Dr Carol Palmer is an anthropologist, archaeologist and botanist. Her research interests concentrate on food production and consumption, including the contemporary and recent use of plants on the broadest level, cultivated, gathered and grazed (ethnobotany); changes in and the long-term impact of food production practices on the landscape and in society; archaeobotany; and food as material culture.

Carol originally trained as an environmental archaeologist (BA Durham; MSc Sheffield), specialising in archaeological plant remains. She developed her expertise in anthropology through her PhD (Sheffield) research, an ethnobotanical study of traditional farming practices in northern Jordan. Between 1999 and 2002 she held a CBRL Post-doctoral Fellowship at the University of Leicester during which time she conducted ethnographic fieldwork in southern Jordan, mainly at Wadi Faynan as part of Prof Graeme Barker’s (now at the University of Cambridge) project there. She gained extensive experience in plant ecology as a Research Associate (2003-2006) on the FIBS (Functional Interpretation of Botanical Surveys) project with Prof Glynis Jones and Dr Mike Charles (University of Sheffield), and has gone on to conduct plant surveys in Greece and Croatia examining the impact of changes in modern landscape use on vegetation, as well as conducting botanical studies in Jordan. Continuing her ethnographic interests, she is currently completing researching and editing a manuscript held by the Palestine Exploration Fund, London, written by the Polish ethnograher, Lucjan Turkowski, based on fieldwork he conducted in the Bethlehem area between 1943 and 1947. She has a long-term fascination with the rural Middle East, and with the cultural heritage of fellahin and bedouin, research she is continuing as part of her current post.

Carol became Director of the British Institute in Amman in September 2009 and is an Honorary University Fellow at the University of Exeter. She currently serves as the editor of the CBRL Bulletin.

Selected publications:

• C. Palmer, S. Colledge, A. Bevan, and J. Conolly (2010) Vegetation recolonisation on abandoned agricultural terraces on Antikythera, Greece. Environmental Archaeology 15: 64-80.
• C. Palmer, D. Gilbertson, H. el-Rishi, C. Hunt, J. Grattan, S. McLaren and B. Pyatt (2007) The Wadi Faynan today: landscape, environment, people, 25-57. In G. Barker, D. Gilbertson and D. Mattingly (eds) Archaeology and Desertification: The Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey, southern Jordan. Wadi Faynan Series 2; Levant Supplementary Series 6. Oxford: Council for British Research in the Levant and Oxbow Books.
• C. Palmer, H. Smith and P. Daly (2007) Ethnoarchaeology, 369-395. In the above monograph by G. Barker et al..
• C. Palmer and P. Daly (2006) Jouma’s tent: bedouin and digital archaeology, 97-127. In P. Daly & T. Evans (eds) Digital Archaeology. Routledge.
• G. Jones, M. Charles, A. Bogaard, J. Hodgson, and C. Palmer (2005) ‘The functional ecology of present-day arable weed floras and its applicability for the identification of past crop husbandry’. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 14 (4): 493-504.
• C. Palmer (2002) Milk and cereals: identifying food and food identity among fallahin and bedouin in Jordan. Levant 34: 173-195. (Arabic version available)
• C. Palmer (1999) Whose land is it anyway? An historical examination of land tenure and agriculture in northern Jordan, 288-305. In C. Gosden & J. Hather (eds) The Prehistory of Food. Routledge.
• C. Palmer (1998) ‘Following the plough’: the agricultural environment of northern Jordan. Levant 30: 129-165.

She also contributed to the plant section of the Field Guide to the Plants and Animals of Petra (2006) by Isabelle Ruben with Ahmed Disi, published by the Petra Natural Trust.

John has a BA in Social Anthropology from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and has a place to study for an MSc in Ethnobotany at the University of Kent in 2011. Since graduating in 2005 John has volunteered in Palestine and Sudan, travelled through parts of North Africa and the Middle East, and worked various jobs to fund it all, including in public libraries back in the UK.

John’s interests lie in the relationship between plants and people: the role plants play in shaping culture, the interaction between people and their environment, and how the nature/culture boundary is subsequently blurred. He is also interested in small-scale, traditional agriculture and what it may offer in terms of sustainable development. He hopes to learn much from the Bedouin and Fellahin of Jordan and Palestine.

