The UCL Institute of Archaeology Air Survey Photographs: an archaeological reference collection of Royal Air Force aerial imagery from 1918–1939

This blog was first featured on the EAMENA blog on September 4, 2017. It is replicated here by the author. The digitised collection is available for browsing through an Album on our Flickr. The collection material is accessible through contact with the UCL Institution of Archaeology Collections Manager Ian Carroll: [email protected].

The UCL Institute of Archaeology Collections Air Survey photographs comprise a series of glass plate negatives, cellulose negatives, safety negatives, and prints of Royal Air Force (RAF) aerial photographs taken between 1918 and 1939. The photographs are predominantly of Iraq, the former Transjordan, Egypt, and Sudan (see distribution map). Recently, EAMENA put out a call for information regarding collections of aerial photography. One of the reasons for this is that the aerial photography conducted by the Royal Air Force in the Mandate territories was not comprehensively archived, and some of it was destroyed once it had served its immediate use. What has survived is fragmented, so we are trying to find and piece together those fragments because these images are an amazing resource for discovery, monitoring and analysis of archaeological sites. The UCL collection is one of the larger collections of RAF imagery from the Middle East, and its survival for use in archaeological research was no accident.

One of the glass plate negative boxes, and glass plates encased in RAF envelopes at the UCL Institute of Archaeology Special Collections. Photograph: Rebecca Repper.

This collection originated from a deposit made by O.G.S. Crawford to The British Museum of "obsolete" photographs collected from the RAF during a tour of Iraq, Transjordan, and Egypt in 1928, made at his own expense. In a presentation to the Royal Geographic Society (RGS) and published in The Geographical Journal in 1929, Crawford describes how he enlisted the help of the Air Ministry to photograph sites of archaeological interest, and stated that "these, and also many existing but obsolete negatives abroad, should be handed over to the Director of the British Museum, to form the nucleus of a national collection." The exact contents of this original deposit, however, are not entirely clear from the written record. Crawford stated to the RGS a number of 1,700 negatives; the British Museum Trustee Minutes of 8th June 1929 state 1,150 glass plate negatives and nine rolls of film. This original deposit is likely to be those items now in the UCL Collection, numbered AP1–1356, or possibly all the way to AP1405 (note that there are no items between AP1101–1202 due to misnumbering). As stated, these are predominantly glass plate negatives (most likely gelatin dry plate). It is important to note that many of these are re-photographs of prints or mosaics, which was possibly a mechanism used by the RAF for copying developed material. The original rolls of film have been copied to safety negative film.

Crawford arranged with the Air Ministry for further photography of archaeological sites to be contributed, and the collection continued to grow from these subsequent deposits. The British Museum Trustee Minutes note at least two deposits of this nature: one in 1931 (Trustee Minutes 12th December 1931) and another in 1938 (Trustee Minutes 14th May 1938). These are predominantly 5 x 5 inch cellulose negatives, and some rolls of film (that have been copied to safety negatives). The UCL collection also includes photographs taken as part of Sir Aurel Stein's aerial survey of Iraq with the help of the RAF in 1938 and 1939, so at least one further deposit must have been made, but whether this came from the Air Ministry or from Stein himself has not yet been confirmed. Prints of the majority of this Stein survey material are at The British Academy Archive, though there is some variation in annotation (ASA/3 - see our previous blog, and the Flickr photoset by APAAME). This collection of aerial photographs was originally going to be transferred from the Department of Western Asiatic Antiquities at the British Museum to the Ordnance Survey, where a plan for an aerial photographic library was underway (Trustee's Minutes 12th October 1940, 11th October 1941), but this never came to pass. Instead it was agreed that the collection should be transferred to the Library of the Institute of Archaeology (The National Archives, OS1/384, letter marked '58A', dated 31 May 1949) at Crawford's suggestion (Trustee's Minutes 9 July 1949) to continue as a collection for archaeological reference and something that would be of interest to students. It is now part of the UCL Institute of Archaeology Collections.

Aerial photographs AP816-920, 922-950 of the site of Ur. Background imagery: Google Earth.

The photographs are vertical, oblique, and photo-mosaics. Many of the vertical images comprise series of overlapping photographs. These include such major sites as Ur (AP702–726, 742–886, 888–896, 908–915, 951, 953–955), Mosul (AP451–477), Sulaymaniya (AP678–699), Tell Afar (AP13–27), Erbil (AP319–356), Ctesiphon/Seleukia (AP108–173), Azraq (AP972–1021), Abydos (AP1241–1283), and Giza (AP1615–1622, 1623a).

