Western Harra Survey Project (original) (raw)
Related papers
Akkermans, P. M. M. G. (ed). Landscapes of Survival: The Archaeology and Epigraphy of Jordan's North-Eastern Desert and Beyond, 2020
The climatically varied Syro-Levantine steppes feature complex dynamics of past human occupation that vary greatly across the region in terms of scale, time periods, and archaeological remains. In particular, the Late Chalcolithic (LC) and Early Bronze Age (EBA) (c. 4400‑2100 BC) saw urbanism in north-eastern Syria, smaller-scale sedentism in central Syria, and the decline of longstanding occupation in north-eastern Jordan. Despite this, the challenges faced by prehistoric populations in these uncertain environments would have been very similar; thus it is reasonable to propose that some of their solutions were also. The region-wide project 'Human Adaptation in Climatically Marginal Environments of late-fifth to third millennium BC Syria and Jordan' takes a holistic approach to investigating these arid and semi-arid regions to determine their appeal to past populations, and the effects of the natural and anthropogenic environment on settlement morphologies and societies. It uses a variety of past and present remote sensing and ground truth data, a vital part of which is the author's 'Western Harra Survey', south of Jawa in the northern badia of Jordan. The first fieldwork season, conducted October-November 2015, identified large quantities of lithic material at numerous sites, a handful of which were likely occupied during the LC/EBA, as well as potential links to raw chert material sources, adding another facet to the appeal of the harrah to past populations, on top of the well-established arguments for the exploitation of pasture land resources. Additionally, a typological seriation of the morphology of sites known as 'wheels' was commenced, which appears to be linked to different site uses and/or periods of occupation. Establishing these connections is crucial to allow mapping occupation dynamics across the greater region and comparisons with areas in Syria and beyond.
The Cyrenaican Prehistory Project 2012: the sixth season of excavations in the Haua Fteah cave
Libyan Studies, 2013
The paper reports on the sixth season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project (CPP) undertaken in September 2012. As in the spring 2012 season, work focussed on the Haua Fteah cave and on studies of materials excavated in previous seasons, with no fieldwork undertaken elsewhere in the Gebel Akhdar. An important discovery, in a sounding excavated below the base of McBurney's 1955 Deep Sounding (Trench S), is of a rockfall or roof collapse conceivably dating to the cold climatic regime of Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 6 (globally dated to c. 190-130 ka) but more likely the result of a seismic event within MIS 5 (globally dated to c. 130-80 ka). The sediments and associated molluscan fauna in Trench S and in Trench D, a trench being cut down the side of the Deep Sounding, indicate that this part of the cave was at least seasonally waterlogged during the accumulation, probably during MIS 5, of the ~6.5 m of sediment cut through by the Deep Sounding. Evidence for human frequentation of the cave in this period is more or less visible depending on how close the trench area was to standing water as it fluctuated through time. Trench M, the trench being cut down the side of McBurney's Middle Trench, has now reached the depth of the latest Middle Stone Age or Middle Palaeolithic (Levalloiso-Mousterian)
Libyan Studies, 2010
The paper reports on the fourth (2010) season of fieldwork of the Cyrenaican Prehistory Project, and on further results of analyses of artefacts and organic materials collected in the 2009 season. Ground-based LiDar has provided both an accurate 3D scan of the Haua Fteah cave and information on the cave's morphometry or origins. The excavations in the cave focussed on Middle Palaeolithic or Middle Stone Age 'Pre-Aurignacian' layers below the base of the Middle Trench beside the McBurney Deep Sounding (Trench D) and on Final Palaeolithic 'Oranian' layers beside the upper part of the Middle Trench (Trench M). Although McBurney referred to the upper part of the Deep Sounding as more or less sterile, the 2010 excavations found evidence for small-scale but regular human presence in the form of stone artefacts and debitage, though given the sedimentary context the latter are unlikely to represent in situ knapping. The excavations of Trench M extended from the basal Capsian layers investigated in 2009 through Oranian layers to the transition with the Dabban Upper Palaeolithic. Some 17,000 lithic pieces have been studied from the Capsian and Oranian layers excavated in Trench M, in an area measuring less than 2 m by 1 m by 1.1 m deep, along with numerous animal bones, molluscs, and macrobotanical remains, as well as occasional shell beads. Preliminary studies of the lithics, bones, molluscs, and plant remains are revealing the changing character of late Pleistocene (Oranian) and early Holocene (Capsian) occupation in the Haua Fteah. Alongside the work in the Haua Fteah, the project continued its assessment of the Quaternary and archaeological sequences of the Cyrenaican coastland and completed a transect survey of surface lithic materials and their landform contexts from the pre-desert across the Gebel Akhdar to the coast, with a new focus on the al-Marj basin. Significant differences are emerging in patterns of Middle Palaeolithic and later hominin occupation and palaeodemography. The Cyrenaican Prehistory Project 2010: the fourth season of investigations of the Haua Fteah cave and its landscape, and further results from the
