• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

ORE Open Research Exeter TITLE The Wadi Faynan Project, Southern Jordan: a Preliminary Report on Geomorphology and Landscape Archaeology AUTHORS Barker, G.W; Creighton, O.H; Gilbertson, D.D; et al. JOURNAL Levant DEPOSITED IN ORE 28 May 2008 This version available at http://hdl.handle.net/10036/28552 COPYRIGHT AND REUSE Open Research Exeter makes this work available in accordance with publisher policies. A NOTE ON VERSIONS The version presented here may differ from the published version. If citing, you are advised to consult the published version for pagination, volume/issue and date of publication -fhe G.S7. BARKER ET AL. Wadi Favnan Proiect.Southcrn Tordan 33 best understood at present is the impact of past met- study area to yield an equally complex history of alliferous mining, where both primary waste materi- settlement and land use. als and slagscan be seento have covered large areas In the Late Pleistocenea period of erosion in the of the landscape and to have entered into the river mountains and deposition at lower elevationsled to systems,where they now produce distinctive copper- the accumulation of alluvial fans and fluvial deposits rich terrace gravels. The primary constraints on nearly forty metres thick (which we have termed progressare the absenceof reliable knowledge of the the Ghuwayr Beds) and at a later date by further antiquity of the deposits present and the absenceof fluvial deposits (the Shayqar Beds). The evidence similar studies from adiacent areas with which com- for human occupation at this time recovered by the parisons can be drawn. Future fieldwork must widen team consists of sporadic chipped stone artefacts, the focus of study to establish whether or not the mostly of middle palaeolithic type, found within and sequence established this year holds true further on top of thesetwo setsof deposits.However, recon- afield, and seekto establishan independent absolute naissancesurvey in April 1996 by Bill Finlayson and chronology for the regional picture that emerges. Steve Mithen immediately prior to our own cam- Our preliminary study of the nature and distribu- paign discovered an epipalaeolithic (final palae- tion of the Quaternary deposits present in the \fadi olithic) site (WF16) consisting of flints, quernstones Faynan and its tributaries has revealed a complex and other groundstone artefacts on the interfluve history of events from c.150,000 years ago to the between the Wadis Ghuwayr and Shayqar, possibly present, embracing environmental changes of great associatedwith circular and semi-circular platforms, magnitude, and our study of the archaeology of the and other smaller collections halfway up the $7adi field system, along with the investigations of other Dana and on the plateau edge (Finlayson and archaeologicalteams, indicates the potential of the Mithen 1996). The Epipalaeolithic in the Near East Figure 12. Looking northeasttowards the herring-bonefields in WF4.3, trapping oaerland water and gully flow and leading this water into thefields below. (Photograph: G. Barker). 34 LEVANTxxrx leeT is of course of critical interest as a key transitional stage to the emergence of agricultural communities, being characterized by social elaboration, the spe- cialized exploitation of plant foods and herd ani- mals, and a degree of sedentism especiallyat lower elevations, with upland sites usually intrepreted as task-specific sites related to residential sites in the lowlands (Henry 1989; Kaufman 1992;Valla 1995). \(rhilst detailed information on the narure of epi- palaeolithic settlement in the study area will only come from the detailed investigation of these sites that is planned, it is clear that a fully-fledged agri- *^ cultural community was established here early in the Holocene, probably by the eighth millennium e.c. ": 'tVadi -a Ghuwayr 1', the PPN site being excavatedby - \o ! o\ the Department of Antiquities, is of a date o\ Jordanian T range similar to the well known village of Beidha a d q) *s few hours walk away on the plateau near Petra (nE (Kirkbride 1966), and has a similar range of struc- ,3 q tures and artefacts. The settlement / R was located at ^s the point where the $(zadi Ghuwayr egressesfrom a narrow defile to form a significant floodplain a kilo- metre up-wadi from the Khirbat Faynan confluence J< (Fig. 4), immediately by the spring that now irrigates S the market gardens of the Faynan. S7hilst the botan- I N ical and faunal data from the site are currently q under l study, the spring-side location N is typical of many a I R early farming settlements i in the Near East, suggest- -, l S M ing a reliance on naturally-irrigated land for crop 6- 6 farming and animal grazing (Bar-Yosef 1995). s Through the Holocene, the environment of the study area has been dominated by a seriesof mainly \)6 