Photo-mosaics produced from the aerial photography taken by 14 Squadron are particularly common for former Transjordan, including a continuous photo mosaic over four frames of the River Jordan (AP1086–1089), and for the area of Petra and Beidha (AP1286–1289). In only a few instances are the individual frames and the photo mosaic both included in the collection, for example, for Qasr Uweinid (AP1036–1038 and AP1040). This is useful because the creation of a photo-mosaic introduced further distortions into the imagery.

Qasr Uweinid individual frames AP1036-1038 (above), and their mosaic AP1040 (below). Background imagery: Google Earth.

The collection captures some sites in the process of excavation, such as Ur and Khorsobad, and also includes a small number of ground photographs of these two sites (AP645–665 and AP1806–1812, respectively), as well as a single ground shot of Nineveh (AP1805).

The majority of sites captured in Egypt and Sudan follow the Nile, including an extensive collection of photographs of the well-known site of Giza, as well as other pyramids further south. An exception is a small series capturing archaeological sites in the vicinity of the northern section of the Suez Canal and the Sinai Peninsula (AP1591–1614).

The distribution of sites featured in the UCL Institute of Archaeology Air Survey photograph collection negatives. Background imagery: Google Earth.

This collection was digitised by the APAAME project in 2016 in agreement with the UCL Institute of Archaeology, and in co-operation with the EAMENA project. Where known, images have been geo-located, and this process is on-going. Interestingly, one image, AP357, seems, due to the architectural style visible in the photo, to not be of a site located in the Middle East or North Africa region at all and remains a mystery. Geo-location is assisted by the annotations on the (deteriorating) photograph envelopes; where this type of information was available, this has been included in the image caption on the APAAME Flickr page. These annotations are particularly rich for the original deposit by Crawford, where the majority of glass plates are enclosed in RAF aerial photograph annotated envelopes (or replacement 'Antiquity' or 'Ordnance Survey' stationery), and are secured in wooden glass plate cases.

Only the negatives were digitized. Some interruptions in the sequence of photographs suggest some items are missing, while others have been broken (where possible the latter have been included in the scanning process). There are also prints in the collection, but these have not yet been fully investigated. All enquiries regarding access to the collection and reproduction of the images must be directed to the Collections Manager, Ian Carroll: [email protected]. We thank Ian Carroll and UCL Institute of Archaeology for their co-operation and assistance during the lengthy digitisation process. Thanks also go to Francesca Hillier (The British Museum Archive), Patricia Usick (The British Museum Egyptian Department), and Angela Grimshaw (The British Museum Middle East Department), who have assisted in our enquiries regarding the provenance of this collection.

The digitised collection can be browsed on the APAAME Flickr page.

Information regarding the UCL Institute of Archaeology and their Collections and Archive can be found at the following links: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology; http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/about/facilities/collections

Motion Picture Aerial Archaeology

An earlier blog looked at the flights and photography of archaeological sites in Transjordan and Iraq of Robert Alexander MacLean in Summer 1922. Three years later (1925) MacLean joined a Franco-American expedition excavating at Carthage. One of the Co-Directors was a man with the memorable name of Count Byron Khun de Prorok. Thanks to 35 years of research by Michael Tarabulski, it is possible to trace the life and career … and transformation of Francis Victor Kuhn (= Cohen) (1896-1954) from his birth in Mexico City to prosperous Central European immigrants through the adoption of a name from his favourite romantic poet, the more Hungarian-sounding spelling of his surname to Khun and the doubtful claim to a title. After education in France, Britain and Switzerland, he had worked on excavations in Italy, visited Carthage in 1920 and then in 1922 (still just 26) began the first of three seasons of excavation there. He soon also made a reputation as a galvanizing public lecturer and toured widely, but was eyed with suspicion by professional archaeologists who regarded him as a “showman, dabbler, and dilettante” and ultimately his conduct led to academic scandal and discredit as a tomb robber and to his conviction Atlantis lay beneath the Sahara. There may have been some further personal scandal as his first father-in-law (he married four times) succeeded in ensuring that when his daughter - after just 4 years, separated from then divorced him, de Prorok gave up not just care of the two children but never saw them again; indeed the children even had their personal names changed when adopted by their grandfather (all this from the research of Michael Tarabulski).

