Hesban 4: Ethnoarchaeological Foundations

Asta LaBianca (English)

Hesban 4: Ethnoarchaeological Foundations

Hesban 4: Ethnoarchaeological Foundations is the title of the fourth in a series of fourteen volumes that make up the Hesban Final Publication Series (Ten volumes are published.). This particular volume will present and interpret ethnographic data gathered in the present day village of Hisban, Jordan and in the surrounding region by a number of collaborators, including the project director Oystein LaBianca, and me, during the original Heshbon Expedition. It will also incorporate ethnographic observations and images recorded in books and articles published by earlier travelers to the region of Hisban. Presently both these datasets are being digitized by two Andrews URAs using NVivo, a software especially designed for analyzing qualitative data. My role with this project will be to serve as co-author and co-editor of this volume. My principal collaborators will be Kristen Witzel and Oystein LaBianca, who have both already done research and writing related to this project and who will, together with me, collaborate on generating the chapters to be published in this volume. In my case, I will focus on writing the chapters that deal with the lives and work of women in the village. To this end I will be learning to use NVivo myself so I can access and manipulate the data digitized this current school year by the two URA students. The goal is to have the text for Hesban 4 completed and ready for the publisher by the end of 2015.