Hands-on-Workshop on Cultural and Natural Heritage in Irbid (Jordan)

Financed by the special “Flight and Migration” funds of the German Federal Foreign Office, seventeen Jordanian and Syrian men and women will be trained as museum and landscape educators. Museum directors and teachers, archaeologists, students and village people, all these men and women learn more about the history and archaeology of their home region.

Under the supervision of the experimental archaeologist Dr. Frank Andraschko from the University of Hamburg and of Dr. Claudia Bührig they experience the use of bows and arrows, spear throwing, fire lighting without matches and other prehistoric techniques, which are experienced primarily with schoolchildren and tourists. The training pursues an initiative launched in 2012 related to awareness-raising and capacity-building based on sustainable knowledge of one’s own history and environment in Umm Qays.

Hands-on-Workshop at the Archaeological Museum of Irbid

A major premiere took place on 9th October at the regional museum of Irbid, where the participants of the workshop successfully supervised, with autonomy and in close collaboration with the local Jordanian museum management, Syrian refugee children from Mafraq, located close to the Syrian border, and a Jordanian girls’ class from the provinciale capital Irbid. During additional event days more than one hundred school children from villages in the surroundings of Umm Quays familiarised were with the concept of archaeology for head, heart and hand.

Both training programmes are planned for spring and autumn 2017 in order to give the participants the opportunity to cooperate in the preservation and reconstruction of monuments and to raise awareness of their value and significance among the population and among tourists in an appropriate manner.

Source: DAI