PellaPod can be found on our Soundcloud, Pella @ Wooster
Resources:
Director’s Progress Report for the period March 15-December 15, 1966 (College of Wooster Special Collections)
Director’s Progress Report of the First Season, 1967 (College of Wooster Special Collections)
Pella Newsletter (College of Wooster Art Museum Collections)
Handbook of General Information, 1967 Season (College of Wooster Art Museum Collections)
Special thanks to Dr. Marianne Wardle for allowing us to share the last two resources publicly!
Transcript:
Hello everyone, and welcome to PellaPod, a podcast dedicated to sharing information about the Pella at Wooster project. My name is Leo Daoud, and I am a sophomore research assistant in the Museum Studies department and I’ll be hosting today’s episode. Last episode was a short overview introducing our goals surrounding the Pella collection and how it exists today, as well as an explanation of how the excavation began. Today, I’d like to elaborate more on the timeline and happenings of the excavation itself.
A group of interested professors drafted and submitted a proposal for an expedition to Pella December 11, 1964. On March 3, 1965, the expedition was approved as a pursuit by Dean Drushal and President Lowry, and it became an official College of Wooster research project. This approval meant that spring of 1965 was populated with policy meetings by the Archeological Advisory Committee, which voted yes on a $5000 grant to fund Smith’s preparations in Jordan. However, prior to his travel to Jordan, Smith spent his time visiting archeologists and other specialists across the East Coast to gather information on methods, tools, and funding. This work also served as part of his efforts to recruit staff for the excavation, who came from other institutions outside the College of Wooster. While Smith did look into some sources of funding for the expedition, this task fell primarily to G.T. Smith from Development, and Professor Arthur Baird from the religious studies department.
In May, the College submitted an application to the Jordanian government for a license to start their excavation. Paperwork documenting this process says that “[LD1] [LD2] Throughout these proceedings, the College has been in close touch with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, from which it has received advice and encouragement.” This relationship between the department and the college came through director Robert Smith’s previous academic relationship with its head, Awni Dajani.
On July 1, 1965, Smith began his travels. Before he arrived in Jordan, he visited England, Rome, Israel, and Lebanon, where he connected with experts, some of whom agreed to work on the expedition. In Jordan, he contacted their Department of Antiquities, and gained approval for both his preparatory work and an extension on the College’s permit to excavate to December of 1967. At Pella itself, he hired a surveyor to draw up maps, and a meteorologist to arrange for a year of weather observations. He was also able to obtain pre-existing maps and aerial view, which he supplemented with his own photographs and videotapes. Some logistical work was completed, including securing accommodations and devising a method for the future excavators to process items. The end of the summer, and therefore this phase of the project, culminated in a Director’s Report published September 26, 1966, which is currently found in COW’s Special Collections. This report estimated that $65,000 would be necessary for the 1967 season alone, an amount that has the same purchasing power as half a million would today.
From September 1966 to February 1967, Smith worked with the Development Department to obtain funding, briefed staff on relevant information, and equipment was shipped to Jordan. In December, final approval by the Jerusalem Committee of the American Schools of Oriental Research was secured; side note, the school is now the American School of Overseas Research. From February to April, Smith was on leave from teaching obligations to continue preparations in Jordan, while the six students selected to join the expedition studied Palestinian archeology and conversational Arabic at ASOR. Previously, the first season was to be divided into a spring session from March 27th to May 18th, and a summer session between June 19th to August 11th. However, because of rainy weather, illnesses among the staff, and delayed shipments of equipment caused by the holidays Eid ul Adha and Easter, the excavation was not able to start until April 9th, 1967. Work on the site focused primarily on 2 different locations: a church in the West, and a cemetery in the East.
