The Islamic Baydha Project, directed by Micaela Sinibaldi, funded by the PEF, and affiliated with the Council for British Research in the Levant, started in 2014 and has concluded its fifth season in 2018.
The project aims at conducting excavations, surveys, conservation, archaeological training and community engagement at the site of Baydha. Since the site holds the most significant accessible archaeological evidence of Islamic-period material culture in the Petra region, the Islamic Baydha Project is also part of a broader study, the Late Petra Project, which investigates the later periods of the Petra region. Although the Petra valley was never completely abandoned, starting from the late Byzantine period the main focus of settlement gradually shifted out of it, and Baydha became one of the main areas of population. Recent excavations of the Islamic Baydha Project have focused on the village habitations and on the study of two mosques, the only two fully identified and studied so far in the entire region. The project aims at conducting excavations, surveys, conservation, archaeological training and community
Micaela Sinibaldi is an archaeologist specialising in the Medieval and Islamic periods and has been conducting fieldwork in Jordan since 1994.