black desert

Light from the East

Dr. Gary Rollefson, anthropologist and recent National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Fellow at ACOR, writes below about his ongoing research in the desolate Black Desert of eastern Jordan.  In 1980, Alison Betts, a doctoral student at the time, invited me to Jordan’s Black Desert to see what her research area looked like. After climbing to […]

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Who Were the People in the Neolithic Black Desert? — An ACOR Video Lecture

The ACOR Video Lecture Series provides accessible discussions of new research into the past and present of Jordan and the broader Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean worlds. This video was adapted from the October 2017 public lecture delivered at ACOR by Dr. Gary Rollefson, ACOR-NEH Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Whitman College.  Dr. Rollefson’s recent

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Gary Rollefson, NEH Fellow, Fall 2017

Dr. Gary Rollefson, professor emeritus of Anthropology at Whitman College, is a 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellow at ACOR. Dr. Rollefson’s NEH Fellowship project, titled “Lithic Technologies and Social Identities: A Comparative Analysis of Chipped Stone Tool Production in Jordan’s Badia,” examines the stone tools associated with the remains of Neolithic houses

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Mesa house photo by Rollefson

“A Kinder, Greener Black Desert” by Dr. Gary Rollefson

A Kinder, Greener Black Desert: Results of Archaeological Research of Neolithic Sites Dr. Gary Rollefson Professor of Anthropology, Whitman College ACOR-CAORC Senior Fellow Tuesday 25 February 2014, 6:00 pm Reception to Follow About the Lecture: Passing through the Black Desert in northeastern Jordan, one is struck by the lifeless and forbidding character of the landscape.

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