The summer of 2012 I had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Petra, Jordan to work on the Petra Routes Project, a subset of the Brown University Petra Archaeological Project, started in the 1970s by Martha Joukowsky. I assisted Professors Felipe Rojas, PhD and Michelle Berenfeld, PhD with their mapping and documentation initiatives in the "suburbs" of Petra. Our focus was the water management systems and agricultural terracing along the routes leading to the city center, as well as developing a drawing standard that shows how these features are embedded in the dramatic rocky landscape.
Watercolor of vaulted cistern shown in drawing below
Water was expertly captured from adjacent mountains as well as from exposed bedrock surfaces using elaborate systems of rock cut channels.
