The Madaba Regional Archaeological Museum Project (MRAMP): Emerging Community Archaeology in Central Jordan
Narrating Archaeological Sites and Places - Fifty Years of the Madaba Plains Project at Tall Hisban, Tall al-`Umayri, and Tall Jalul - Douglas R. Clark
Douglas R. Clark [+]
La Sierra University
Description
In collaboration with MRAMP co-directors Suzanne Richard (Gannon University); Andrea Polcaro (Perugia University); Marta D’Andrea (Sapienza University of Rome); and in-country coordinator Basem Mahamid (Department of Antiquities of Jordan) Excavations at Tall Ḥisbān, Tall al-ʿUmayri, and Tall Jalūl, along with a dozen other active projects in the region bounded by southern ʿAmmān and the Wādī al-Mūjib, the Dead Sea and the eastern desert, send recovered material culture to the Mādabā District office of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan (DoA) for storage and research. The Madaba Museum backstory involves a 2006 meeting in the office of then Director General of the DoA, Dr. Fawwaz al-Khraysheh, during which he asked for help to upgrade the current Madaba museum, train its staff, and digitize its records. Regional dig directors pressed for the establishment of an entirely new museum near the heart of historic downtown Mādabā, an emerging consensus which gained traction and led in 2012 to approval for use of part of the Madaba Archaeological Park West for the new facility. In 2015 the international (American, Italian, and Jordanian) collaboration, Madaba Regional Archaeological Museum Project (MRAMP), was born. Not only did MRAMP provide an opportunity to protect, preserve, and present the region’s considerable cultural heritage to locals and visitors alike, it also opened the door for the practice of “community archaeology.” This relatively new sub-discipline considers archaeology as a public asset which promises public protection of the past and economic security for the present and future.