PSU Magazine Spring 1992

encouraged him to analyze his collec– tions and put them in historical con– text. He came to know neolithic arrow heads, spear points, ax heads, and to distinguish between those of different eras and cultures. "I was surrounded by history, and I was constantly reinforced," he says. During spring break his senior year, Mandaville and some friends wanted to touch history on a different front by hiking the route of the first C rusade. The C rusade routes were no stranger to him; Crusade castles were the frequent destination of school field trips, and the students would bring back cannon balls that they would roll down the tile halls of the dorm. Their hike started at the Turkish border town of Antioch, and was to go south over mountains. With only ordi– nary shoes, two of the five friends developed severe blisters, and they had to cu t the trip short. Rather than waste the rest of spring break, they decided to visit a friend at the American embassy in Damascus, Syria. As they arrived, their embassy friend was packing sup– plies to take to an archaeologist in the late-Roman city of Palmyra. The supplies turned out to be crates of beer and whiskey, and the archae– ologist turned out to be Carlton Coone, one of the better known American diggers, who was working in a cave looking fo r flints-some of which were as old as 40,000 years BC. Mandav ille impressed Coone by being able to identify flints of different ages on the site. "Boy, did I feel important," he says. If Mandaville had an interest in his– tory before, the experience in Palmyra with a well-known archaeologist turned it into a hunger. He didn't yet think of it as a vocation, because he was raised to think of business as the logical path to follow-particularly coming from a blue-collar family that was trying to climb the economic ladder. He began college at Dartmouth, a business-oriented school in the cold climate of New Hampshire. Mandaville didn't like it, and didn't fit in. He majored in philosophy to prove to everyone that he was d ifferent, "because I felt different." '' Yearly trips to Yemen help Mandaville keep in contact with that part of the world. "It's all real to me," he says. "I've comfortably walked around outside Jerusalem where Jesus walked. It's real. And trying to get that reality across is my ambition." '' Philosophy was another way, he says, of looking for reality. Looking for truth. Earn ing barely a C-plus average going into his junior year, he trans– ferred to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, where he got the chance to study Arabic and Islamichistory. From then, he says, he was totally dedi– cated. He found his vocation, and he began earning straight As. Midway through working on his thesis in Turkey in 1965, his advisor told him of a job opening at Portland State in Middle East history. PSU, it turned out, had a good Arabic collec– tion in its library. He arrived in Portland from Istanbul, and has been here ever since, "carrying with me all those funny ideas of digging around." Media contacts aside, life at PSU is typically routine for Mandaville. Like all professors, he publishes articles and teaches classes. In additions to his specialty of 16th Century Ottoman, he teaches classes on Palestine and Israel, Modem Arabia, and World History. He does make it back to Yemen annually, the place where in 1978 he helped set up the American Institute for Yemeni Studies in San'a to aid a newly established research effort in that part of the world. In add ition to a library, it contains a storage place for picks and shovels for use in archaeologi– cal digs. Mandav ille spent considerable time driving archaeologists out to their sites. The country had just opened Yemen to archaeologists, and those who came there were looking for biblical cities in order to tie up loose ends of history. In neighboring Oman, Ubar repre– sented another loose end, but not one that was actively pursued when the Yemeni Institute opened. Archae– ologists, Mandaville says, tend to go after finds that show some degree of probable success. Cities that are truly "lost," like Ubar, don 't fit in that category. Now that Ubar has been uncovered, those loose ends can be tied up. The find is showing historians that people lived in that part of the Arabian Penin– sula long before they were previously thought to have been there. And the more they dig, evidence of an even ear- r lier civilization is likely to be found, says Mandav ille. H is yearly trips to Yemen help him keep on top of the latest finds and make physical contact with that part of the world-the Peninsula-on which he is an expert. Physical contact makes h istory come alive: the sights, the feel of the Arab sun, and the grit of the sand. "It's all real to me," he says. "I've comfortably walked around outside Jerusalem where Jesus walked. It's real. And trying to get that reality across is my ambition." When students are as lucky as Man– daville was, growing up to receive con– stant reinforcement of their curiosity, they don't have to travel far to find academic fulfillment. History is everywhere. "It can happen in Eastern Oregon, the sense that you are working on the edge of d iscovering ancient buried truth is always there. Any high schooler is liable to run into someone like Carlton Coone, as I did, and have his curiosity reinforced. "Then off he'll go-he'll find his Ubar somewhere." D (John R. Kirkland, a Portland free-lance writer and photographer , is a frequent con– tributor to PSU Magazine.) PSU I I