 

De Prorok’s reputation as a public speaker was founded in part on his use of motion pictures taken on his fieldtrips and excavations, a technique then in its infancy. More than that, however, he was a pioneer not just in taking aerial photographs for recording and discovery at and around Carthage, but using a movie camera in the air as well. Whether he was the first to do so in the Middle East and North Africa region is unclear. Some of his film was broadcast from time to time by Pathe as part of its popular cinema News programmes. For example, Pathe Review No. 46 of 1926 included “The Lost Empire of Africa: A camera chronicle of the American excavations at ancient Carthage led by the Count de Prorok”.

Neither the Pathe material nor de Prorok’s own copies - perhaps sold-off or discarded in his last years when he was in serious financial difficulties, seems to have survived.

What he did and was trying to achieve is explained in some detail by de Prorok in his 1926 book, Digging for Lost African Gods (40-41) where he differentiates between films (moving pictures) and photographs (still shots) and introduces he nearly as enigmatic colleague:

We took films of what we were doing. It was the first time that archaeological research had been filmed, and the idea did not meet with very great favour at first. Since then, however, the value of the step has been recognised, and it is a common practise in many universities to-day, to use films for instruction. Our photographer was the young Prince Edgard de Waldeck, who had spent a fortnight of intensive training in Paris, preparatory to this task. 

Later (71-2):

These are the things we talked about on the voyage, because we were all  keyed up by the prospect of a great advance. We talked about what we had done, and what we were going to do. Of all our future plans, perhaps two stood out most vividly

The first was the use of the Aeroplane in archaeology. That venture, as an experiment, materialized three years ago [1922], and since then we have continued, year by year, our prospecting from the air.

In 1922, we took our first films and photographs from different heights, which resulted in our being able to trace the great submerged walls of ancient Carthage. Flying above the Gulf of Tunis, we were able to film clearly six miles of submerged wall, showing constructions a hundred and fifty yards from the present shore. I can still remember the interest with which the news was received by the Royal Geographical Society, when I lectured to them on the subject in London.

… Our use of the aeroplane this year is to be more varied. At the moment we are using it to film the whole coast line, especially at a spot where we have located a sunken galley a stupendous find, of which I shall say more later and at the legendary island of Djerba, where we have located a city under the sea

And later still (181):

            The sea has also made a great deal of change on all this peninsula, but it is very difficult to ascertain at what period it encroached on the land. From the splendid film taken from the air by the late Prince deWaldeck, who was killed on his way back from Carthage this June, it is possible to perceive constructions as much as 100 yards out to sea.

This film is a unique documentation in archaeology, it being the first attempt to film submarine ruins and record their position. The film and photographs were taken at a height of 1500 feet and again at 400 feet, and are superior to any record we could have made on the sea surface. One can trace not only the ancient sea-wall, which in parts is at a depth of 30 feet, but one can study the topography of the peninsula to an extraordinary extent. The bed of the Mejerda is clearly outlined, the wall of Theodosius can be followed approximately, and even the Roman allotments are defined. Soundings off Carthage were undertaken in 1898 by M. de Roquefeuil, but only in that portion of the coast where Roman Carthage was built, that is between La Goulette and Cap Carthage.

That there was a port at La Marsa is certain from the film (“el Mersa” means a port). The constructions we perceived underwater are of vast dimensions, and stretch from Cap Carthage north-east to Cap Kamart; but those at Cap Kamart have not been marked on any map. There appears to have been a great port here, recalling that of Alexandria, with an opening, and breakwater at right angles to the present village of La Marsa. There was a port here in Arab days, but the jetty was certainly earlier, either Roman or Punic. We have followed these walls in a small boat as far as Cap Kamart in continuous zigzag lines. From the aeroplane we could distinguish another line farther out at sea at a depth of about 30 feet, but it is difficult to ascertain, until our final soundings are completed, whether this was a part of the first constructions. The authorities of the French Oceanographic Museum at Carthage will charter a special ship to make soundings along the coast to verify the measurements of these constructions for future investigation.

Cicero mentions a fact that historians of Carthage seem entirely to neglect, that the city “which Scipio destroyed was surrounded with ports.” From the air one can easily get an idea where ports may have been, in the Sebkha of Sukhra (Salina of the Ancients), at La Marsa, and lastly in the Lake of Tunis (Stagnum of the Ancients). We also photographed from the air the sunken galley found in 1908 by sponge divers, from which a rich spoil of marbles and bronzes has been recovered for the Museum of Bardo. We hope to examine the Gulf of Tunis this winter on the chance of finding traces of other ancient ships, five hundred of which were known to have perished during the Punic wars.

