Shaqarat Mazyad - the Village on the Edge Lea Rehhoff Kaliszan, B.D
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Shaqarat Mazyad - The village on the edge Lea Rehhoff Kaliszan, B.D. Hermansen, Charlott Hoffmann Jensen, TimB.B. Skulbøl, Mikkel Bille Petersen, Pernille Bangsgaard, Anna Ihr, Low Sørensen Mette, Bente Markussen To cite this version: Lea Rehhoff Kaliszan, B.D. Hermansen, Charlott Hoffmann Jensen, Tim B.B. Skulbøl, Mikkel Bille Petersen, et al.. Shaqarat Mazyad - The village on the edge. NEO-LITHICS: The Newsletter of Southwest Asian Neolithic Research, Ex Oriente, 2002, pp.16-19. hprints-00623163 HAL Id: hprints-00623163 https://hal-hprints.archives-ouvertes.fr/hprints-00623163 Submitted on 13 Sep 2011 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Ofer vo £-71y/v1 v^> ox^ Harvard University . Jacquesf et Marie^aip auvin i jlnsdtut Prehistoire Oner tale, Jales • i Niehuhr-Institute, Copenhagen V»ir«r>i»<<X>' . rv" '- Table of Contents Editorial Note •f Obituary Eric Coqueugniot: Jacques Cauvin (1930 - 2001) et le Neohthique du Levant Nord I ' \/ •'.—* Ran Barkai: Towards a methodology of Neolithic and Chalcolithic bifacial tool analysis Phillip C. Edwards and Ghattas Sayej: Was the Hagdud Truncation a hafted Micro-Adze? Field Reports '__ '?i«!O:LITHICS c/o Gary O. Rollefson Phillip C. Edwards, John Meadows, Mary C. Metzger, and Ghattas Sayej: results from the first season at Zahrat adh-Dhra, 2: a new Pre- Whil man College Pottery Neolithic A site on the Dead Sea Plain in Jordan ._ a Walla, WA 99362, USA, Lea Rehhoff Kaliszan, Bo Dahl Hermansen, Charlott Hoffmann Jensen, E?mail: [email protected]«Ku;\; [email protected] "*' Tim B.B. Skuldb01, Mikkel Bille, Pemille Bangsgaard, Anna Ihr, * / \\e Low S0rensen, and Bente Markussen: Shaqarat Mazyad - Orders:rd the village on the edge '~~\~^~"^\\t~\n Simmons and Mohammad Najjar: Preliminary report of the Tell Wadi Feinan Neolithic Testing Project ( » Huttenweg 7, 14195 Bei{ in, Germany Gary O. Rollefson and Matthew C. Parker: Craft specialization at Fax 0049(30 83852106 : , al-Basit, Wadi Musa, Southern Jordan 3mail: ex oric)iUc@ginxvflet i «, <J a ; \o Free Univeisity of Berlin Klaus Schmidt: Gobekli Tepe - Southeastern Turkey. The seventh Published and distributed by e^oriente, Berlin campagne 2001. > e^ortente, Berlin - I! SN 1434-6990 New Web Sites ^',, t, -"\V fl ics Research r 209-236. School of Prehistoric Research Bulletin 43. stone oak and pistachio as well as shrubs and other minor Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum, Harvard University. herb plants (Gebel 1986: 299). Kuijt I. and Mahasneh H. In 1964 D. Kirkbride encountered and surveyed the site 1998 The Early Neolithic Occupation of Dhra', Jordan: Implications for the first time during her work at Beidha. She proposed a for the Jordan Valley as a Social, Economic and Ritual Focus, dating within the MPPNB. H.G.K. Gebel revisited the site in Journal of Field Archaeology 25/2: 153-162. 1984, conducted a systematic survey and made a small Kllrschner H. sounding there (Gebel 1988); he could confirm the date. 1986 A physiognomical-ecological classification of the vegetation Then, more recently, the area around the site was partly of southern Jordan. In H. KOrschner (ed.), Contributions to the surveyed by M. Lindner. Vegetation of Southwest Asia: 45-80. Beihefte zum Tubinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients, Reihe A, Nr.24, Wiesbaden, Dr Goals of the Excavation (LRK) Ludwig Reichert Verlag. It is the intention to establish a chronostratigrapic frame- Mithen S. and Finlayson B. work of the site in order to relate it to other Neolithic sites in 2000 WF16, A New PPNA Site in Southern Jordan, Antiquity 74: the area, including Basta, Ba'ja, and Beidha. These are sites 11-12. that completely cover the whole PPNB sequence. Also it is NeefR. the intention to make comparative analyses of archaeologi- 1997 Status and Perspectives of Archaeobotanical Research in cal structures and material remains from Shaqarat Mazyad Jordan. In H.G. Gebel, Z. Kafafi and G. O. Rollefson, (eds.), The Prehistory of Jordan II. Perspectives from 1997: 601-609. and sites in or near Wadi Araba. The newly excavated Studies in Early Near Eastern Production, Subsistence and Neolithic site of Wadi Fidan may be one such occupation of Environment 4. Berlin, ex oriente. relevance to Shaqarat Mazyad. Thus it is one of our goals to evaluate the degree of sedentism at Shaqarat Mazyad. The Popper V.S. 1988 Quantitative methods in paleoethnobotany. In C. A. Hastorf site is very small, which makes it ideal to study types of and V. S. Popper, (eds.), Current Paleoethnobotany Analytical intrasite spatial organization preceding the megasite phe- Methods and Cultural Interpretations of Archaeological Plant nomenon characteristic of the Late PPNB. Remains: 53-71. London, University of Chicago Press. Powell J. H. 1988 The Geology of the Karak area. Map Sheet no. 3152 III. Bulletin 8, Geological Mapping Division, Geology Direc- torate. Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources / Natural Resources Authority. Amman, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Rast W.E. and Schaub R.T. 1981 The 1977 expedition to the southeastern Dead Sea Plain, Jordan. In W.E Rast and R.T. Schaub, (eds.), The Southeastern Dead Sea Plain Expedition: An Interim Report of the 1977Sseason: 1-6. Cambridge, MA: American Schools of Oriental Research. Sayej G. j 2001 A New Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Cultural Region in Jordan: the Dead Sea basin. In A. Walmsley (ed.) Australians Uncovering Ancient Jordan: Fifty Years of Middle Eastern Archaeology: 225-232. Sydney, University of Sydney. ******************* Shaqarat Mazyad - The Village on the Edge Lea Rehhoff Kaliszan, Bo Dahl Hermansen, Charlott Hoffmann Jensen, Tim B.B. Skuldb01, Mikkel Bille, Pernille Bangsgaard, Anna Ihr, Mette Low S0rensen and Bente Markussen Carsten Niebuhr Institute, University of Copenhagen ([email protected], [email protected]) Introduction (LRK) Om 50m 100m 150m The Shaqarat Mazyad Neolithic Excavation and Survey Project is a salvage project kindly offered by the Department Fig. 1. Topographic map of Shaqarat Mazyad and its immediate of Antiquities in Amman to The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of surroundings. 1-meter contour intervals are indicated. Near Eastern Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The project operates as a multi-level educational field Topographic Survey (TBBS & MB) school and is funded by The University of Copenhagen, Between 6-12 August, 2001, a topographic survey was Faculty of Humanities. Dr. Ingolf Thuesen is project director. carried out by Tim B. B. Skuldb01 and Mikkel Bille with the In-field directors of the 1999 season were Dr. Lea Rehhoff kind help of students. The aim of the survey was to map the Kaliszan and Dr. Charlott Hoffmann Jensen. The 2000 season archaeological site and its immediate surroundings. The was directed by Dr. Susanne Kerner, and the 2001 by Dr. Lea survey area covered an area of approximately 0.04 km2 (ca. Rehhoff Kaliszan. In the first two seasons the excavation was 200 m x 200 m) or 4 ha (Fig. 1). supplemented by a survey in the immediate surroundings The site is located at the southernmost part of a plateau conducted by Bo Dahl Hermansen. that overlooked several wadis. Large topographic variation such as rock formations and steep slopes characterize the Environment and Previous Investigation in the Area (LRK) survey area. The largest difference in altitude was approxi- The site of Shaqarat Mazyad is situated at 35°26'23" mately 30 m. East/30°26'45" North in the sandstone mountain area ca. 13 The survey area is also marked by heavy use of the area. km north of Petra. The vegetation in the area is dominated by Conspicuous are the many modern features such as the road 16 running north of the site created by a bulldozer. This conti- nuous road construction caused some leveling disturbance Architecture (LRK) of the site and may therefore have affected the measurements. The buildings of the main phase were constructed of Terracing of probably Nabataean date has disturbed the roughly dressed sandstone and limestone blocks in various eastern and southern extension of the Neolithic site. sizes. In a few walls mortar was used, though the quality seems to be low, as it does not really stick to the stones but Stratigraphy (LRK, MLS, BM, AI) appears more as a kind of filling. Structures are in general The surface of the excavated area slopes slightly downhill round and built together in a honeycomb fashion, with walls from north to south and east to west. The general stratigra- being ca. 0.65m thick. phic profile of the excavated area consists of three Neolithic Houses were constructed as post buildings, each having building phases. The main building phase is erected on a 10 or more wooden posts around which stones were piled up compact yellow, silty layer. It is characterised by approxi- at a height of at least 1 m (Fig. 3). At least three buildings mately circular structures (Fig. 2). Probably late in this show alterations on part of the wall (C, E, J), thus creating an phase several rebuildings have been undertaken at the site. oblong cavity between the old and the new wall, perhaps for These are mainly represented by minor alterations on the storage. Most buildings are 3.5-4.5 m in diameter. In several houses themselves as well as newly built shelter walls (for buildings the inner wall face was finished by a row of flat, keeping animals?, e.g., north of buildings B and D, and upright stones (Fig.