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Khirbat Nuqayb Alasaymir and Middle Khirbat Nuqayb al­Asaymir and Middle Islamic Metallurgy in Faynan: Surveys of Wadi al­Ghuwayb and Wadi al­Jariya in Faynan, Southern Jordan Ian W. N. Jones Thomas E. Levy Department of Anthropology Department of Anthropology University of California, San Diego University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093–0532 La Jolla, CA 92093–0532 [email protected] [email protected] Mohammad Najjar Levantine Archaeology Laboratory University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093–0532 [email protected] Khirbat Nuqayb al-Asaymir, in the Faynan region of southern Jordan, is one of the best-preserved Middle Islamic–period copper production sites in the southern Levant. Two seasons of survey in Wadi al-Ghuwayb and Wadi al-Jariya revealed much about the site and the landscape surrounding it, which during the Middle Islamic period was exploited primarily for mining and pastoral activities. The finds from these surveys, focusing on those collected at Khirbat Nuqayb al-Asaymir, are presented here. A new model explaining the revival of copper mining and smelting activities in Faynan dur- ing the Middle Islamic period, linking copper from Faynan to the expanding Jordanian sugar industry, is also proposed. introduction scholars working on the Islamic periods in Jordan seem to be aware that this revival took place, and those n the early 13th century A.D., the copper min­ who are aware of it have engaged it only on a lim­ ing and smelting industry in southern Jordan’s ited level (e.g., Milwright 2008: 123–24; 2010: 149; I Faynan district was revived, after a hiatus of at Walmsley 1997: 349). least 500 years. Archaeological remains of this revival Recently, though, two synthetic works on the have been known in the region since Glueck’s (1935: archaeology of Faynan have been published, both of 30–32) surveys in the early 1930s, yet few attempts which attempt to explain the underlying economic have been made to investigate this phase of industry in motivations behind the Middle Islamic–period re­ Faynan or to explain it in economic terms. Researchers vival of the copper smelting industry (Newson et al. working in Faynan have, somewhat understandably, 2007; Weisgerber 2006). However, neither of these focused on the important and often more productive offers a particularly satisfactory explanation. One earlier periods of copper exploitation. Likewise, few simply dismisses the copper industry in this period as 67 68 JONES, LEVY, AND NAJJAR BASOR 368 unsuccessful and unimportant (Weisgerber 2006: 25– the same time. Likewise, the use of political terminol­ 27), and the other attempts to connect it to a later and ogy can obscure cultural changes at smaller scales. In almost certainly unrelated event in Egyptian monetary place of this, Whitcomb (1992a: 386) argues for the history (Newson et al. 2007: 364–65). Despite these use of a neutral, archaeological periodization based attempts, the economic motivations underlying the re­ on century divisions, rather than dynastic changes. vival of the Faynan copper industry remain somewhat To some extent, this paralleled similar proposals in obscure. history; Hodgson (1974: 234), for example, had di­ This paper seeks to address the problem through vided the 7th–13th centuries into the High Caliphal discussion of Khirbat Nuqayb al­Asaymir (Arabic for and Middle periods. While we agree that neutral, ar­ “Ruin of the Small Black Pass”; henceforth KNA),1 chaeological periods are useful, at least four different the largest and best­preserved Middle Islamic–period archaeological periodization schemes have been pro­ smelting site in Faynan. We present here a preliminary posed for Jordan alone, most based on Whitcomb’s analysis of data collected during intensive, full­cover­ (1992a) proposed chronology (fig. 1). age surveys conducted in 2002 and 2007 by the Edom The first scheme is what we refer to as the “tra­ Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP) ditional” chronology of the Islamic period of central and its predecessor, the Jabal Hamrat Fidan Project and southern Jordan, used by, among others, Lindner (JHF). We then offer a new explanation for the re­ (e.g., Lindner et al. 1998: 238) and Brown (1992: 54). vival of the Faynan copper industry, this one rooted The second periodization is Whitcomb’s (1992a: 386), in the economic history of Jordan between the 13th offered as part of his call for the use of a neutral chro­ and 15th centuries A.D. Specifically, we propose a link nology. This chronology has probably seen the widest between the copper industry of Faynan and large­scale adoption; and since its publication, several attempts sugar production near the Dead Sea and farther north have been made to revise it. One of these revisions is in the Jordan Valley. Before this, however, we provide that used by Walker and LaBianca (2003: 448) at Tall a brief background