In Search of the Domestic: Geophysical Exploration at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat
Although much is known about Hafit and Umm an-Nar mortuary practices, the same cannot be said about their settlements. We know of only a few third millennium BC settlements on the entire Oman Peninsula. This year the American-Japanese Bat Archaeological Project (AJBAP) concentrated many of its efforts on understanding domestic settlement -the places where daily life occurred -in the third millennium BC. The UNESCO World Heritage Site of Bat, in north-central Oman, is well-known both for its Hafit tombs and for its Umm an-Nar "tombs and towers", which dominate the landscape even today ). However, recent research (e.g., suggests that Bat's archaeological heritage is far more complete than previously understood. It has long been known that over 200 m of the "Settlement Slope" adjacent to Tower 1145 is crowded with Umm an-Nar domestic structures (Frifelt 1976), but these rectilinear buildings -built on the slope, and exposed for 4000 years -provide disturbed and shallow contexts. At the same time recent research has shown that the nearby wadi floor is not representative of the ancient landscape. In wadi environments such as at Bat, Hafit domestic structures, where present, are buried beneath c.1-2 m of fluvial sediment (Fouache and Desruelles, 2010). Excavations in 2009 and 2010 at the third millennium BC tower known as Kasr al-Khafaji have exposed the remains of third millennium rectilinear stone buildings, 1-2 stones deep ( ) and in two discrete phases. These structures continued out beyond the limits of the excavation, and their extent was unknown.
Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, 2023
Our project, “Climate, environment, and early farming societies: Late Neolithic settlement patterns on the Karak Plateau, Jordan”, aims to study the resilience to climate change of early farming communities in Jordan. It will achieve this by studying Late Neolithic settlement patterns and chronology through ground survey in combination with experimentation in the use of remote sensing and predictive modelling to aid in the discovery of these sites. Late Neolithic sites are under‑represented in the record not just because of a research bias (for example not collecting or studying chipped stone during surveys), but also because of other factors, including: a lack of training of survey crews in prehistory; the poor preservation of Neolithic pottery; the scarcity of diagnostic tools; the sites often being small; and site location being especially prone to have been covered by colluvium or later occupation. While deflated sites on hilltops and in steppe and desert areas may be found during intensive survey, in wetter areas many parts of the Neolithic landscape will have been destroyed The Karak ‘Neolithic’ Survey: PILOT SEASON, OCTOBER 2021 ADAJ 61 – 166 – by erosion (wadi downcutting) or covered by colluvium (Banning 2015). An approach that uses an iterative Bayesian allocation approach to target areas with a higher probability of containing preserved prehistoric remains has been successful in northern Jordan (Hitchings et al. 2016). We aim to use the same approach, although the pilot season presented here was used mainly to gather more data to assign such probabilities within the study region.
2015
Extensive prehistoric stone structures in Jordan are known as the “Works of the Old Men”.We date by OSL a category of the “Works” known as “wheels”.OSL dates the wheels from eastern Jordan to the Late Neolithic, and Early Bronze Age.Spatial statistics on the wheels reveals that they are organized in clusters.In this paper we generate chronological constraints through optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating on extensive prehistoric stone structures that stretch out in the Arabian Desert and appear as geometric lines, known as the “Works of the Old Men”. Two major types of the “Works” that are common throughout the Arabian Desert are the “wheels” and the more intensively investigated “desert kites”. Here, OSL dating was applied to “wheels” in the Wadi Wisad area, in the eastern badia of Jordan. OSL dating generated ages that fall into the Late Neolithic to Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age periods. This chronological spectrum is consistent with the well-documented prehistoric activities at the archaeological site of Wisad Pools, also located in the Wadi Wisad area. Spatial analyses of the “Works” in Wadi Wisad and in the Azraq Oasis revealed that: 1) the wheels are organized in clusters, 2) the spatial distribution of the wheels is predetermined by the kites, 3) the kites were most probably created earlier than the wheels in the study areas and 4) a cluster of wheels nearby the Azraq Oasis tentatively demonstrates ranking and, perhaps, tendency for alignment, although this is not the case for the other wheel-clusters studied. Despite the progress toward understanding the chronological and spatial aspects of the wheels, a great deal of research remains to resolve the actual nature of these enigmatic stone structures.