The site of Humayma in southern Jordan has been under excavation since 1986. Those explorations uncovered a Nabataean village, one of the earliest Roman forts in the Roman provenance of Arabia, and several churches and mosques on the approximately 1-square-kilometer site. Yet much remains unknown about the daily life of Humayma’s Classical-period residents, the funerary landscape, and urban industry in a peripheral, arid landscape. This lecture will discuss what 30 years of archaeological work has discovered about the site, under the direction of John Oleson and M. Barbara Reeves, and the recently renewed project, directed by Craig Harvey (PhD, University of Michigan), Sarah Wenner, and Amanda Hardman.

Sarah Wenner, Ph.D. (Classical Archaeology, University of Cincinnati, 2023), is the jointly appointed assistant professor of archaeology at the American Center of Research (Amman, Jordan) and provenance researcher and object historian at the Cincinnati Art Museum. In Jordan, where she has worked for well over a decade, Wenner serves as the associate director of the Humayma Excavation Project and assistant director of the Petra Garden and Pool Project. Currently, she is editing an exhibition catalogue on ancient queenship of the eastern Mediterranean and West Asia in the 1st millennium BCE and the final report for the Roman Street Project. Her work explores the making of Roman cities through the recycling of urban waste.

FAST (Field Archaeology Series on Thursday) Lectures are free and open to the public. This event will take place in Room 125 of the Kelsey Museum’s Newberry Hall. Light refreshments and food will be provided at 5:30 PM, with the lecture starting at 6:00 PM.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding accessing this event, please visit our accessibility page at https://myumi.ch/zwPkd or contact the education office by calling (734) 647-4167. We ask for advance notice as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.