DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

Dhiban: Valuing Sites Through Valuable Stories

Project disclaimer

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Description

The aim of this project is to strengthen the local stewardship of Tall Dhiban, a large mound 70 kms south of Amman Jordan, by enhancing its economic and social value. This will be achieved by increasing local connectivity with the site and improving on-site interpretation and management. Tall Dhiban is well-known as capital of the biblical kingdom of Moab and the find spot of the Mesha inscription (now in the Louvre), the longest Iron Age royal inscription from the Levant. Despite the strong historical narrative and biblical connections provided by the Mesha Inscription, the site is seldom visited by tourists and is poorly understood by local residents because the visible archaeological remains are difficult to interpret and partially obscured. Modern Dhiban is an adjacent Bedouin town of the Bani Hamida tribe that has been the site of economically motivated civil unrest since at least 2011. This unrest has led to increased looting of Tall Dhiban as well as violent confrontations between police and protestors on the site itself in 2016. This project aims to transform the site of Tall Dhiban into a cultural resource for the building of positive local heritage identities, as well as an economic resource for local businesses by increasing the number of external visitors to the site. In doing so, we also aim to build capacity in Jordan for public history and the management of cultural heritage sites. This will be pursued with a two-fold strategy. In town we will run a schools based public history programme working with teachers and Mutah University trainee researchers. This project will culminate with a History Festival, in which student family history projects and social media will be used to encourage residents of Dhiban to contribute their own stories, images and artefacts. A repository of these materials will be turned over to the community for self-directed public history projects in future. One emphasis of this public history project will be on the relationship between the town, tribe and the tell (archaeological mound) of Dhiban. On the tell itself we will work with Hashemite University students to prepare a site management plan and interpretive signs and related materials for presenting the site. We will also instigate a programme of site maintenance and cleaning, and the establishment of visitor pathways. Through a Jordanian non-profit (SELA Training) we will provide a nationally recognised vocational training programme in basic conservation techniques for dry-laid stone architecture to four unemployed youths from Dhiban, which should allow them to find more regular and better paid employment within the heritage sector in Jordan. It will also provide us with skilled technicians to help stabilise the exposed architecture from various phases of Dhiban's 5,000 year settlement history. Current visitor numbers for Tall Dhiban are very low, hence we expect that any improvement to the presentation of the site will lead to a proportionately significant increase in visitors and external income. It will also allow Tall Dhiban to be a potential stop on developing day-tour circuits within the Madaba Governate, where one already finds two UNESCO World Heritage Sites and several important concentrations of mosaics. The site will also serve as a point of integration between often intagible local historical narratives and the global and national narratives that dominate archaeological interpretation. Academically, we will trial best practices for realising this integration, articulating the histories of the town and the tell as intertwined and continuous. If successfully presented, the site will become easier to integrate into local cultural and educational activities and provide a more diverse and nuanced experience of Jordan for foreign tourists. It is already evident that engaging with recent histories will challenge academic approaches to tell sites that do not analyse them as places that are still in formation.

Objectives

The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.

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Location

The country, countries or regions that benefit from this Programme.

Jordan

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