Long before the publication of this book – re-issued in 2004 with a lengthy biographical essay on de Prorok by Michael Tarabulski, de Prorok had published several articles, gone on an extensive lecture tour (including in 1923 as Norton Memorial Lecturer of the Archaeological Institute of America) and a lecture to The Royal Geographical Society in London on 27 November 1923 on his excavations (published in The Geographical Journal 63.3 (March): 177-187). The last is important, providing further references to his flying and filming and the statement that the lecture was “illustrated with kinematograph films taken by the late Prince de Waldeck” and one photograph of “The exacavation of Thuburbo Majus” captioned as “Enlarged from kinematograph film by the Prince de Waldeck”.

Michael Tarabulski has generously shared his 3+ decades in pursuit of de Prorok including his aerial photographs and aerial movie films. Despite the role of digitization in revealing the contents of old archives, nothing has so far emerged from this flying in Tunisia. No further success has attended a Spanish researcher whose articles have appeared just recently (Garcia Sanchez 2014 and 2016). Nevertheless it seems unlikely all copies of all of these early aerial movie films are lost.

‘Count’ Byron Khun de Proprok is a fascinating character. Even some of those who were most critical of his conduct found him personally charming. Plainly audiences were enchanted – perhaps in part because the tall, handsome and self-confident young man sometimes chose to present himself in pith helmet and fieldwork jodhpurs. His lectures regularly merited reports in The New York Times. Whatever his standing as an archaeologist – mere self-publicising tomb-raider, given to grand-standing perhaps, he was swift not only to apply the very new technique of aerial reconnaissance and photography (at least 3 years before Poidebard commenced his pioneering aerial reconnaissance in Syria) but to take it further with motion pictures which could exploit a growing public taste for cinema and raise awareness of archaeological research.

Many thanks to Michael Tarabulski for generously sharing so much of his research and a detailed correspondence.

Reading:

Garciá Sánchez, J. (2014) “Las excavaciones del conde Byron Khun de Prorok en Cartago (1920-1925): la colina de Juno y la difusión cinematográfica de la arqueología cartaginesa/ The Excavations of Count Byron Khun de Prorok in Carthage (1920-1925): The Hill of Juno and the Cinematographic Dissemination of Carthaginian Archaeology”, Boletín del Seminario de Estudios de Arte y Arqueología 80: 129-163

Garciá Sánchez, J. (2016) “Regreso a la tumba de Tin Hinan: nuevas fuentes en torno a las excavaciones de Byron Khun de Prorok en Abalessa (Ahaggar, Argelia)/ Tin Hinan’s Tomb revisited: new sources relating to the Byron Khun de Prorok’s excavation in Abalessa (Ahaggar, Algeria)”, Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (CuPAUAM) 42: 187-208

Khun de Prorok, Comte Byron (1924) “Recent researches on the Peninsula of Carthage”, The Geographical Journal 63.3 (March): 177-187

Khun de Prorok, Comte Byron (1926) Digging for Lost African Gods. The Record of Five Years Archaeological Excavation in North Africa, New York and London (Putnam)

Tarabulski, M. (1989) “Recording the past: capturing the history of archaeology on videotape”, in A. L. Christenson (ed.) Tracing Archaeology's Past: The Historiography of Archaeology, Carbondale (Southern Illinois University Press): 179-186

Tarabulski, M. (2004) “The life and death of Byron Khun de Prorok”, in B. Khun de Prorok, Digging for Lost African Gods. Five Years Archaeological Excavation in North Africa, Santa Barbara (The Narrative Press) 251-267.

Of interest are the recent fictionalised account of de Prorok:

Turmel. W. (2015) The Count of the Sahara, London (The Book Folks)

… and an nterview with the author on 18 November 2015

https://www.voiceamerica.com/episode/88632/the-count-of-the-sahara

View Counts for APAAME on Flickr

Thanks to Andrew Wilson for this graph illustrating the steady and accelerating usage of the APAAME archive. As of 9 February it stands at 7,534,945 … a rise of over half a million view counts in four months.

Flight 20141019 - A new Edomite Stronghold

On Flight 20141019 from Amman to Aqaba six photographs were taken of the dramatic landscape looking west from Qasr Rajif over Wadi Suweid cutting through the sandstone peaks. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the photographs capture the site of an Edomite Fortress.

