Dissertation Research: Petra Lower Market Survey

在布鲁斯博士的指导下，Leigh-Ann Bedal女士将为她的博士论文收集数据。她的工作重点是佩特拉考古遗址，位于约旦，死海以南约80公里。文献证据表明，佩特拉是纳巴泰王国的首都，其令人印象深刻的岩石凿成的建筑和雕刻在砂岩悬崖上的纪念性坟墓立面是众所周知的。然而，人们对该遗址的功能或其位于贫瘠沙漠地区的原因知之甚少。根据这个世纪早期的挖掘，人们假设大的开放空间作为市场，该网站在长途贸易中发挥了重要作用。然而，正如Bedal女士所指出的，这些区域实际上是什么功能是非常不确定的，这项研究的目标就是解决这个问题。在一个田野季节的过程中，贝德尔女士将对"低市场"地区进行调查。她将为所有现存的建筑特征绘制一张仔细的地图，并收集表面材料。然后，她将在选定的地区进行测试挖掘。该项目将为一个重要的史前遗址提供新的线索。在罗马征服之前的这段时期，近东的大部分地区都被组织成了帝国，考古学家希望了解这些单位所发挥的作用，以及促进分布在广阔地理区域的不同种族和语言群体整合成大规模运作的政治单位的力量。许多研究者认为，对长途贸易的组织和控制允许必要的中央集权，纳巴泰王国提供了一个评估这一假设的场所。这项研究将产生许多考古学家感兴趣的数据，并有助于培养有前途的年轻科学家。

Under the direction of Dr. Bruce Routledge, MS Leigh-Ann Bedal will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. Her work focuses on the archaeological site of Petra which is located in Jordan, ca 80 kilometers South of the Dead Sea. Documentary evidence indicates that Petra was capitol of the Nabataean kingdom and its impressive rock hewn buildings and monumental tomb facades carved into sandstone cliffs are well known. However much less is understod about the site's function or the reason for its location in a barren desert region. Based on excvavations in the early part of this century, it was hypothesized that large open spaces served as markets and that the site played an important role in long distance trade. As Ms Bedal notes however, it is extremely uncertain what functions these areas in fact were and the goal of this research is to address this issue. Over the course of one field season MS Bedal will conduct a survey of the "Lower Market" area. She will construct a careful map of all standing architectural features and collect surface materials. She will then conduct test excavations in selected areas. The project will shed new light on an important prehistoric site. In this period which preceeded Roman conquest, much of the Near East was organized into empires and archaeologists wish to understand the functions which such units served and the forces which facilitated the integration of diverse ethnic and linguistic groups spread over exgtensive geographic areas into large-scale functioning political units. Many researchers believe that organization of and control over long distance trade permitted the necessary centralization of power and the Nabataean kingdom provides a venue to evaluate this hypothesis. The research will produce data of interest to many archaeologists and assist in training a promising young scientist.