Archaeology, Lawrence, and Guerrilla Warfare
Neil Faulkner and Nick Saunders, Co-directors of the Great Arab Revolt Project, tell how a recent field trip to southern Jordan sheds light on the theories and exploits of T.E. Lawrence.
Wadi Rutm in southern Jordan is a level expanse of windblown sand about a kilometre wide running between high spurs of orange-brown rock. No one lives there today, though scatters of debris attest temporary Bedouin encampments. Except for the occasional vehicle, there is no sound save the wind. Some clumps of wiry vegetation cling to channels gouged by winter flood-water; nothing else grows.
We were the first archaeologists to come here: a team of twenty-eight British specialists and volunteers on the first field season of a pioneering new project in 2006. Our mission was to add another dimension to the emerging sub-discipline of First World War archaeology – to shift it from the trench-war mud of Flanders and Picardy to the deserts of the Middle East. We had come in search of Lawrence of Arabia’s war.
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