I'm pleased with my design for my Editorial report and choice of paper for my hard copy. I feel that the choice of paper compliments the images and text. I think the layout of my report is easy to read and reflects the designs I looked at beforehand for influence.
Petra has a captivating story of its history and how it came to be re-discovered from the West in 1812 by Swiss explorer, Johannes Burckhardt, and become one of the 7 wonders in our world on 7/7/2007. It’s gained its title for its mysterious location, and has yet to been fully excavated by archaeologists, leaving many secrets still to be uncovered. It was also announced as a designated World Heritage Site on 6/12/1985. It’s located in the country, Jordan, between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, surrounded by mountains. What initially amazes people when visiting the ancient city, is its architectural beauty. It’s clear to see why Petra is so renowned for its architecture due to the nature of it being carved into a mountain perfectly, which is quite a spectacular view. The name Petra itself is a Greek word for “The Rock” as Diodorus calls it. Petra is also named the Red Rose city for the colour of the rock the city is carved from. The lost city is popular for not only its world heritage or 7th wonder titles, but also its archaeology site which is one of the richest and largest archaeological sites on red sandstone land. What is it about Petra’s history that we are so enthralled upon to discover about our ancestors?
The Nabataens were the name of the civilisation that settled upon the land and formed the city Petra and others like it nearby. First documentation of them was noted from the 6th century BC. Up to the 4th century BC they weren’t originally as prosperous. Initially they were nomads, refugees of a nomadic tribe, and lived in tents that weren’t permanent. Their choice of land to settle on created a reference point for traders and others who were constantly travelling, and because of this, it’s how the Nabataens began to prosper. The scattered nomads grouped into an organised society and their lifestyle became dependant on the incense trade that travelled through, however as they became permanently settled in this region, they began to establish an agriculture lifestyle. To make their prosperous capital city, Petra, to survive in a dry environment, the Nabataens had developed an intricate water system that collected water off the surfaces of rocks into channels that led to open-air reservoirs or closed cisterns for hoarding. The amount they collected was enough to deliver 40 million litres of water a day to the 20,000 inhabitants at the height of its status. Petra became an essential part of the trading industry 2000 years ago. It was an important junction to allow trading across the world, such as silk and spices from China and India towards Southern Arabia, the Mediterranean and Europe. By the end of the 4th Century AD, Petra had received the title ‘Metropolis’ which displays how highly respected the city became. One of Petra’s famous features is its architecture. The architecture itself helps archaeologists to understand the history of Petra and how it became the prosperous city it became. Looking at a world map today, we can see that Jordan is near enough the centre of the world which makes it a perfect spot for world trading across all cultures, and this is clear to see through the architectural style of Petra. By analysing the architecture, it’s possible to tell that many different cultured people would has passed through here and deliver an influence alongside. The architecture is a fusion of Eastern design with western Hellenistic and Byzantine flair, which shows how Petra was a central point between these two different stylized cultures that came together here, bringing their influence with them. In 106 AD, Petra became annexed by the Romans which caused a lot of Roman influence upon the buildings that would be built upon there, such as the Colonnaded Street and the circular Theatre. When Burckhardt ‘re-discovered’ Petra in 1812, only few of the locals knew of its location. Petra had become deserted and forgotten by the world for hundreds of years and it’s not entirely explained as to why, however there are many theories as to how this may have been caused. It’s estimated that this could have happened during the 8th Century AD, over a millennium before Burckhardt had found Petra himself. It’s theorised that the main cause was because of earthquakes that Petra had received multiple times. Highlighting the 747AD earthquake, which happened when the inhabitants were thought to have been progressively abandoning Petra. Although, it is also known that there was a period of time where trade routes began to shift away from Petra and change. With the development of technology for seaborne trade, this mean trade would bypass Petra. This would had caused a major drop in the income proceeds for Petra as it did rely heavily upon travellers and its trading status. BBC’s Human Planet also depicted Petra as a ‘Boom-and-Bust’ civilisation where the water would had run out. It’s a possibility, which as Petra was a wealthy city with water, it may have somehow lost its water supply (maybe caused by the earthquakes as mentioned before) causing people to leave the city in search of a place with a substantial water supply in order to survive. These theories show me that the reasoning’s for the inhabitants to leave the city is not because they didn’t like it, but because they had to go elsewhere to survive and protect themselves, which shows me how popular this city must had been amongst our ancestors at the time. Petra has a detailed history of being a highly respected, lively city that became lost throughout the centuries, to becoming a wonder of the world. Archaeologists are still searching through the city to uncover its hidden secrets of our past within its mountainous walls. There is much about Petra that can tell us about our ancestors and I think that is what has intrigued me the most about this wonderful city. As some westerners have described it; it’s an exotic place. It can teach everyone that visits something new about the sort of people our ancestors were, and how they operated 2000 years ago. It’s also given an insight as to how our society today was formed on the concrete our ancestors had laid upon for us in the terms of multi-cultural trading. Petra deserves to be wonder and preserved forever for historical and educational purposes. I started looking at digital designs for influence how I could design my report. I found the brochure designs on this webpage fun, bright and creative. It's a good insight to see how creative I could get with the design. I thought that the first link showed a wide variety of different designs for different causes, so I thought looking at museum type brochures would influence me with more relevant designs for my report topic. Compared to the first set, these designs have a more clean and precise aesthetic to them which I feel are more appropriate for my historic and monumental topic.
