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A Festschrift honoring Thomas Parker’s contributions to Roman Arabia and Jordanian archaeology

In the early 1970s, after S. T. Parker read G. W. Bowersock’s “Report on Provincia Arabia”, Parker’s life — and, with it, our understanding of Roman Arabia — was changed significantly. Bowersock’s report, a summation and observations on past research, pointed out our lack of understanding of this region in the Later Empire, and suggested a solution: The history of Arabia the province is dark in the late empire ... Perhaps not much can be expected until, if a hope may be expressed, Lejjūn is excavated.1 Parker would fulfill that hope. After gaining valuable archaeological experience on projects in Jordan, Israel and Cyprus, he wrote a Ph.D. dissertation addressing the history of the Arabian frontier that in 1976 involved fieldwork “to survey the entire length of the [Limes Arabicus] frontier in Jordan and to examine most sites that were larger than a watchtower” (ix). To date the sites surveyed, Parker studied with J. Sauer, utilizing the ceramic typology that Sauer had recently created for Tell Hesban.2 Thus began Parker’s career as a ceramicist as well as a field archaeologist and historian. After completing his dissertation (it was published in 1986),3 Parker returned to Jordan in 1979 with an excavation and survey project focused on the Arabian frontier east of the Dead Sea.4 This project included excavation of the legionary fortresses at Lejjūn which, thanks to his multi-year excavations, is still one of the most important sites for our understanding of the eastern frontiers.5 In 1993, Parker enlarged his focus to ancient trade and the economy by undertaking a multi-year project to survey and excavate the Red Sea port of Aqaba (Aila) and its hinterland in the Nabataean and Roman periods.6 In 2012, with codirector M. Perry, he expanded his research once more to investigate a non-élite neighbourhood on Petra’s north ridge.7 All of these projects, as well as his work as an excavator and ceramicist for B. de Vries’ Umm el-Jimal Project in 1977-84, have considerably enhanced scholars’ understanding of the Roman and Byzantine Near East and of the Nabataean Kingdom, especially in areas relating to the military frontier and to trade and supply. His projects have also provided training for hundreds of students in the field and in his ceramics lab, and have given opportunities to specialists from diverse disciplines to use his projects’ data in their own research.