This past Tuesday I attended the unveiling of Mega-Jordan with other ACOR fellows. Mega-J is basically an upgraded version of JADIS or a more detailed version of DAAHL. It was created by the Getty and World Monument Fund in cooperation with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. It is a site documentation and management tool, cataloging all archaeological sites in Jordan. It was created in an open source format using Google Earth and GIS tools. It will have two main uses: monitoring sites in order to assess damage or potential damage and as a search engine for the location, periodization, and content of each site.
Personally I have been waiting for it to be unveiled so I can use it for my dissertation. In part of a chapter I want to look at settlement patterns in the Baq’ah Valley during the major occupation periods at Safut. Since there has been no recent complete survey of the valley (McGovern’s survey only covered the southwest corner) I was planning on using DAAHL to get all the sites in valley. However there was no way to export the data sets, which is something easily done in Mega-J.
John, Matt, and I in front of the Jordan Museum
