ACOR Photo Archive – ACOR Digital Archive

Introducing the USAID SCHEP Collection (EN)

A message from ACOR Executive Director Pearce Paul Creasman and USAID SCHEP Chief of Party Nizar Al Adarbeh

*Ghawr as Safi, site tour with ACOR USAID SCHEP staff and project director Konstantinos Politis, 2016*.

لقراءة المقال بالعربية اضغط ه ن ا

In 2014, ACOR partnered with USAID to establish a groundbreaking new project that would approach heritage management in new and dynamic ways. Building on the model of ACOR’s Temple of the Winged Lions Cultural Resource Management Initiative, which worked to involve people from Petra in multiple aspects of the project, and inspired by the best aspects of other ongoing projects across Jordan, ACOR adapted this model and scaled up its approach into the Sustainable Cultural Heritage Through Engagement of Local Communities Project (USAID SCHEP). SCHEP has evolved and witnessed several stages of development into a customized model that could be adapted to achieve the project objectives. More information can be found about the project in the open-access publication The Story of SCHEP 2014–2018.

Today, we are pleased to announce the addition of 4,710 images from the first four years of this pioneering project to the ACOR Photo Archive. ACOR and SCHEP are proud that this collection is both the first born-digital collection in the ACOR archive and described using fully bilingual English and Arabic metadata. The SCHEP Photo Archive team worked diligently to create and translate these data in order to ensure the maximal accessibility of these images and the information contained therein for a range of audiences in the US, Jordan, and beyond.

*Umm al Jimal, local workers clearing interpretive trail, 2017.*

From 2014 to 2018, USAID SCHEP supported the adoption of its community engagement model at nine archaeological sites across Jordan, conducting site development interventions to make them more accessible, training local community members to take an active role in their management, raising awareness of their potential as tourism sites, and supporting the establishment of community-rooted enterprises to help care for the sites and offer experiential tourism services.

*Ghawr as Safi, familiarization trip for Ammon University student*s, 2018.

Along the way, the project worked with Jordanian heritage-mandated entities to help develop tools and guidelines to improve the management of Jordan’s cultural heritage, while ensuring a role for local communities in these processes.

*Amman, ArcGIS training for employees of the Department of Antiquities and the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority, 2017.*

SCHEP also engaged children and youth in hands-on activities designed to increase their awareness of and interest in cultural heritage. During the first four years of the project, SCHEP engaged thousands of young people from all over Jordan in pottery making and reconstruction, mosaic art workshops, site visits with active learning components, and more. Just as SCHEP worked to ensure that the lessons of appreciating, caring for, and preserving Jordan’s heritage were passed on to the next generation, the project is proud now to share this new collection of photographs that preserve its activities and achievements for posterity—and for researchers and practitioners yet to come.

*Amman, awareness activities at the Children’s Museum Science and Art Festival, 2017.*

As deeply rooted as SCHEP is in Jordan and in local communities and sites throughout the country, the spirit of the project have always reached beyond Jordan’s borders. It is our hope that SCHEP’s model, as well as the specific activities and interventions that we have employed, will serve as an inspiration and an initial blueprint for other projects worldwide. SCHEP demonstrates a viable alternative to top-down, outside-in heritage management. SCHEP works toward a future in which local communities are key stakeholders in decisions about their neighboring heritage sites, active participants in the implementation of such decisions, and direct beneficiaries of tourism to their own hometowns.

*Petra, site visit and workshop for SCHEP site stewards, 2017.*

This is one reason we are proud to be working within the ACOR Photo Archive (soon to be the ACOR Digital Archive) to make the USAID SCHEP collection freely available online as a resource for whoever may be interested. These pictures convey information that goes far beyond what we have been able to put into words and help bring the ideas of SCHEP to life. They serve as important documentation of modern conservation techniques and cutting-edge technologies employed at several sites. The images also provide documentation of the sites themselves, many of which, such as Busayra and Bir Madhkur, are not well-known even within Jordan.

