Jordan was the featured country at the archaeological sessions of the joint Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR). The sessions covered the Paleolithic, Neolithic and Roman periods. The most exciting presentation was that by Gary Rollefson of the Neolithic statues from Ain Ghazal. The site was discovered in 1974 and in 1981 a salvage excavation was organized under the speaker. He described the site and its artifacts including two remarkable caches of human statues and busts made of plaster. Slides were shown of the figures conserved under the direction of Kathy Walker Tubb of London University's Institute of Archaeology. These statues found at nearby Jericho are described as well.