Levant Supplementary Series

This edited volume provides a full report on the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site of WF16, southern Jordan. Very few sites of PPNA date have been excavated using modern methods, so this report makes a very significant contribution to our understanding of this period. Excavations have shown that the site contains a highly dynamic use of architecture, and the faunal assemblage reveals new information on the processes that lead to the domestication of the goat.

Pre-state ceremonial monuments, rich mortuary arrangements, forts, walled settlements and temples: all these occur in a narrow stretch of the Euphrates River valley prior to the rise of Carchemish, one of the major capital cities of the Ancient Near East. This well-illustrated book examines recently discovered evidence from the hinterlands of archaeologically inaccessible Carchemish in its regional context. Amongst the 18 contributors Tony Wilkinson characterizes the neighbouring regions of Carchemish, Guy Bunnens elaborates on a site hierarchy within the valley and Gioacchino Falsone appraises unpublished records from excavations at Carchemish itself. These material culture studies are important for those interested in the emergence of complex societies that do not conform to the Mesopotamian paradigm.

The fifth volume in the series of final reports on the work of the Joint Expedition to Jerusalem in the 1960s describes the discoveries made in six sites in the ancient city and places them in the archaeological and historical context of Jerusalem and the surrounding lands. Among the most debated issues are the extent of the occupation of the city during the Iron Age, the location of the southern defence line in Herodian and Roman times, and the date of the destruction of an Umayyad palatial structure. There is fresh information on the civic amenities of the southern half of the Byzantine city, and on the structure of the Ottoman city defences built under Sulaiman the Magnificent in the sixteenth century. Fine glazed pottery, both locally made and imported, and the wide range of materials reaching Jerusalem through trade and pilgrimage, reflect elite patronage and the high status of the holy city under Islamic rule.

Umm al-Biyara, the highest mountain in Petra, southern Jordan, was the first Iron Age Edomite site to be extensively excavated. It was a domestic, unwalled site of stone-built longhouses dating to the 7th-6th centuries BCE. The stratigraphy, pottery, small finds and inscribed material, including the important bulla of Qos-Gabr, King of Edom are described, supplemented by chapters on the use of space and a landscape study of mountain-top sites in the Petra region. The later Nabataean remains on the edge of the summit indicate a major Nabataean complex of buildings, possibly a palace, which would make this the first Nabataean palace in Petra to be explicitly identified.

The natural arc of resource-rich land which forms the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of South-West Asia is regarded as the earliest centre of village-based farming in the world and has been the focus of much of our understanding of the transition from Epipalaeolithic hunter-gathers to Neolithic farmers. Beyond the Fertile Crescent is the first volume of the Azraq Project, a large-scale archaeological and palaeoenvironmental survey and excavation project undertaken between 1982 and 1989 in the ecologically diverse sub-region of the Azraq Basin in north-central Jordan: an area rich in Palaeolithic and Neolithic archaeology. Beginning with an overview to the Project aims, a detailed analysis of past and present environments and land use and the history of excavation in the Basin, Beyond the Fertile Crescent explores the geology, stratigraphy and dating of the Late Palaeolithic sites and provides a detailed description of the technology and typology of the lithic assemblages from the sites. These are then compared with those from the wider Levant, in order to explore possible links between technological traditions and social groups in order to understand the evidence for settlement strategies across the region.

The archaeological site of Tell Nebi Mend, a tell on the Homs plain in present-day Syria, is universally recognised as the location, first, of Qadesh (or Kadesh), where, in c. 1286 BC, the armies of Ramesses II of Egypt and Muwatalli II of Great Hatti fought the most famous battle of pre-classical antiquity, and, second, of Laodicea ad Libanum, founded most probably in the 3rd century BC as the capital of a district of the Seleucid empire. Collaborative excavations undertaken over 12 seasons aimed to fill a major gap in archaeological knowledge between the northern and southern Levant and to develop an understanding of the archaeology and early history of the Levantine Corridor independent of, and supplementing, that based on Palestinian and Biblical research. The primary aim was to obtain as complete a sequence as possible of cultural and environmental data, sampling all periods of the site’s occupation, which included Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Hellenistic/Roman deposits, enclosures and defenses spanning the 7th millennium BC to the mid-1st millennium AD. A definitive classification of all types of Syrian pottery over two millennia was established, together with a much longer sequence of pottery, stone, metal and bone implements, terracottas and other cultural remains, accompanied by a wealth of environmental data and a series of radiometric dates. The earliest settlement so far discovered at Tell Nebi Mend dates to the first half of the 7th millennium BC and is the subject of this volume. Five phases of occupation were recognised with architectural features including, at different times, house structures and remains of larger, probably communal, buildings, along with remains of plaster, floor surfaces, fire and rubbish pits and burials, followed by large-scale abandonment. More than 2000 sherds of Neolithic pottery and 1400 flint and obsidian artefacts were recovered.