*At-Tafilah, archaeological site of Busayra, remains of postern gate providing access from the walled city to the canyon below*, 2017.

Digital access to these sites is especially important in light of the coronavirus pandemic and resulting limitations on travel and in-person visits, which have coincided with an increase in the use of online resources. With these images accessible to all, students and researchers in the U.S., Europe, the wider Middle East, and beyond can better understand Jordan and its heritage sites when unable to visit in person.

*Familiarization trip to Bir Madhkur, 2016.*

A collection of photographs taken by drone over the site of Umm al Jimal, for example, shows aspects of the site and surrounding area that would be less visible from the ground, as well as evidence of looting.

*Umm al Jimal, aerial view, east side of site, 3rd–4th century Roman fort in upper middle area, fields, 2017.*

The collection also showcases the techniques used by SCHEP and its partners to excavate, conserve, protect, and study the project’s affiliated sites, as well to improve their navigability and presentation to the public. In the images below, you can see several stages of SCHEP-supported interventions at the Temple of the Winged Lions in Petra (the images progress through time from the top left to the bottom right). As a result of this work, the site is now better protected, stabilized, and prepared for winter rains with an improved drainage system.

From top left: Petra, Temple of the Winged Lions, southwest quadrant, facing north, 2016; Petra, Temple of the Winged Lions, southwest quadrant, team member wrapping architectural elements in geotextile to protect them prior to backfilling (2016); Petra, Temple of the Winged Lions, southwest quadrant with geotextiles (2017); Petra, Temple of the Winged Lions, southwest quadrant after backfilling (2018).

It is exciting to integrate SCHEP into the ACOR Digital Archive as this important resource continues to develop and change to become more accessible for all. The USAID SCHEP Collection is the first collection for which all metadata has been produced in both English and Arabic. It is also the first “born-digital” collection to be included, addressing a major future issue for all such archival resources. We are all grateful for this collaboration, which was especially impactful to work on during the pandemic, when the importance of digitization and open access resources has never been clearer.

SCHEP was granted a four-year extension period in 2018, and over the next few years we will continue to add to this collection until it represents a comprehensive archive of the project over its entire period of implementation, reflecting the ways in which the approach and methodology also changed over time.

Finally, we wish to acknowledge the hard work and dedication of the team that made this collection possible, even under challenging and ever-shifting circumstances. From June 2020 until February 2021, the SCHEP Photo Archive staff comprised:

Ashley Lumb, SCHEP Photo Archivist

Shatha Abu Aballi, SCHEP Communications Manager

Starling Carter, SCHEP Communications Specialist

Jessica Holland, ACOR Archivist

Nora Al Omari, SCHEP Archival Assistant (from November 2020)

Khadija Al Faqeer, SCHEP Archival Assistant (July – September 2020)

We also would like to acknowledge the SCHEP staff, who worked hard during the past years to accomplish the goals of the project, capturing these images. The current staff can be seen on the “Meet the Team” page, and all previous members are listed in The Story of SCHEP 2014–2018.

We encourage you to visit the full collection, but you may want to first view the curated content selected by our specialized team to get an introduction to the themes running through the USAID SCHEP archive, inspiring your own research questions. For this reason, we have created several online galleries showcasing different components of USAID SCHEP: Site Development, Capacity-Building, Awareness, Tourism Development, and Events, Conferences, and Lectures.

For more information about USAID SCHEP, visit acorjordan.org/schep.

For more information about ACOR, visit https://acorjordan.org.

The Sustainable Cultural Heritage Through Engagement of Local Communities Project (SCHEP) is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by the American Center of Research (ACOR).

Text and photo selections by Starling Carter, with input from Jessica Holland, Shatha Abu Aballi, Nizar Al Adarbeh, and Noreen Doyle.

Sharing Moments in Time: ACOR’s Photographic Database for Documenting Cultural Heritage

Originally published in ASOR’s “The Ancient Near East Today”, vol. VI, no. 11 November 2018. Read the original here.