fluvial events: rivers have U4 incised their floors, erod- !4 ing the Ghuwayr and Shayqar Beds, as well as orher \-r pre-existing surficial deposits and bedrocks. Traces R of these rivers exist up-wadi, in the form of terrace N deposits of sediments and erosion surfaces, some- a times displaying significant cementation and cal- a.i' cretization, whilst in the confluence area, distinctive \ layers of fluvially-deposited boulders gravels R and cl) E were laid down. The discovery within the Upper q) Faynan Beds of the presence of a more-or-less (|- o' perennial stream adjacent to Tell Wadi Faynan, and associatedwith the site's occupation in the sixth and TI a fifth millennia 8.c., presents q' a strikingly different 'Fa picture from today, of a relatively rich and diverse q) aquatic landscape. Interestingly, the pottery and z.--I- mortar from the site contained a mixture of reeds q) and grassas well as straw (Najjar et al. l990r 4l) R The excavations at Tell \7adi Faynan found traces FS of simple rectangular dry-stone buildings associated l-r with storage pits, sickle blades, carbonized cereals (r1 and a faunal sample dominated c) by the bones of L goat. sheep or We found traces of what may be a b0 boulder wall in the river section fifty metres or so t -- G.\7. BARKER ET AL. The Wadi Faynan Project,Southern Jordan 35 east of the settlement, within the same sedimentary 1972). The social and economic conrext of these horizon as the Tell Wadi Faynan settlement, so an transformations, for example the nature of the con- important question to try to resolve in future years trol of the ores and of the trade in their products, will be whether this community was growing its and of the impact of the expansion of copper mining crops on moist backswamp soils, as Sherratt (1980) on local economic and social organization, are much for example has argued for neolithic settlements in debated (Finkelstein 1995; Joffe Lgg3), and form basin-edge locations such as Qatal Htiyrik in Turkey the principal research focus for Dr $Tright's investi- and Nea Nikomedeia in Greece, or whether people gation of site \UfF100. in the \7adi Faynan were now beginning to experi- Whilst her initial fieldwork at the site is being ment with systems of floodwater farming using reported separately, the principal result was an primitive diversion walls. appreciation of the remarkable size of the settle- By the later fifth millennium B.c. the Tell \7adi ment: the boundary walls of \7F4.13 measure Faynan community was extracting malachite copper approximately 400 by 200 metres) and the area ore on a small scale from the local sandstones,and within is carpeted with chalcolithic and early bronze smelting it on site, creating quantities of iron-silicate age pottery, together with other diagnostic artefacts 'Canaanite' slag (Najjar et al. l99O). This development accords of the periods such as blades and frag- with the evidence from the region as a whole, that ments of basalt bowls. Some of the enclosure walls the systematic exploitation of copper ores began in are certainly later, presumably of Nabataean/ the Chalcolithic and then gready expanded in the Roman/Byzantine date, but others, including sec- third millennium B.c. during the Early Bronze Ag., tions with turret- or bastion-like structures attached accompanied by technological improvements allow- to them somewhat akin to the towers at contempo- ing the large-scale use of low grade ores (Adams rary settlements such as Arad (Amiran et al. 1978), 1991; Adams and Genz L9951'Hauptmann 1989 may also be associatedwith the early bronze age and 1992; Hauptmann et al. 1992; Rothenberg settlement. As noted earlier, habitation traces of * F[1: Figure 14. The water catchment st/ucture WF24, on the basisof surface material likely to be of chalcolithic and/or early bronze age date. (Photograph: G. Barker) 36 LEVANT xxrx 1997 these critical periods were also noted elsewhere N within the field system. ' b. 5r- i $(rhilst our understanding of the land use systems c.i that supported the chalcolithic and bronze age \o settlement transformations in the study area will o\ o\ certainly require excavationof sites such as WFl00, it is noteworthy that our survey identified a series of *-/ --^-xYQAR +f ":a) circular or oval silt-filled structures on the low-angle ,.o,6#: fans along the southern edge of the floodplain that q) R may have been used for water catchment and/or U. storage at this time. WF24, for example, located within $fF4.11, consisted of a circular depression some fifteen metres in diameter bordered by a rough S,) dry-stone wall (Fig. l4). Immediately to its south, q)a q) upslope, was a single boulder wall (5059) con- N structed along the slope to lead any surface runoff a into a small (three by two metre) rectangular srruc- a. ture (5059) and thence into the main catchment.

Load more

  9

Copy Link