sketch to situate our arguments. Hisban, which retains the original dates but subdivides the periods to allow for greater specificity. Whitcomb historical and (1997: 106; 2001: 505; 2009: 127) has also offered archaeological background several revisions which differ significantly from his original suggestion, but these have not seen wide­ Periodization and Islamic Archaeology spread use by other archaeologists. It is worth noting that, while many archaeologists In an oft­cited paper published nearly 20 years ago, concur that dynastic chronologies are problematic, not Donald Whitcomb (1992a) problematized the use of all agree that an archaeological periodization is the an­ political terminology to define Islamic archaeological swer. McQuitty (2007: 159), for example, prefers to periods. The argument, briefly summarized, is as fol­ use calendar dates rather than historical or archaeo­ lows. The use of political periodization in archaeology logical periods.2 Despite the common use of calendar implies, falsely, that cultural change inevitably follows dates among archaeologists seeking to avoid political political change, and that the two occur at essentially terminology, Hirschler (2006: ix) warns that “the em­ ployment of ‘neutral’ centuries might lead to a peri­ 1 The site is known by several names in other publications. odization devoid of any analytical value.” Likewise, Glueck (1935; 1940) favors various spellings of Khirbat Nuqayb Walmsley (2001: 634) has argued that for projects in al­Asaymir, “the Ruin of the Small Black Pass,” and Musil (1907) refers to the pass itself using the same diminutive form. The Eng­ their early stages, calendar dates can force an absolute lish­language Jordanian geology map of the area refers to the site as chronology onto the data, where a relative one might Khirbat Naqb Ismayr, “the Ruin of the Black Pass,” instead (Rabbaʿ be more appropriate. At the same time, he also notes 1991). This is complicated, however, by the report on the ʿAraba por­ that Whitcomb’s (1992a) periodization has not been tion of King et al.’s (1989) survey of Byzantine and Islamic sites in universally accepted, in part because the archaeologi­ Jordan. The surveyors were unable to find Glueck’s KNA but were instead told by locals “that the name Nuqayb el­Asaymir is used to cal periodization is arbitrary and somewhat problem­ describe all of the area north­northwest of [Khirbat] Finan” (King atic itself (Walmsley 2001: 634, n. 3). Walker (1999: et al. 1989: 202). In the reports of the Deutsches Bergbau­Museum (DBM) and the Center for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), the site is instead called el­Furn (Arabic for “the Furnace”). We 2 Although in previous publications on Khirbat Faris (notably, follow the diminutive form of the name used in Glueck’s (1935) McQuitty 2005) she has also used Whitcomb’s (1992a) archaeolog­ initial report of the site. ical periodization. 2012 MIDDLE ISLAMIC METALLURGY IN FAYNAN 69 Whitcomb TraditionalWhitcombHisban Dynastic Revised 500 Byzantine Byzantine Byzantine Byzantine 600 630 7th century 700 Early Early Umayyad Islamic I Islamic I 750 800 EI I Early 900 Early Early EI II ‘Abbasid Islamic Islamic II Islamic II 969 1000 EI III 11th century Fatimid 1100 Middle Middle 1115 Islamic I Islamic I Crusader 1174 1200 MI I MI IIa Ayyubid Middle 1263 1300 Middle MI IIb Late Islamic II Bahri Islamic Islamic II 1400 MI IIc Mamluk 1382 Middle Burji LI Ia Islamic III 1500 Late Mamluk 1516 Islamic I 1600 LI Ib 1700 Late Late Ottoman (Ottoman) Islamic II Islamic IIa 1800 1900 Late Modern 1918 Islamic IIb Modern Mandate Fig. 1. Visual comparison of chronologies for the Islamic period in Jordan. In this paper, we use the modified version of Whitcomb’s chronology used at Tall Hisban (Walker and LaBianca 2003). 207) also recognizes the advantages of an archaeolog­ (2003) at Tall Hisban. While we have adopted this ical chronology, but due to the poor stratigraphy of archaeological periodization for our project, in this many Islamic­period sites and the difficulty of dating paper we prefer to use it only broadly and for the ar­ later Islamic ceramic types, prefers dynastic terms. chaeological data to which it is best suited, favoring On this issue, we agree with Hirschler (2006: ix) calendar dates (in years A.D.) when possible. Finally, that “[t]he only convincing solution for the moment when discussing historical events, rather than archae­ seems to be a combination of the different possibili­ ological data, we often use dynastic terms (fig. 1).3 ties.” With this in mind, we attempt here to compro­ mise between all three options we have presented. 3 This is not to suggest that dynastic terms are always appro­ For our fieldwork in Faynan, ELRAP has adopted the priate for historical data. As we noted previously, many historians chronological scheme used by Walker and LaBianca have also adopted non­dynastic chronologies.
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