By Glenn Corbett and Jack Green. Published: 13th January 2019

The past two decades have seen rapidly expanding damage to archaeological and heritage sites across the Middle East, the result of urbanization, industrialization, and conflict. At the same time, there has been a dramatic digital revolution in archaeology, including the development of online photographic databases focusing on archaeological and cultural heritage documentation. One such collection is at ACOR, the American Center of Oriental Research, in Amman, Jordan. The need is clear – photographic resources in institutions, alongside archival records, carry essential information related to archaeological and historical sites, objects, landscapes, and people, yet these collections have often remained hidden from view. Digital preservation priorities, academic interest in archives, and limited prior publication have naturally led to a focus on the earliest phases of photographic documentation – especially with digitization of rare collections from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographs taken within living memory have had lower priority, including 35mm color slides that were so popular from the 1960s to the early 2000s. But as the technology to view slides is largely obsolete, there is now an important need to make these images accessible through digitization. The ACOR Library has an archival collection of more than 100,000 photographs preserved in a variety of formats, including 35 mm slides as well as negatives, prints, and born-digital images that document numerous archaeological and cultural heritage projects. Given its wide range of content and subject matter, this collection has become a critical resource for scholars from around the world involved in cultural and natural heritage preservation and management, as well as historical and sociological research.

This archive is now presented through a new online database accessible at https://acor.digitalrelab.com/, launched as part of ACOR’s Library Photographic Archive Project, and made possible through a 2016 American Overseas Research Centers grant from the U.S. Department of Education (Title VI). Through the four-year course of this project, 30,000 images and associated metadata from ACOR’s collection will be digitized and put online. Over 10,000 images are already available online for research, teaching, publication and general interest.

With a strong emphasis on visual documentation of Jordan’s heritage, the archive includes images taken by ACOR’s long-term directors (since 1975) related to the center, its activities, projects, and events, as well as numerous archaeological sites. There are also important collections from individuals who have developed close ties to the institution, including Jane Taylor, Rami Khouri, Linda Jacobs, Nancy Lapp, and Kenneth Russell.

Al Khazne (Treasury), at Petra, 1999. Jane Taylor collection. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

West side of Jabal Khazali, Wadi Rum, Jordan, 1995. Jane Taylor collection. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

Aerial photograph of the Colonnaded street (Cardo maximus) from south to north, Jerash, Jordan, 1998. Jane Taylor collection. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

What is special about the ACOR Photo Archive is that it includes not only images from famous sites such as Petra, Wadi Rum, and Jerash, but also smaller and less well-known sites in Jordan visited and documented over the decades, as well as people and places in other countries. Taylor’s photography in Jordan and neighboring countries, for example, has spanned more than three decades, and includes aerial and on-the-ground images of important sites in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and Iran, as well as now threatened or destroyed sites in war-torn and destabilized countries like Syria and Yemen. In addition, ACOR also maintains the photo collections and primary documentation of two important archaeological projects: The ‘Aqaba-Ma’an Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey and the American Expedition to Petra’s Temple of the Winged Lions excavations.

Beyond simply preserving and making available ACOR’s vast photographic collections, the ACOR Photo Archive is intended as a tool for researchers, educators, cultural heritage professionals, and local management authorities interested in assessing changes in archaeological sites and their surrounding landscapes over time. In particular, these digitized and archived photos, which cover nearly eight decades of change across the countries of the Middle East, provide invaluable visual documentation of cultural heritage sites that are now increasingly under threat from development, illicit excavation, and deliberate, targeted destruction by both state and non-state actors. Despite the role these images may play in preserving the memory of damaged sites, others tell the equally powerful story of how archaeological sites and landscapes—separate and distinct from their cosmopolitan or universalist heritage value—have always remained part of the essential fabric of the lived human experience of the region.

