Quality Removals

ACOR have instituted a pottery conservation and restoration project, and Stephen Bourke sent 50-odd boxes of pottery up from Pella a couple of years ago so that Naif Zaban could restore any whole pots from the Iron Age destruction levels. 9 complete vessels and 4 partial ones have been put back together. Last Thursday Issa and Aladdin Madi and me had the task of transporting the restored pots, and the left-over sherds back down to Pella.
I made another amateur mistake - instead of going down to the basement in working hours to check the deal, I had assumed that the message "the pots are in crates and are ready to go" meant that it was a matter of putting everything in the pickup on Thursday morning and off we would drive. So late Wednesday I discovered that while the pots were in crates, they were none of them in crates big enough to transport them properly (ie they were balanced in small boxes so they didn't roll around on the floor) and "ready to go" meant simply that Naif didn't have any more sticking together to do.
So Thursday morning meant a typical Jordanian scenario of 5 Chiefs (me, Aladdin, Issa, Abed - the maintenance & fix-it guy at ACOR - and Naif) and no Indians deciding how to organize the packing. Two of the pots were over a metre high and and nearly that in diameter. I was taking advice from Christina, a very sensible field conservator from Italy who thought that sturdy red plastic crates and lots of sheets would probably do the trick (for those of you who have had experience with conservators - Wendy Reade excepted - will know that this is not a common response. Usually it would be "Where are the large wooden crates and bespoke cut out solid foam casings??". Christina says it's because in Italy they have too many antiquities and not enough resources either, so they are used to winging it).

Eventually we got all the complete pots and about 15 boxes of sherds in the pickup - the half pots were too unstable to move, and there was no room for the remaining 27 boxes of sherds - that'll be trip 2 in late October.








The very big pots took up most of the back seat, and I was inserted into the remaining 15cm of seat space in order to cushion the pots on the right hand side. Issa drove very carefully, but very slowly to Pella, so after nearly 2 hours squashed as padding in the back, when we arrived at the dig house the only way I could get out of the car was to open my door and fall sideways onto the carpark. Eventually my legs worked again.