Visit Petra website was a great resource as it covered all the different types of information about Petra itself and the current archaeology/tourist side to it as well. However it didn't cover great depth about it unlike the books I borrowed. The same can be said about the Visit Jordan website however I did feel that these were a great resource to collect images from for my report for educational purposes, as they were easily accessible on-line. The two books held a lot of historical information about how Petra came to be, what it provided and who for, and possibilities as to how it became forgotten. The Petra Rediscovered book was vastly helpful in understanding the Nabataen people that built, carved, lived and traded within Petra. Reading all this information, I started to think how am I going to fit this all in 1000 words. I thought that by finding information that was relevant to explaining why Petra should be a preserved monument would be a good way for looking for selective information to back up my point. New photographs of a pair of cave lion cubs found frozen in Siberia give an unprecedented look at a species that has been extinct for about 10,000 years. Russian researchers revealed new details about the cubs in a press conference on Tuesday, including how they were found, and how they died. (See "Frozen Cave Lion Cubs from the Ice Age Found in Siberia.") Collectors unearthed the cave lions while looking for mammoth tusks in Yakutia, Siberia, and at first were not sure what they had found. They placed the cubs in a glacier to keep them frozen, and then sent them to scientists in Yakutsk for analysis. Nicknamed Uyan and Dina for the Uyandina River where they were found, the kittens will provide scientists with more details about the lions that roamed Eurasia and North America during the most recent Ice Age. They are the first prehistoric cats to be found in such an exceptional state. The cubs were only two to three weeks old when they perished, says Sakha Republic Academy of Science paleontologist Albert Protopopov. They were so young that their baby teeth had not yet started to poke out from their gums. Most likely, Protopopov says, the cubs died when the soil of their den collapsed. While tragic, the way Uyan and Dina died played an important role in their preservation, keeping them frozen for over 12,000 years until flooding this past summer exposed them. Scientists estimate that the cubs were only a few weeks old when they died, possibly more than 12,000 years ago. Here, researcher Gennady Boeskorov of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha examines a cub. But the real research has only just begun. Until now, the cave lion—a subspecies of Panthera leo related to today’s lions—was known only from bones and tracks. Uyan and Dina will provide the first look at the soft tissues of these cats, from the characteristics of their thick coats to the anatomy of their internal organs. Protopopov also says that genetic analyses are in the offing. “We will be able to know the degree of kinship between cave lions and African lions,” he says. The scientists also hope to use radiocarbon analysis to determine how long ago the cats died, thought to be at least 12,000 years, and additional studies will likely provide new insights into what they ate and how they adapted to the frigid conditions of the chilly steppe habitats they one prowled. Switek, B. (2015) Meet Uyan and Dina, frozen cave lion cubs from the ice age. Available at: <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151119-frozen-cave-lion-cub-siberia-uyan-dina-archaeology/> [Accessed: 23 November 2015]. I really didn't enjoy this zine session. I find collaging a major downfall for me, especially in short time periods, as I feel that I end up making a design horror. I couldn't deal with all the glueing and sticking of fiddly bits of paper. This session highlighted this for me greatly and I definitely do not want to create my editorial design handcrafted and traditionally, I'll be using InDesign as I find it more efficient for myself to create neat and clean designs.
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