P-54 Classifying Ethnographic Photographs from Tall Hisban: Toward an Improved Process for Analyzing Old Photographs from Jordan

Buller Hallway

The goal of this project is to come up with an improved process for classifying and analyzing hundreds of ethnographic photographs collected by LaBianca and his students during the original Heshbon Expedition (1971-1976) in Jordan. To this end expedition photographs are being scanned and entered into the computer using NVivo, a commercial qualitative data analysis software. As photographs are being entered they are being categorized using two frameworks: the food system observation guide originally proposed by LaBianca (1990) and the “seven little traditions” framework proposed more recently by LaBianca & Witzel (2007). The findings resulting from this experiment in categorization will serve as the basis for coming up with an improved categorization scheme.