'el-Manktaa' (Edomite Fortress) - APAAME_20141019_RHB-0287.

Prof. Chaim Ben David alerted us to the existence of the site, known as 'el-Manktaa' to the Bedouins, after he viewed the photographs on our Flickr. His ready knowledge and identification of the site probably due to the fact he had coincidentally visited it just a few months earlier.

The bridge to the site as seen from the wadi valley below. Photograph by Boaz Langford, courtesy of Chaim Ben David.

Following information from fellow hikers Eli Raz and Lior Enmar, who were aware of the phenomenon of Edomite mountain strongholds, in July 2014 Chaim visited two new, apparently as yet undocumented mountain strongholds in the sandstone area below the village of Rajef. The sites are about three kilometers south of Qseir, the southernmost known stronghold until this latest discovery.

Crossing the bridge to the site. Photograph by Boaz Langford, courtesy of Chaim Ben David.

The isolation of the site in the landscape is easily discernible on Google Maps (click here to go to the location). The small Bedouin constructed bridge used by Chaim and his companions to cross into the site can just be seen on the satellite imagery across the fissure that marks the western boundary of the stronghold. Structures are not readily visible on the satellite imagery, or on the low level obliques taken by AAJ, but photographs taken by Boaz Langford from the visit with Chaim show collapsed stone built structures.

Evidence of stone structures at the site. Photograph by Boaz Langford, courtesy of Chaim Ben David.

Chaim’s information means that we can add the coordinates of these sites to future AAJ flight routes, so that the site may be captured in full instead of in a lucky low level oblique landscape shot. Moreover, our better understanding of this type of site means in future we will be better able to discern these sites from the air. Chaim has offered his knowledge to the identification of many sites taken during the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan project's seasons of flying, and taken us on a couple of his amazing hikes across the landscape to investigate features further. Many thanks!

Following is an excerpt from Chaim Ben-David’s forthcoming publication in ARAM Periodical:

“You who live in the clefts of the rocks” (Jer.49:16): 

Edomite Mountain Strongholds in Southern Jordan

Goodbye 2014

What a year it has been!

6 flights of aerial reconnaissance as part of the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan Project 2014
9,522 aerial photographs taken as part of the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan Project 2014
3,216 slides/film digitised
17,344 images cataloged and uploaded to our Flickr archive

Conferences attended:

• Green Arabia, University of Oxford, April 2-4, 2014
• 9th International Conference on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, June 9-13, 2014

Presentations:

• The Parlitalia Lecture - "The Roman Army in Arabia" by David Kennedy to The Italian Association of British Columbia, in Vancouver
• Lansdowne Lectures at the University of Victoria, BC (three lectures and a seminar) presented by David Kennedy.
• Paper by Kennedy, Banks and Dalton - 'Kites in Saudi Arabia' in a Workshop on Kites at ICAANE IX, in Basel
• David Kennedy seminar at the Department of Archaeology, University of Manchester
• Robert Bewley (supported by PEF) workshop - Introduction to Aerial Archaeology March 1st-4th, 2014 at Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Petra.
• Robert Bewley lecture Aerial Archaeology in Britain, Europe and the Middle East to MA in Landscape Archaeology students, University of Oxford, November 2014.

Publications:

• David Kennedy (2013) Remote Sensing and ‘Big Circles’: A New Type of Prehistoric Site in Jordan and Syria, Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie 6: 44-63.
• David Kennedy, (2014) 'Nomad Villages' in north-eastern Jordan: from Roman Arabia to Umayyad Urdunn, Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy 25: 96-109.
• David Kennedy with Rebecca Banks and Paul Houghton (2014) Kites in 'Arabia', Emergent Form for Apple iBooks.
• David L. Kennedy (with Karen Henderson) 2012 (2014) 'The Cairn of Hānī: significance, present condition and context', Annual of the Department of Antiquities, Jordan 56: 483-505. 

Submissions:

• David Kennedy and Rebecca Banks, 'The Khatt Shebib in Jordan: from air and space', Zeitschrift für Orient-Archäologie
• David L. Kennedy and Brett D. Hirsch, 'Prime Suspect: William Cowper Prime in the Holy Land and the identity of 'An American' in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 1858', Palestine Exploration Quarterly
• David Kennedy, Rebecca Banks and Matthew Dalton, 'Kites in Saudi Arabia'
  

Archives: The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection

The G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection is housed at the Library of Congress, Washington.

