Dr Robert Bewley is the Director of the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East (APAAME). This is long-term research project founded by David Kennedy and based at the University of Sheffield (1978-1990 and then the University of Western Australia (1990-2015). In 2015 it moved to the University of Oxford (School of Archaeology). Since 1998 it has been directed by Professor David Kennedy and now Dr Robert Bewley. The project is designed both to develop a methodology suited to the region, discover, record, monitor and illuminate settlement history in the Near East. The archive currently consists of over 115,000 (mainly aerial) images and maps, the majority of which are displayed on the archive’s Flickr site. Although principally focused on Jordan, in which there has been an annual programme of flying since 1997 (The Aerial Archaeology in Jordan (AAJ) Project), high resolution satellite imagery on Google Earth is now permitting research on neighbouring countries.

The photos collected of downtown Madaba were collected from a helicopter in October 2019 by Dana Salameen, Pascal Flohr and Robert Bewley.                 