Brian Boyd received renewed funding for his collaborative project “Building Community Anthropology Across the Jordan Valley” from the Columbia University President’s Global Innovation Fund for academic years 2020-22.
A collaborative Columbia University/Birzeit University archaeology and museum anthropology community project, focusing in and around the West Bank village of Shuqba, northwest of Ramallah. This project involves collaboration with local communities in producing a deep history of their village and its cultural landscapes; the establishment of a community museum; and anthropological/archaeological training and opportunities for local students. Project partners include the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Shuqba Village Council, Riwaq, and the Columbia Global Center in Amman, Jordan. The project’s research and training is focused around the important local archaeological site of Shuqba Cave, in the Wadi Natuf, excavated in the late 1920s by Cambridge University (UK) archaeologist Dorothy Garrod and a team of Shuqba villagers. Shuqba Cave is a foundational site for the entire prehistory of the Middle East and is of global significance for the study of the origins of agriculture, domestication and settled village life around 10,000 years ago. Shuqba Cave and the Wadi Natuf were placed on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites Tentative List in 2013. The current stage of the project will culminate in the opening of the first public Shuqba Museum exhibition, titled Natufian +100: stories from Shuqba 1924-2024.