The Early Bronze Age I Site and Necropolis of Jebel al-Mutawwaq, Jordan

By Andrea Polcaro and Juan Muniz

Much of the archaeological landscape of the ancient Near East is rapidly disappearing. This is especially true for pre and protohistoric sites that lack the imposing size of tells. Features such as dolmens, aboveground stone tombs, are being especially hard hit and are under constant threat from stone quarries and modern farming.

Jebel al-Mutawwaq is an Early Bronze Age (EB) I site, dating to the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, located along the Middle Wadi az-Zarqa valley, approximately 10 kilometers south of Jerash. The site is comprised of a huge dolmen field (with originally more than one thousand preserved) and a 13 hectare village delimited by a wall. The settlement is located along the southern cliff of the valley, while the dolmen field is located all around the mountain. The site was first surveyed in the 1980s and then excavated from 1989 to 2011 by J.A. Fernandez Tresguerres-Velasco. A new Spanish-Italian archaeological project, codirected between the Perugia University and the Pontificia Facultad San Esteban of Salamanca, started in 2012.

The Early Bronze Age I settlement

The EB I village had originally more than 300 dwelling structures preserved, but these are now heavily damaged by modern agriculture in the upper part of the mountain. Houses were approximately 12 by 4 meters in size, built with large stone blocks and small stones, often with a hearth and divided in two rooms by an inner wall, and had a double apsidal rectangular shape. Some of the excavated houses had not been completely emptied at the end of their use, suggesting a final phase of abandonment of the settlement for unknown reasons.

The materials collected inside the houses are mostly flint scrapers and blades used to processing the animal skins, but also tools like flint sickle blades, basalt pestles, and grinding stones, suggesting a mixed agricultural-pastoral economy. The pottery recovered, in particular from the central sector of the village, is uniform: handmade, low fired, of a pink or orange paste, with red or white slip treatment of the surface, and mostly dating to the first part of the EB I.

The southeastern corner of the settlement wall was excavated in the 2013 campaign (Area A). The wall was built by first leveling the natural slope of the bedrock with layers of small stone and pebbles. Large flat stones were then placed without any superimposed mud brick structure. The height of the wall did not reach more than 1.50 meters, without traces of towers or defensive artifacts. The wall in this area probably had no defensive function, but an ideological meaning, dividing the village from the necropolis.

The topography of the site suggests that houses were arranged in different neighborhoods, leaving space in some areas for larger complex structures, corresponding to the three main promontories visible along the southern cliff of the mountain dominating the Wadi az-Zarqa Valley. In the 1990s, excavations discovered a large house (no. 76) on the main promontory in the Central Sector of the village, later identified as the main shrine of a sacred complex. This was labeled the “Temple of the Serpents,” for the large jars with snake decoration on the body and on the neck of the vessels, dated to the EB I. The complex, delineated by a small stone wall, had other rooms and structures clearly used for food production and for animal sacrifices.

In 2014, excavations investigated a large circular structure visible on the surface of the promontory of the Eastern Sector of the village, labeled the “Great Circle”(Area C East). It is a large circular open space of ca. 1500m2, surrounded by a huge wall, two meters wide, preserved in some points for three courses. Two small circular structures were identified inside the Great Circle, presenting a stone installation against one of the inner sides. The pottery from this structure dates to the EB I, contemporary with the settlement, though a single sherd could suggest further use of the structure until the beginning of the EB II (first half of the third Millennium BCE). The large complex seems to be related to economic activities involving the whole village, perhaps linked to animal husbandry or food processing. This could indicate the growing complexity of the village’s social organization during the first part of the Early Bronze Age.

The Dolmen Field

In 2012–2013, six dolmens were investigated in the Southeastern area of the megalithic necropolis (Area B), connected with the Eastern Sector of the settlement by a street. The architecture of the tombs in this area is homogeneous: a single burial chamber built directly above the bedrock with two large vertical stone slabs, a heavy capstone used as roof, a rear vertical slab and a floor stone slab. A circular or apsidal stone wall, built with stones, encircles the whole structure. The space between the wall and the side and rear slabs was filled with layers of earth and small stones. These layers compose a tumulus originally covering the whole burial chamber.

Dolmens had a path-like entrance oriented toward north, with a narrow stepped corridor with three steps of flat stones following the bedrock slope. In the excavated dolmens the burial chambers were completely emptied and sealed with layers of small stones and earth. Pottery sherds recovered in the external layers of tumuli and inside the sealing layers are dated to the first part of the EB I. As with sherds from the houses, most are fragments of jars and bowls.

In Dolmen 317, excavated in 2013, an entire burial (B. 25) was discovered intact above the floor slab, hidden behind a large flat stone. The only funerary gifts recovered were two flint fan scrapers. The position of the bones indicates they had been moved to the dolmen; the long bones were placed in a pile in front of the entrance with the skull just behind. Sex is not easily determined, but the analysis reveals a balanced diet, no diseases, and a triangular hole in the back of the head. A single blow may have been the cause of death. Further analyses are necessary to better understand the causes of the death, which may indicate a ritual killing or a crisis scenario.

In 2014, one of the few dolmens located inside the village (no. 534), along the border of the southern cliff in the Eastern Sector, was excavated some 10 meters west from the Great Circle. The dolmen had clearly a different architecture from the other excavated outside the village. The burial chamber is almost twice the size of EB I dolmens, the circular wall and tumulus are of large limestone blocks, and the entry is angular and not in axis with the entrance. Some of the stones of the dolmens could have been taken from neighboring EB I buildings. Inside the burial chamber, partially robbed in modern time, many bronze objects were recovered, together with two complete jugs on the floor slab. The red-burnished ware jugs date to the EB II, suggesting the first construction of the dolmen in this period.

Chronological framework

Our studies indicate that dolmens located outside the settlement were used and abandoned inside the first part of the Early Bronze Age I, with no sign of reuse in the later part of the period. However, two jugs discovered during the last excavation campaign in Dolmen 534 and the sherd recovered inside the Great Circle in the same area of the village indicate that the site had a second phase of occupation in the Early Bronze Age II, at least as a funerary area. Our plan is to continue research and to race against the ongoing destruction of important sites such as Jebel al-Mutawwaq as Jordan’s population increases.

Andrea Polcaro is researcher and professor in Near Eastern Archaeology at Perugia University, Italy. Juan Muniz is a researcher at the Facultad San Esteban of Salamanca, Spain. They co-direct the Spanish-Italian Jebel al-Mutawwaq Expedition.

The authors want to thank the General Director of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, Munther Dahash Jamhawi, the Spanish Embassador in Amman, Santiago Cabanas, and the Italian Embassador in Amman, Patrizio Fondi, for their vital support to the project. The authors also want to thanks for their collaboration Eloisa Casadei (Area C Ovest and pottery supervisor), Valentin Alvarez (Area C Center and lithic supervisor), Gianluca Perri (Area C East and topographical supervisor), Pablo Zambruno, Gerardo Sierra, all the students of Perugia University, and the colleagues of U.A.B. of Barcelona (in particular Joaquim Garcia for the pottery analyses) involved in the project.

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