The collection began as a result of the founding of a photo department at the American Colony in Jerusalem c. 1898, and continued after the break up of the Colony under the direction of G. Eric Matson and his wife Edith as the Matson Photo Service. It was donated to the Library of Congress by Eric Matson in during the 1960s.



It is a rich source of historical images of the Middle East. Though the majority of the items depict Palestine where the Colony and the Matsons were based, there are numerous historical photographs of Amman and other locations in Jordan, as well as other major centres in the Middle East. Of particular interest are the numerous aerial photographs taken - many on the Cairo to Baghdad Airmail Route.

The majority of the collection is in the Public Domain thanks to the original conditions of the donation. The fantastic digitisation program by the Library of Congress means you can access those images online: www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=matpc.

We have gone through the collection and found the majority of the aerial photographs and created an individual set in our Flickr archive: http://www.flickr.com/photos/apaame/sets/72157635656377565/. Where not already known we have endeavoured to identify all of the sites in the photographs and georeference them. In addition to this you will find the Library of Congress online database reference information. In this Flickr set we hope to highlight the part of the collection that is aerial photography, as well to those that depict archaeological sites. We have paid particular attention to the ruins of Amman, ancient Philadelphia.

For more information on the collection please go to the Library of Congress website: www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/matpc/about.html. If you wish to access the original photographs or want unwatermarked digital copies please visit the Library of Congress website. We have provided the reference numbers for the items and links to their item records for this reason. APAAME holds no rights to these images and merely wishes to add to the information held regarding them in the Public Domain.

Flickr Archive: Search issues

Users of our archive hosted on Flickr may have noticed that the interface has gone through some changes recently. Unfortunately this has included what seems a serious glitch in the search tool- basically that you may not get any results at all even if a photograph is named exactly with what you search for (such as 'Umm es-Surab' as I recently found).

My basic experimentation with the problem indicates that a search will find items 'tagged' with the search terms, but not if they are named with that term. If you are having trouble finding a site as a temporary solution I advise that people search for photographs of their site using the georeferenced search tool at www.flickr.com/apaame/map
You can find instructions on how to do this on our YouTube channel: http://youtu.be/rFEF4Vjdo00
If you still have difficulty finding your site, please contact us directly.

Thank you for your patience as we adjust the archive to the changes occurring on the Flickr interface.

Archive: Ground photographs

If you follow our Flickr archive you will have noticed we have been uploading a large amount of ground photographs over the last couple of days. What, you may ask, is an AERIAL photographic archive doing uploading so many ground photographs?

Well, in short, you cannot make sound conclusions from the aerial photographs unless you go and have a look on the ground – and this is why we have conducted so many ground visits. Additional information can easily be gathered without the need to conduct any formal excavation – such as if stone is worked or not, if there are large amounts of pottery scattered over the site, and whether there are any associated structures not easily visible from the air such as wine presses, cisterns etc.

This means that on our Flickr photostream you may compare the impression you get from a site as seen from the air with how that site appears on the ground. Ground photographs reference numbers are prefixed by APAAMEG (Or you can find them all in the collection here).

Something you may have noticed is that we are continually returning to sites. We revisit sites that are at particular risk or are constantly changing – such as Yajuz and the risks associated with the urban development of Amman, or the ongoing excavation, conservation and restoration projects at Jerash. A good excuse to visit sites again is when the team has a new member.

Something new to our Flickr archive and still being trialled with this most recent upload of ground images is the inclusion of ‘Pleiades’ tags. Pleiades (http://pleiades.stoa.org/) is an open source project developed by the Ancient World Mapping Centre, the Stoa Consortium and the Institute of the Ancient World. The database of sites is developed to act as a continually updated referenced atlas of the ancient world. They list 34,690 places and counting.

Each site has a unique identifier which you use to complete a ‘machine tag’: “Pleiades:depicts=******” if the site is depicted in the photograph, or “Pleaides:atteststo=*****” if the object photographed attests to the existence or location of the site- such as an inscription. There are other combinations too which you can read about on Sean Gillies blog.

By using these tags the Pleiades database recognises that we have photographs of their documented sites, and therefore people accessing their database of sites can easily access our photographs that relate to that site. Everyone ends up a winner! If you have feedback, please don’t forget to let us know.

If you are interested in the Pleiades project, or wish to become a contributor, please visit their website for more info.

