The 1994 season of the Umm el-Jimal Project focused on the excavation ofLate Antique tombs, (2) the excavation of a house in al-Herri, the site of the Nabataean/Late Roman village, and (3) a survey of the decorative fragments and inscriptions in the ruins of the Byzantine/ Umayyad town.
Burial specialists excavated thirteen cist tombs which contained a minimum of thirty-one skeletons from the Early Byzantine period. The simply constructed tombs offered few grave goods; the fanciest item was a pair of gold earrings. The people buried here were probably of very poor to moderate economic status.
While most bodies were placed carefully either directly in the soil or in wooden coffins, there were some bizarre exceptions. One person was casually dumped on top of a wooden coffin in which another had already been buried, and another was interred in separate pieces so that articulated arms and other body parts were found disconnected from each other. Though most cists contained one or two skeletons, one somewhat larger tomb held fourteen persons, stacked one on top of the other in a single wooden coffin!
The bones and related soil samples have been shipped back to Michigan, where full laboratory analysis will supplement the stratigraphic data.
Excavation of a house at al-Herri, a rubble site 300 m in diameter, 100 m east of Umm el-Jimal's Byzantine ruins, exposed the walls and floors of several rooms. Five Nabataean painted sherds found in levels above the floors testify to the influence of the Nabataeans here in the Roman era. Domestic occupation lasted from the first to the third century, but the house was destroyed early in the fourth. The site is very important because it is the only rural Early/ Late Roman settlement in northern Jordan that has not been disturbed by later occupation.
After the destruction of the house in the Early Byzantine period, the entire ruin was covered by a thick ash-filled deposit of soil characteristic of dumping and burning. Extremely rich in Early and Late Roman pottery, the dump contained enough Early Byzantine pottery throughout to date its deposition to the fourth century CE. Figuring out the origin of this debris and why it was dumped on this ruin should shed significant light on the ancient method of garbage disposal! Perhaps such cleanups had a hygienic function related to disease and epidemic control.
An intensive survey of the Byzantine-Umayyad town recorded numerous decorative and epigraphic features. These included a large number of Byzantine crosses from churches and house lintels, and many Nabataean and Greek inscriptions, including some previously unknown ones.
The project employed a staff of twenty archaeologists and students and twenty field workers from the Umm el-Jimal village. The senior staff included Janet Brashler, Ahmad Momani, Cherie Lenzen, Amjad elBataineh, Sally de Vries, and Gerard Hammink. The on-going project is directed by Bert de Vries. Generous financial support came from the Ambassador Foundation, Calvin College, the Warner-Lambert Foundation and several private donors.
Bert de Vries