Excavations at Khirbat en-Nahas, Jordan
For the past ten years, a joint University of California, San Diego and Department of Antiquities of Jordan research team led by Professor Tom Levy and Dr. Mohammad Najjar has been investigating the role of mining and metallurgy on social evolution from the Neolithic period (ca. 7500 BC) to medieval Islamic times (ca. 12th century AD). As an anthropological project, the team uses changes in the scale of copper production over time as an index for measuring social complexity.
The recent article concerning the Iron Age (ca.1200 – 500 BC) excavations at Khirbat en-Nahas, Jordan, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) has stimulated media interest around the world.
Some of the most important findings concern:
a) the first stratified excavation of the largest Iron Age copper production site in the southern Levant spanning over 6 meters of ancient industrial debris to virgin soil;
b) the application of some of the most advanced on-site digital archaeology methods based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for recording the location of artifacts and samples found in the excavation; and
c) dating the stratified industrial layers using a tight sequence of 22 high precision radiocarbon dates processed at the University of Oxford that extends the archaeological chronology of ancient Edom by some 300 years.
The radiocarbon dating project reported on in the article show two phases of ancient industrial scale metal production in Jordan’s Faynan district (located in the lowlands of Edom) in the 10th and 9th centuries BC. Earlier research assumed that the Iron Age of Edom began in the 7th century BC. Thus, the new data opens up opportunities for understanding the evolution of complex societies in Edom, its relationship with ancient Near Eastern texts and monuments concerning these earlier centuries, and Edom’s interaction with its Iron Age neighbors. The research in the PNAS article highlights the unique nature of Jordan’s Faynan district as one of the world’s best preserved ancient mining and metallurgy districts. Currently, the research team is working with the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature in Jordan to make the Faynan district a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Amman, November 3, 2008
By Thomas E. Levy, Professor, University of California, San Diego, USA and Mohammad Najjar, Ph.D., Friends of Archaeology of Jordan, Former Director of Excavations and Surveys, Department of Antiquities of Jordan.
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