Conflict Heritage

One of the functions of the ACOR Photo Archive is to provide photographic documentation of archaeological and heritage sites as they existed prior to damage or destruction during recent regional conflicts and upheaval. The archive’s collections—whether Jane Taylor’s spectacular images of traditional Yemeni architecture in Sana’a from the 1990s or Linda Jacobs’s beautiful photographs from the early 1980s of famed Syrian archaeological sites like Palmyra, Mari, and ‘Ain Dara—capture these places and their settings before they came under siege or were even reduced to rubble by aerial bombardments. For programs like ASOR’s Cultural Heritage Initiatives or CAORC’s Responsive Preservation Initiative that aim to document these destroyed sites and the damage that has been done, such photos are now invaluable records of a heritage that, in most cases, will never be recovered.

Minarets of Masjid Ali and Shahidayn Mosque, Sana’a, Yemen, 1999. Jane Taylor Collection. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman

Ain Dara, Syria, 1982. Linda K. Jacobs collection. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

Threatened Heritage

While there is now broad awareness of the plight of cultural heritage in conflict zones, there remains relatively little concern about the more mundane but no less significant threats facing heritage sites across the region. The ACOR Photo Archive serves as a invaluable tool in observing less severe changes in and around sites through time, whether from gradual encroachment of nearby towns and villages, the effects of sustained looting and illicit excavation, or even the neglect and slow degradation of sites after they have been excavated.

Kerak, Jordan 1995. Charles Wilson collection. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

From Charles Wilson’s photography of Karak in the 1940s, for example, we see the famed Crusader-era castle surrounded by a few dozen Late Ottoman farmhouses and relatively barren hillsides, a far cry from what one of central Jordan’s largest towns looks like today. Similarly, by comparing Jane Taylor’s 1998 photograph of the Bronze Age cemetery of Fifa in Jordan’s southern Ghor with a drone photo by Austin “Chad” Hill taken from nearly the same perspective in 2016, one can easily see just how much looting has intensified at the site over the past two decades. Lastly, the stunning image by Rami Khouri showing the freshly uncovered Neolithic statues of Ain Ghazal, Jordan, remind us of the importance of archaeological context and what might have otherwise been lost to development had the site not been carefully excavated in the 1980s.

Aerial photograph of Nabataean fortress and adjacent Early Bronze Age cemetery at Fifa, Jordan, 1998. Jane Taylor collection. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

Aerial photograph of Early Bronze Age cemetery at Fifa taken using a drone (UAV) in 2016. Compare the density of the looters’ pits with Taylor’s 1998 image. Photo by Austin “Chad” Hill. Courtesy of the Landscapes of the Dead project.

Neolithic statues being unearthed at Ayn Ghazal, Jordan 1983. Rami Khouri collection. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

Lived Heritage

The ACOR Photo Archive also preserves a vibrant record of the many ways that everyday people from across the Middle East have engaged with their traditions, landscapes, and cultural heritage across the decades. For scholars and researchers, for example, it is remarkable to see Charles Wilson’s 1945 photograph of camels being used to transport the wheat harvest to markets in Amman, or a Jane Taylor photograph from the Yemeni coastal Tihama that documents traditional methods of fishing. But much more than that, such photographs, like Rami Khouri’s stunning 1985 photograph of Amman’s Roman Theater packed for a public performance, remind us that cultural traditions and heritage sites, while certainly important to preserve for their historic and archaeological value, are invested equally with the memories, experiences, and identities of the local people who engage with these places every day.

Roman Theater during a performance, Amman, Jordan, 1985. Rami Khouri collection. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

Making Connections

The ACOR Photo Archive project also provides excellent opportunities for sharing and connecting diverse people, institutions, and resources. Social media is used to share recently digitized images through @acorarchives on Instagram, as well as on Twitter and Facebook. This helps build awareness of the collections, and connect with similar projects in North America, Jordan, and the wider world. It will be possible to widen the scope of research and collaboration with resources of well-dated and well-sourced images – for example, the Manar al-Athar Open Access project at Oxford University, the Arachne project coordinated by the German Archaeological Institute including its Syrian Heritage Archive Project, the APAAME aerial archaeology resource, the EAMENA project, and the crowd-sourced Yemeni Cultural Heritage at Risk project.

