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Archaeology in Jordan Author(S): Bert De Vries and Pierre Bikai Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol Archaeology in Jordan Author(s): Bert de Vries and Pierre Bikai Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 97, No. 3 (Jul., 1993), pp. 457-520 Published by: Archaeological Institute of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/506366 Accessed: 16/07/2009 15:03 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aia. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Archaeological Institute of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of Archaeology. http://www.jstor.org Archaeology in Jordan BERT DE VRIES AND PIERRE BIKAI This installment of the annual newsletter on ar- chronologicaloverlap to achieve a ranking. All eras chaeology in Jordan reports comprehensivelyon cur- from the Palaeolithic to the 20th century are well rent activities. These activities include not only represented. fieldworkconducted last year (December 1991 to Oc- Several institutionsare cited frequently below and tober 1992), but also new laboratoryand interpretive are abbreviatedas follows: American Center of Ori- work on projects previously in the field. The 1993 ental Research(ACOR), American Schools of Oriental edition of the newsletter is fully representativeof the Research (ASOR), British Institute at Amman for archaeologicalresearch conducted in the Hashemite Archaeologyand History (BIAAH), the CulturalRe- Kingdom by scholars from North America, Europe, source Management division of ACOR (CRM), the Australia,and Jordan itself. Publicationof "Archae- Department of Antiquitiesof Jordan (DAJ), and the ology in Jordan" in AJA has been funded in part this United States Agency for InternationalDevelopment year, as last year, by generous matching subventions (USAID). from the Jordan Societyin Washington,D.C., and the Endowmentfor BiblicalResearch, Boston. PALAEOLITHIC, NEOLITHIC, CHALCOLITHIC This newsletter includes 44 reports on research Wadi Hasa. G.A. Clark, Department of Anthro- involving 39 sites (fig. 1). It includes 37 projects that pology, Arizona State University,reports: were active in the field during the first nine months The third season of excavation and survey of the of 1992. This high number testifies in part to the Wadi Hasa Palaeolithic Project (WHPP) took place normal business of archaeologyin Jordan. The num- between 11 Februaryand 8 April 1992 and was di- ber is unusually high, however, because several proj- rected by G.A. Clark.There were three majoraspects ects delayed by war in the Gulf took 1992 as the first of the work: 1) continued excavationof the Ain Difla opportunity for rescheduling. rockshelter(WHS 634) in the Wadi Ali, 2) horizontal As before, the archaeologists who have done the expansion of the 44 m trench (WHS 1065) at el-Hasa, fieldwork,usually projectdirectors or codirectors,re- and 3) initiationof a multiseasonsurvey program on port herein on their own work. We thank all the the north bank of the Wadi Hasa, the Wadi Hasa contributorsfor taking the time to write and send us North Bank Survey (WHNBS). The survey is in- their essays,and editorialassistantJane Haney for the tended to complement Burton MacDonald's Wadi countless hours spent on the manuscript. Hasa Survey(WHS), which was restrictedto the south These reports, though technical in nature, are in- bank. tended as news items, and do not replace the more The Ain Difla rockshelter(fig. 2) was located by the elaborate scholarly reporting in the Annual of the Wadi Hasa Survey in 1982 and tested previously by Department of Antiquities of Jordan (ADAJ) and the Clarkin 1984 and by Clarkand G. Rollefson in 1986. journals of the various national societies. Regular re- The earlierexcavations produced some 8,000 artifacts ports on fieldworkin Jordan also appear in the ACOR pertaining to a Tabun Type D, elongated Levallois Newsletter and Ancient Jordan, the newsletter of the Mousterianassemblage, but did not penetrate below Jordanian Friends of ArchaeologySociety. For multi- 1 m from the surface of the deposits (which was season projects with a research history prior to 1990, variablebecause of irregularitieson the original floor bibliographyand comprehensivefield reports may be of the rockshelter).Burnt flint samples from the 1986 found in Archaeology of Jordan, prepared by D. excavations produced a thermoluminescence (TL) Homes-Fredericqand