Dhiban: Valuing Sites Through Valuable Stories

该项目的目的是通过提高其经济和社会价值，加强对约旦安曼以南70公里处的一个大土丘Tall Dhiban的当地管理。这将通过增加与现场的当地连通性和改善现场口译和管理来实现。Tall Dhiban是著名的圣经王国摩押王国的首都，也是黎凡特最长的铁器时代皇家铭文米沙碑文(现在在卢浮宫)的发现点。尽管梅沙碑文提供了强大的历史叙事和圣经联系，但游客很少参观该遗址，当地居民也很难理解，因为可见的考古遗迹很难解释，部分被遮盖住了。现代迪班是巴尼哈米达部落毗邻的贝都因人小镇，至少自2011年以来，那里一直是出于经济动机的内乱的发生地。这场骚乱导致了对Tall Dhiban的抢劫增加，以及2016年警察和抗议者在该地点本身的暴力对抗。该项目旨在将Tall Dhiban遗址转变为一种文化资源，以建立积极的当地遗产身份，并通过增加该遗址的外部游客数量，为当地企业提供经济资源。通过这样做，我们还打算在约旦建设公共历史和文化遗产地管理方面的能力。这将以一种双重战略来推行。在镇上，我们将开展一个以学校为基础的公共历史项目，与教师和Mutah大学的实习研究人员合作。该项目将以历史节结束，届时将使用学生家族史项目和社交媒体来鼓励迪班居民贡献自己的故事、图像和文物。这些材料的储存库将被移交给社区，用于未来的自我指导的公共历史项目。这个公共历史项目的一个重点将是城镇、部落和迪班的Tell(考古土丘)之间的关系。关于Tell本身，我们将与Hashemite大学的学生一起准备场地管理计划和用于展示场地的解释标志和相关材料。我们还将推动一项网站维护和清洁计划，以及建立游客通道。通过约旦非营利组织(SELA培训)，我们将为来自Dhiban的四名失业青年提供国家认可的干式石材建筑基本保护技术的职业培训计划，这将使他们能够在约旦的遗产部门找到更正规和更高收入的工作。它还将为我们提供熟练的技术人员，帮助稳定迪班5000年定居点历史不同阶段暴露出来的建筑。Tall Dhiban目前的访问量非常低，因此我们预计网站外观的任何改进都将导致访问量和外部收入按比例显著增加。它还将使Tall Dhiban成为在Madaba省发展一日游线路的潜在停靠点，在Madaba省，人们已经找到了两个联合国教科文组织世界遗产和几个重要的马赛克聚集地。该遗址还将作为往往无形的地方历史叙事与主导考古解释的全球和国家叙事之间的融合点。在学术上，我们将尝试实现这种整合的最佳实践，将小镇和Tell的历史清楚地联系在一起和连续。如果成功呈现，该网站将更容易融入当地的文化教育活动，并为外国游客提供更多样化和细致入微的约旦体验。已经很明显的是，研究近代史将挑战学术方法，即告诉那些没有分析它们的地点是仍在形成中的地点。

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.