Simon Mills studied at the Universities of Wales and Manchester and gained his PhD from Queen Mary, University of London in 2009. His thesis, which he is currently reworking into a monograph, examines the British Unitarians’ contribution to philosophical and theological debate in the second half of the eighteenth century and the circulation of these ideas in the correspondence networks of the scientist, philosopher, and theologian Joseph Priestley (1733-1804). Between 2005 and 2009 he was an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award Holder at the Dr Williams’s Centre for Dissenting Studies, where he remains a Visiting Research Fellow. He has published an online edition of a selection of Priestley’s correspondence, a number of articles on topics related to his thesis, and is a contributor to the forthcoming A History of the Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860, for which he is writing chapters on the teaching of ‘Pneumatology’ as part of the academies’ philosophy curriculum and the connections between the English academies and the Scottish universities.

Simon’s wider research interests lie in the religious, cultural, and intellectual history of the period from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, with a particular focus on rational dissent, correspondence networks, the history of biblical and oriental studies, and the history of philosophy. At the CBRL Simon is developing a new research project examining the careers of the chaplains who served the English Levant Company at Aleppo, Constantinople, and Smyrna between 1620 and 1760. He is particularly interested in the intersection between exploration and scholarship, and is using letters, diaries, and travel journals to explore the ways in which the first-hand knowledge of the languages, religions, antiquities, geography, flora, and fauna of the Levant acquired by the chaplains impacted on the development of biblical and oriental studies in Britain.

Research Interests

• ‘Scripture and Heresy in the Biblical Studies of Nathaniel Lardner and Joseph Priestley’, Dissent and the Bible in Britain, 1650-1950, ed. Scott Mandelbrote and Michael Ledger-Lomas (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
• ‘Pneumatology’, in A History of the Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860, ed., Isabel Rivers and David Wykes; associate editors Knud Haakonssen and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
• ‘The dissenting academies and the Scottish universities’ (with David Steers) in A History of the Dissenting Academies in the British Isles, 1660-1860, ed., Isabel Rivers and David Wykes; associate editors Knud Haakonssen and Richard Whatmore (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)
• ‘Joseph Priestley’s connections with Catholics and Jews’, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, 24.3 (2009), 176-191
• ‘Aspects of a Polymath: Unveiling J. T. Rutt’s Edition of Joseph Priestley’s Letters to Theophilus Lindsey’, Enlightenment and Dissent, 24 (2008), 24-53
• The Letters of Joseph Priestley to Theophilus Lindsey, 1769-1794 (Dr Williams’s Centre for Dissenting Studies, 2008) Access online here.

Alison Damick holds a BA in the History of Art and Architecture from Middlebury College and an MA in Field Archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. She is currently involved with the Epipalaeolithic Foragers in Azraq Project excavations at Kharaneh IV, for which she is developing a long-term community engagement strategy, and with the American University in Beirut excavation at Tell Fadaous-Kfarabida, where she is studying the ground stone artifacts.  She has also worked with the Beirut Digital Archives Project and held a Presidential Internship with the Department of Performing and Visual Arts at the American University in Cairo.

Alison’s research interests lie in the development of collaborative archaeological practice, archaeology as civic engagement, and the contemporary socio-political context of archaeology in the Middle East. She is also interested in domestic material culture, particularly stone technologies, in the Levant and especially Lebanon in later prehistory and proto-history. Her current work attempts to engage with localized pathways of communication about the past, archaeology, and heritage in Jordan and Lebanon within archaeology-specific and non-archaeology-specific contexts in an attempt to promote a working methodology for collaborative archaeology in these regions and to establish productive frameworks for future research.

To see a video clip of one of the recent school programs held at Azraq (in Arabic), click here: Aramram Film's website.
Alison's work in Azraq has also been profiled by The Jordan Times here.

Research Interests

• Community archaeology
• Field methodology
• Later prehistoric and proto-historic Levant

Nadja Qaisi completed her BA in Archaeology at the University of Jordan and worked for the German Protestant Institute (GPI), The German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) before starting at CBRL (BIAAH) in 1996.

Moh’d Fseiseh worked in Iraq for 9 years before returning to Jordan, where upon he worked for 2 years with a satellite company. At the beginning of the seventies he joined the staff of the BIAAH (British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History) where he worked for its first director Dr Crystal Bennett as the cook and driver. He has worked continuously for the BIAAH/CBRL ever since; a period covering over 30 years and is now the Institute’s caretaker, driver and general fix-it person.

Baby Delgado worked in the Philippines and travelled to Singapore and Bahrain before settling in Jordan in 1986. She first started working for the BIAAH as a housekeeper in 1998, when Alison McQuitty was director. Baby has been with the organisation for many years and is a vital member of the local team, who ensures the smooth running of the centre.