Official Practice & Code

Conservation & Ethics Merit · Duty · Consent

Archaeology is a practice of attention. Conservation is its discipline. Ethics is its permission. Nothing found in a valley matters if the valley itself is not respected as a sovereign source of information.

Fieldwise Consent Required

Merit of Conservation

Conservation begins with non-interference. In our practice, we preserve:

The natural order of stones & their positions.
Cultural silence, areas not meant to be touched.
The right of local families to speak first.
Photography as evidence, not extraction.

Peace Corps Guidelines

The Nabatean Research Center follows values aligned with humanitarian work:

Respect for borders of tribal, Bedouin, and ancestral property.
Zero removal of material unless granted by local authority.
Knowledge > Possession. We collect data, not objects.

Letter of Endorsement

All research, photography, and publishing must hold a written endorsement by our local directorate. This includes social media publication, academic papers, documentaries, and newsletters.

Determination of Consent

Consent is determined by territory:

Bedouin Land — consent from the owning camp family.
Government Land — consent from Jordan Antiquities.
Open Valley — still protected; silence is permission denied.

Time of Reference

Artifacts must be understood with temporal sovereignty:

Objects speak from their time, not ours.
Do not “correct” a culture’s design with modern logic.
Age data is supportive, not definitive of meaning.