J.B. Hennessy in supplements date of 105,000 + 15,000 B.P. (Oxford University III, VII, and VIII of Akkadica. Laboratoryfor Isotope Geochemistry).It should be In order to convey a historicaloverview, the reports noted that this date is at the top of the deposit and are arranged in chronological order. Reports on can be considered to date only the latest phases of multiperiod sites are placed with the period where Mousterian occupation. No archaeological remains the project appears to be making its greatest contri- later than the Mousterian (Middle Palaeolithic)are bution currently. We accept full responsibility for preserved at the site. faulty judgments here! In the section on the Helle- The 1992 excavationsextended tests begun in 1984 nistic to Medievalperiods, however, the arrangement and 1986 to a depth of nearly 3 m and uncovered the is geographical because there is generally too much remainsof dozens of smallhearths and firepits,which 457 AmericanJournal of Archaeology97 (1993) 458 BERT DE VRIES AND PIERRE BIKAI [AJA 97 26 / A 24 25 ' .. , " ,1 wadi hasa 15 13 2 tabaqat el-bt uma 3 beidha 212 31 4 iraq ed-dubb dead, '-^~ 325 tell esh-shur na deseaa;d/ 32 , 6 e wadi el-yabis ,*/^^ --<7 abu snesleh V^^/*17\8 pella Jgi74 3 99 lehun 3 3: r10 baqa 'ah vall(ey kerak*hS) 11 tell el- 'umeiiri 12 tell jalul 4~ T^ r)13 tell iktanu 14 tell abu al- kharaz ~/18 ~- '~c\ v 15 tell jawa (r/(r\ <~'> ,. 16 khilda /) L35>'-3J 17 el- balu ,/ X t A 18 feifa / -Js^ ^y__ 19 petra I/ J {?^ 20 tell el-fukha r f~I,)f~/ f~- {21 umm qais I 43 1200m 900 m 22 abila /I 19p} m / 23 dohaleh ma'an \ 9t Z4 umm el- jima iI 39 37 \ 25 umm el - qutt(ein x/ yj \N)26 burqu' / ruw(eishid (< / \ \, 27 jerash I g^ y^~ ,~C28]~ tell abu sart )ut 6 I 29 'amman: ten nple of hercules -u/?>S^~ + < ? s/i \30 'amman: khilrbet salameh 31 madaba 32 machaerus 33 khirbet faris qaba ) 34 deir 'ain 'abalta J t/ c5 ,'35 t uwaneh t ) 36 humeima /,_A"/_ <,37 ma'an / ~..7 , 0,-- .38 'aqaba 39 taibeh Fig. 1. Sketch map of archaeologicalsites in Jordan referred to in the text. Not to scale. 1993] ARCHAEOLOGYIN JORDAN 459 Fig. 2. 'AinDifla rockshelter(WHS 634). Viewed from the 27 m high terraceof the WadiAli system,looking northwest. should yield more dates from what is Jordan's earliest minations to about 16,000 years ago. The overall Palaeolithic site. Thousands of artifacts were recov- objectiveof the researchwas to get a pictureof human ered along with poorly preserved animal bone. Many life in the waning millennia of the Pleistocenein the of the artifacts showed signs of having been burned intervaljust prior to the appearance of the earliest in fires-certain evidence of the systematic use of fire domesticatedplants and animals.The aim of the 1992 by these early, pre-modern humans. Some 3-4 m of excavationwas to open up some horizontal areas of archaeological deposit still remain to be sampled, with the site, with the possibilityof identifying living sur- the exciting prospect of uncovering stratified evidence faces or structural remains. Additional excavation of early humans extending back 250,000 years or might also enable us to isolate discrete phases of Epi- more. The site is located on top of an ancient river palaeolithicoccupation. Kebaranand Natufian com- terrace, one of three preserved in the valley, and is in ponents were identifiedby means offossiles directeurs close proximity to an enormous fossil spring, which in the 1984 tests. can also be dated using uranium series methods. The Our objectives were only partially met. We were aim of the research is to shed light on early Middle unable to identify unequivocalliving surfaces or ar- Palaeolithic adaptations prior to the emergence of chitecture,but a Kebarancomponent may have been modern man. isolated in the complex occupation sequence at the We also expanded earlier tests at WHS 1065, an site, which evidently"moved" up and down the slope 800 m2 Epipalaeolithic site associated with a fossil lake over the long term probablyin response to changes in the eastern part of the Wadi Hasa. This site had in the level of the lake. We also noted differences in been tested in 1984 by a series of eight 5 m and one lithic technology,which should be further elucidated 4 m step trenches that bisected the site and ran from by laboratoryanalysis at ArizonaState Universitydur- the marls below it to the collapsed rockshelter and ing the summer and fall of 1992.
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