Danny In Jordan

Above: Danny on his cell phone talking to me from the middle of the desert in Wadi Rum.

Danny is on an archaeology dig in Jordan for 5 weeks. He went with a group of about 20 students from UCSD, and is digging under the archaeology professor at the school. This fulfills part of the requirement for a minor field in archaeology, along with a huge research paper that he'll work on when he returns. He left CA on June 26th and was able to spend a few days in Israel, and met up with some friends of ours from San Diego, Josh and Heidi Van Ee. Josh is a couple years ahead of Danny in the same PhD program. (Heidi just went for a tour and a week of digging, but Josh will be with Danny the whole dig.) He'll return on August 6th. (We're counting the days!)
Above: Josh, Heidi, their taxi driver and Danny on their way to the dig site.

Above: This is the camp site where they are staying. The closest 'civilization' to them is a bedoin village.

Below: Josh tries to get some rest in the heat of the afternoon on his cot. Danny is sitting in the back of the tent.

Above: Danny and Josh relax under their tarp as a bedoin man tries to start a fire.


Above: This is the dig site. They are digging an ancient copper mine.

Above: The 'clean lab' where they work in the late afternoons cleaning pottery, recording finds in computers, taking pictures, etc.

Below: The computer lab, which is still over 100 degrees inside!

Above: Danny photographs some important artifact.

Above: The meal tent. (Notice this is covered but the dig site isn't. This doesn't make any sense to Danny.)

Below: The restroom facility, with the flush buckets waiting outside. Their showers are in this building as well.


Above: Josh and Danny return from a nice shower in the evening. Normally a breeze comes up just before bedtime, so that helps a bit, making it tolerable to sleep.
Above: A survey team uses a GPS device to record the exact location they have found an artifact. Danny has been doing this most days from about 5 am until after 12 noon. They take a jeep and travel about 45 min to a site and then hike around all day, going up and down hills trying to spot ancient remains. This makes the days go faster than digging in one spot, but he is extremely exhausted when he returns for lunch and an afternoon break.

Above: Danny, Josh and Heidi enjoyed a jeep tour in the Wadi Rum before joining the dig group. They had a bedoin guide and stayed in a bedoin tent.

Below: Eating a meal with the tour guide and his friends.

Above: Enjoying a nice meal at their hotel near the Red Sea, before the dig began.

Above: Sipping some coffee with a Jordanian man who sold Danny a sim card for his cell phone then envited them to his house for coffee.