The spring session of the first season was fruitful in the eyes of Robert Smith. In addition to many artifacts, his team was able to uncover mosaics in the church, and multiple tombs at the cemetery. One of the tombs was believed to belong to an official in late Byzantine times. However, there were a few concerns that came from a fellow College of Wooster professor, Arnold Lewis from the Art Department, He was able to visit due to his proximity to the area, since he was on sabbatical in Beirut. In a letter to Dean Drushal, he detailed some of the challenges Smith and his team were facing socially. Firstly, there was some tension in the archeological community due to previous interest in the site, which was arguably the richest unexplored location in the country. Some felt that it was unfair that a school that didn’t even have an archeology program was allowed to stake their claim over the site first, purely because they were able to first secure funding and legal permission. Additionally, some of the staff at ASOR in Jerusalem were apparently a bit hostile to Wooster students because of their lack of expertise and prior training, leading to some tense moments and frustration, especially among the female-identifying students.
Lewis’ letter also foreshadowed some logistical problems that remain challenges for the collection. The college was in too deep—as a small liberal arts college, its resources were not well matched with a major archaeological dig. Typically, research-intensive institutions with graduate students and big grants undertake these kinds of projects. Lewis also worried about the artifacts from the dig, as there was no guarantee how many of them they would be able to keep. And if they were allowed to keep the artifacts, how would they be kept and displayed? At the time, Wooster did not have an art museum or museum storage facility.
These concerns were especially critical because the 1967 season was to be only the first of 5 dig seasons that were supposed to happen every two years over the next decade, per the 1966 proposal. But all Smith’s meticulous planning could not account for the disruptions the dig faced.
The biggest disruption was the outbreak of the Six-Day War. On May 20, the spring session of the 1967 season was supposed to temporarily halt for a month while Smith and the students took a break in Jerusalem. By May 28, Smith sent word back to the United States that he wouldn’t be resuming the summer session as expected. He reported on the escalation of the situation, saying that near the end of the spring session, American and British news sources described military parades which took place in Israel in celebration of 19 years since its establishment as a nation. In response, Egypt wanted UN peacekeeping forces kept at the Israel-Egypt border to withdraw.
Historically, there had been tensions between the two parties, so many of the other Westerners that stayed at ASOR in Jerusalem did not find the American Consulate’s encouragement to leave the area to be urgent. However, the situation seemed to get more and more serious as the Straits of Tiran were blockaded by Egyptian forces, which would prevent Israel from accessing waterways from the South. This would potentially be grounds for war. Relations between Jordan and Syria also deteriorated, as a Syrian car rigged with explosives was detonated at the Jordanian border, killing 16. The resulting closure of the Syrian border, and the potential blockage of Jordan’s access to the sea due to Egyptian efforts to halt shipping to Eilat, Israel limited potential escape routes. By then, it was clear that sending the students away was the best choice to ensure their safety. They were sent to Beirut – to be guests of Professor Arnold Lewis, who was there conducting research on his sabbatical. The six students stayed with Professor Lewis for a short time before they rerouted back, eventually, to the US. Meanwhile, Smith stayed to properly close down the site for the season, where he documents soldiers setting up artillery before he was airlifted to Tehran, Iran, on June 12, 1967.
Smith fully intended to return to the site, though there was no updated timeline to when this would occur. Jordan’s signature of a mutual defense pact with Egypt on May 30 made sure that they were actively involved in the Six Day War, which began on June 5. However, political upheaval was not the only factor in these delays. Dr. Howard Lowry, president of the college, and a powerful supporter of the expedition died suddenly on the 4th of July 1967, shortly after Smith returned stateside. Even in the best of times, it is an extraordinary feat for a small liberal arts college to successfully undergo such an expedition. Gathering resources—whether this be manpower, knowledge, or money—is difficult to do on such a scale. With this sudden loss compounding the political upheaval of the Six Day War and the cancellation of the second half of the first Pella season, the fate of Dr. Robert Smith’s beloved endeavor was grim – but this isn’t the end of our Pella story.
And with that, I just want to thank you all for listening to the continuation of PellaPod and shoutout our other social media, on which we’ve had some super cool updates on the most recent steps we’re taking with this journey. Our Instagram is @pellawooster, and our TikTok is @pella.wooster. As with last episode, we have some of our resources in the show notes, and tune in to our next episodes to learn more about Dr. Smith’s next steps in his journey with Pella, and Wooster’s return to Pella after the Six Day War.