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TOMATO SEASON IN THE GHOR ES-SAFI: A Lesson in Community Archaeology

From January to March of 2011 the Follow the Pots project embarked on a field project at the Early Bronze Age site of Fifa on the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan. Fieldwork embodied a two-part approach to recording the landscape: archaeological and ethnographic. We had no problem at all carrying out the archaeological groundtruthing and mapping of the looted cemetery at Fifa — producing detailed maps and successfully testing a theory about the uses of Google Earth in monitoring archaeological site looting. As a second prong of this project we sought input from interested communities, those who may be directly or indirectly associated with the looting of the area. We were unsuccessful at engaging with local communities — they were all busy harvesting tomatoes, something we had not factored into our “collaboration.” Our take-home message from this project is that community engagement is situational, context-dependent, and a negotiated process between equal partners.