After 14 summers excavating an ancient Nabatean temple complex in Petra, Jordan, Martha Joukowsky '58 P'87, professor emerita of old world archaeology and art, will stop working on the site, though it will remain a University project.
Joukowsky said she decided to retire from archaeological fieldwork because of the physical and financial demands associated with such efforts.
"When you've had 14 years of 10 weeks in the field in the blistering heat with the most amazing group of students, it's exhausting," she said. "It's heartwarming but at the same time its very strenuous work ... you don't think about anything else."
For the past 14 years, Joukowsky has dedicated much of her time to the Great Temple, a complex built by the Nabateans sometime between 100 B.C. and 200 A.D. in Petra. When not in Jordan excavating with her husband, Chancellor Emeritus Artemis Joukowsky '55 P'87, and a team of Brown undergraduate and graduate students, Joukowsky spent most of her time fundraising and preparing for each summer's fieldwork.
"It's a tremendous responsibility, dealing with archaeological and administrative matters, dealing with the (Jordanian) government, dealing with fundraising," she said. "30 percent of my time each year was spent raising money for the excavation."
The Great Temple site - a massive complex consisting of a temple, a 620-seat theater and a Roman-Byzantine bathhouse, among other structures - was first discovered by German archaeologists in the 1920s but was deemed impossible to excavate. However, Joukowsky and her teams have been able to excavate almost the entire site, which included the largest freestanding building yet excavated in Petra, over the past 14 years.
This past summer Joukowsky's team largely finished excavating the Roman-Byzantine bath complex adjacent to the Great Temple itself.
"Even I didn't know what we would be able to do," Joukowsky said. "I'm flabbergasted."
The excavation of the Great Temple has yielded more than 500,000 artifacts, about seven of which were shown at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The exhibition has traveled throughout the country and is now being shown in Canada.
Joukowsky said her team received permission from the Jordanian government to keep many of the antiquities discovered in Petra at Brown on a 30-year loan.
Marshall Agnew '07, a student who has participated in the digs with Joukowsky for the past two summers, said the Great Temple site will remain a University project but will also involve Jordanian authorities.
The site will also be taken care of and restored by some of the roughly 30 Bedouins who have worked on the project since its inception, Agnew said. As a result of continued collaboration over the years, Joukowsky and her team have built lasting relationships with many Bedouins living in Petra.
"It was great working in the Middle East with Brown students and exposing them to Bedouin culture," Joukowsky said. "My team was so popular they'd be invited to three weddings a night."
"The Bedouins have us over all the time," Agnew said. "It made me want to go back to Petra for the rest of my life because now I have such good friends there."
Though Joukowsky is officially retiring from fieldwork, she said she might return to Petra in the next year. Joukowsky also said she would like the University to stay involved in the future.
"I hope that in a couple of years there will be a Brown interest in further excavation of the site," she said.
"I feel so grateful to Brown, I feel so grateful to my team, to the Bedouins who have worked beside me for 14 years, I watched so many of them grow up," Joukowsky said. "I've watched my students become independent scholars and critical thinkers and I don't think there's anything more satisfying than that."