Searching APAAME Flickr by location

Perhaps one of the easiest way to search for images of a place is to search by its location. You will now be able to search using this method on our Flickr archive because we are currently uploading our geo-referencing metadata with our images. We'll let you know when it is all uploaded - check our Twitter @APAAME.

We geo-tag our images in one of two ways:

1. a digitised image from the collection is georeferenced based on the site it represents
2. a digital photograph is georeferenced based on the GPS of the flight path or camera when the photo was taken in real time.

The resulting scatter of location 'dots' will reflect these two methods of geotagging:

• many photographs may be represented by one 'dot' where they have been georeferenced based on the location of the site
• sequences of dots may indicate the path taken on a particular flight

To help you search our Flickr archive by location, we have composed this short tutorial.

How to search for a location in Flickr: (to expand images simply click on them)
1. Go to http://www.flickr.com/apaame/map

What www.flickr.com/apaame/map looks like when you first get there.

2. Zoom to the area you are interested in finding photographs for

Here I have zoomed in onto the ancient and modern town of Umm el-Jimal.

3. 'Refresh' the image list (pink dots will populate the map area if there are images for it)

This is where you find the refresh button when you have chosen the area you are interested in.

Notice the cluster of pink dots in the centre of Umm el-Jimal and that the list of photographs has gone down from around 60,000 to 200 or so in this instance.

4. If there are more images listed than what shows on the thread, click on the arrow to the right to scroll through them.

Click on the arrow to the right of the thread to scroll through available images for this area. Notice the distribution of pink dots has changed to suit those images now showing in the thread.

5. If you click on the pink dot that represents photograph/s georeferenced to that point - the thread of images will highlight those images that correspond to that geographic location. Click on an image thumbnail to view a larger thumbnail, and click on the larger thumbnail to open the image in a new window.

Notice the 'dot' clicked on has a white selection cloud around it and the two images for that location are indicated to the left of the thread - one of which has an expanded thumbnail to allow you a better look.

Note: the map will only show the locations of those images that are visible in the thread, not all the images in the archive. To access all of the images for the viewable area you must scroll through the thread.

We hope this quick tutorial has been helpful. If you would like some clarification, or think we should include something else, please let us know. Likewise, if you have any pointers for us.

More tutorials about how to use our archive are available on our YouTube feed: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhsAYi0XrGzZg75WIYZEEWqdJ0h1kxQpx

Flickr Featured Sets

Over the last couple of days I have been looking through the Flickr archive and updated a few of our sets.

In 'Tracking Change' we set out to fly over a handfull of sites regularly in the course of our flying seasons to photograph the changes that are occuring, whether they be seasonal, environmental or man made. We have also included a set named 'Development Impacts' which gives examples of the kinds of human activity that are encroaching on Jordan's heritage.
Some sites that have particularly changed over recent years are:

• Yajuz: a small Roman town on the outskirts of modern day Amman
• Qasr el-Mshatta: a 'desert castle' located near Queen Alia Airport
• Jarash: one of the best preserved archaeological sites in Jordan which is the focus of ongoing excavation and reconstruction
• Azraq Shishan: the oasis of Azraq that was (and is) severly under threat from overuse of its water, but has in recent years become a nature reserve in an effort to bring life back to the dying wetlands.

In 'Featured Sets' we hope to build a collection of sets that will act as introductions to the various site types and time periods that are evident in Jordan's archaeological landscape. Our collections so far include

• General Showcase: a selection of some of our favourite sites and photos of Jordan
• Classical Showcase: Classical (Greek and Roman period) sites in Jordan
• Kites: photographs of the various stone build structures known as Kites
• Wheels: a selection of the numerous and somewhat enigmatic circular structures known as Wheels
• Desert 'Castles': popular tourist attraction in Jordan, the scale and layout of these often impressively preserved structures is highly visible from above
• The Hejaz Railway and World War One: the archaeology of modern conflict is still clear throughout parts of Jordan. This set introduces trenches and railway remains from this period, well known for the Great Arab Revolt and exploits of T. E. Lawrence
• Biblical Sites: Jordan is the setting of many episodes from the Bible, and this set features some of the known sites mentioned in the Bible that we have visited.

If you want to see more photographs of a particular site, or we haven't featured one you are interested in, please use the search tool at the top right hand corner of Flickr's site window, being sure to select "Search APAAME's Photostream".

If you have any site types or periods that you think we should feature or photograph in future, please let us know!