the remains, checking for visual pathologies and other items of interest (tattoos, parasites, insects etc.), and photographing the remains. These observations will allow us to assess our equipment needs for the summer and will help us prepare NSF and NEH grants to cover the costs of analysis. In June we will bring a portable x-ray machine and accessories and will radiograph the mummies to observe preservation of the internal organs and identify any skeletal pathologies obscured by soft tissue, artifacts located within any remaining clothing/textiles, age and sex if necessary, and other anomalies. We will also collect soft tissue samples for chemical and molecular analyses of diet, migration, relatedness, and pathological differential diagnosis, and hair samples for chemical analysis of dietary seasonality. In addition, if preserved, we will take coprolite samples to understand diet, season of death, and climate; organ samples for histological assessment of disease; parasite samples; and insect samples for investigating climate and season of death. We also will remove and preserve any other artifacts recovered with the mummies and turn them over to the Department of Antiquities. We will also meet with Dr. Fawwaz al-Khraysheh, Director-General of the Department of Antiquities to communicate our discoveries. We also will travel to Ma' an in southern Jordan to meet with Hani Falahat, our project collaborator at the Department of Antiquities. We finally will meet with Khairieh 'Amr of the National Museum of Jordan and discuss future curation of the mummies in their new facilities.

date/time interval

  • February 2006 - September 2006