ACOR Photo Archive Project intern Hala Saqqa working on the image database. Photo by Steve Meyer. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

Although the archive’s content is all-important, the links between the photos and metadata, and their presentation online in an understandable and searchable format, could not be achieved without the support and assistance of our dedicated project team and staff. ACOR has also instituted an active internship program to manage the pace of its digitization efforts, which in turn is helping train a number of Jordanians in scanning, rehousing of photographic materials, and digital archiving – all skills which we hope may be applied elsewhere in the future. Other archives in Jordan have benefited from engagement with ACOR’s archive and the sharing of skills and knowledge. A workshop was first held in summer 2017 in Amman on archives, tools, and approaches. In July 2018, ACOR held its second workshop which focused on digitization of photographic archives, attended by a wide range of institutions from Jordan and further afield with a focus on archaeology, cultural heritage, history, library and information sciences, and arts and culture.

Participants at the Second Annual Skill-sharing Workshop for Libraries, Archives and Museums, held at ACOR, Amman, in July 2018. Photo by Njoud Abu Hweij. Courtesy of ACOR, Amman.

The workshop provided an opportunity for professional networking and sharing experiences, information, and challenges regarding diverse collections and projects. By leveraging technology to make these photographs available and freely accessible, ACOR hopes to better equip American, Jordanian, and international researchers and policy makers to monitor and assess the numerous threats facing heritage sites in the Middle East and especially Jordan. What is more, this project helps establish best practices for processing and digitizing its collection of photographic and archival records, particularly those related to archaeological and cultural resource management documentation. To find out more about the Photo Archive, go to https://photoarchive.acorjordan.org/, and also check us out at the ASOR Annual Meeting this November in the Cultural Heritage Management session.

Glenn Corbett is Program Director at the Council of American Overseas Research Centers based in Washington D.C. and is the former Associate Director of ACOR and former project lead for the ACOR Photo Archive Project.

Jack Green is Associate Director of ACOR based in Amman, Jordan, and current project lead for the ACOR Photo Archive Project.

ACOR Library Photo Archive Notice and takedown policy

In making material available online the ACOR Library acts in good faith. However, despite these safeguards, we recognize that from time to time material published online may be in breach of copyright laws, contain sensitive personal data, or include content that may be regarded as obscene or defamatory. If you are concerned that you have found material on our website, for which you have not given permission, contravenes privacy laws, is obscene / defamatory and in terms of copyright law is not covered by a limitation or exception, please contact us on archives@acorjordan.org stating the following:

1. Your contact details.

2. The full details of the material, including the exact and full title of the image(s) and filename(s). Filenames start with 2-3 letters (e.g. “JT” or “RK” or “LKJ” and are 10-15 characters long).

3. If the request relates to copyright, provide proof that you are the rights holder and a statement that, under penalty of perjury, you are the rights holder or are an authorized representative.

4. The reason for your request including but not limited to copyright law, privacy laws, data protection, obscenity, defamation etc.

Follow up procedure:

Upon receipt of notification the ‘Notice and Takedown’ procedure is then invoked as follows:

1. The ACOR Library will acknowledge receipt of your complaint by email and will make an initial assessment of the validity and plausibility of the complaint.

2. Upon receipt of a valid complaint the material will be temporarily removed from the ACOR Library website pending an agreed solution.

3. The ACOR Library will contact the contributor who deposited the material, if relevant. The contributor will be notified that the material is subject to a complaint, under what grounds, and will be encouraged to assuage the complaints concerned.

4. The complainant and the contributor will be encouraged to resolve the issue swiftly and amicably and to the satisfaction of both parties, with the following possible outcomes:

The material is replaced on the ACOR Library Photographic Archive website unchanged.
The material is replaced on the ACOR Library Photographic Archive website with changes.
The material is permanently removed from the ACOR Library Photographic Archive website.

5. If the contributor and the complainant are unable to agree a solution, the material will remain unavailable through the ACOR Library until a time when a resolution has been reached.