By James Fraser

 

“The problem with archaeology is when to stop laughing”. So mused Glyn Daniel in Antiquity in 1961, when reflecting on the construction of megalithic stone circles by what he dubbed “bogus Druid” groups. I doubt he would be surprised to learn that 88 permanent replicas of Stonehenge stand across the globe today, at least according to a blog devoted to documenting these monuments, titled magnificently and inevitably Clonehenge.

While archaeologists are quick to observe the absurdity of linking Iron Age druids to Neolithic cult, we must also admit that megaliths have loomed large in our scholarly imaginations as well. Dolmen tombs in the Levant are a case in point. These visually striking megalithic chambers are almost always found robbed of cultural remains; and so, untethered to chronological or cultural anchors, dolmen studies have, occasionally, ridden the tides of megalithic speculation that have swollen and ebbed over the last hundred years.

The greatest problem lies in the application of the term dolmen itself. Although originally an ancient Breton word for stone table, the term has long been applied in the Levant to a miscellany of features that have little in common beyond their shared use of stone. Such loose parameters obscure rather than clarify patterns in the archaeological record, and thus help perpetuate depictions of dolmens as part of an ill-defined megalithic phenomenon that supposedly stretched from the Taurus Mountains to the Yemeni coast.

Can we bring these mysterious monuments into sharper focus if we restrict the term dolmen to a group of comparable megalithic structures? Accordingly, a dolmen is defined here as an above-ground rectangular chamber constructed with two upright slabs beneath a single horizontal roof-stone.

Trilithon dolmen in the Wadi Rayyan, Jordan (Photo by Adam Carr, © North Jordan Tomb Project).

 

Trilithon dolmen in the Wadi Rayyan, Jordan (Photo by Adam Carr, © North Jordan Tomb Project).

 

Defining dolmens

We can start to untangle these threads by going back to 1985. This year saw the simultaneous discovery of unrobbed dolmens at Damiyeh in the Jordan Valley (excavated by Khair Yassine) and on the Golan plateau (excavated by Claire Epstein). However, their assemblages dated a thousand years apart: to the Early Bronze I at Damiyeh (EB I, 3700-3000 BCE); and to the Intermediate Bronze Age in the Golan (IBA, 2500-2000 BCE).

It is remarkable that both datasets were accepted at face value, given they bookend a period of tremendous social change. Rather, the disjunction was explained by the attribution of dolmens to nomads, whose populations supposedly waxed in periods of transition, and waned in periods of consolidation. Both datasets are still accepted today.

If we look closer, however, then it is clear most megalithic tombs in the Golan are not simple trilithon dolmens, but rather much larger, semi-subterranean, cairn-like structures.

Megalithic “dolmen” tomb in the Golan (Photo by M. Kersel, courtesy of the Galilee Prehistory Project).

 

Epstein’s typology of dolmens in the Golan (after Fig. 1 in Epstein, C. 1985. “Dolmens excavated in the Golan.” Atiqot 17:20-58).

 

Strikingly, Epstein only recovered IBA (and later) materials from these elaborate, tumulus-covered tombs (Types 2c, 4 & 6), while none of the trilithon dolmens she excavated yielded any cultural remains (Types 1a & 1b).

Are we comparing apples and oranges? To Epstein, the use of large stone slabs was itself sufficient index for assuming cultural equivalence. Accordingly, she yoked six types of tombs into one dolmen typology, explaining differences in morphology as the various predilections of IBA tribal groups. However, it is possible that the megalithic landscape of the Golan is analogous to the megalithic landscapes of Europe, which developed as palimpsests of short, disparate episodes of megalithic construction over long periods of time.

We must therefore be careful applying the term dolmen to any of the large, multi-chambered, tumulus-covered IBA tombs that are found in the Golan and the Galilee. Indeed, the concentration of simple trilithon dolmens in the Jordan Valley escarpment, compared with the distribution of larger, tumulus-covered tombs in the Golan and Galilee, suggests that the Golan plateau was possibly a nexus between an IBA basalt cairn-tomb tradition that extended north, and an EB I trilithon dolmen tradition that extended south.

 

Trilithon dolmens in time and space

If we restrict the term dolmen to comparable trilithon structures, then two observations immediately come into focus:

1. Trilithon dolmens are concentrated in a remarkably discrete zone that extends only 150 km north-south between the Golan plateau and the Madaba Plains, and only 100 km east-west between the Galilean hills and the Syrian Leja.

Distribution of trilithon dolmen fields in the southern Levant (© J. Fraser).

 

“Dolmens” reported beyond these zones represent a variety of megalithic features, but almost none are trilithons when strictly defined.

2. While dolmen chronologies remain coarse, they are more refined than in 1985. Trilithon dolmens yielding EB I materials have now been excavated at Damiyeh, Tell el-Hammam, Tell el-Umayri, Jebel Mutawwaq, and in the Leja. No trilithons have been discovered with IBA materials. This situation suggests that dolmens in the Levant are best understood as predominately a local EB I funerary tradition of the Jordan Rift escarpment.

 

Dolmens and EB I settlements

These observations allow us to draw some important insights concerning the distribution of dolmens in the southern Levant. Focusing on dolmens in Jordan, there is a distinct spatial relationship between dolmen fields and settlement sites that were occupied in the EB I. Furthermore, there is also a clear correspondence in size, where small dolmen fields are found near small EB I settlement sites, and large dolmen fields are found near large sites.

Yet this correlation is not absolute. While dolmens are always found near EB I settlements, not all EB I settlements are found near dolmens. As shown in Figure 6, dolmen cemeteries are separated by large areas such as the Wadi Yarmouk that were also settled in the 4th millennium BCE, but in which no dolmens are found. If the distribution of dolmens was solely related to the EB I settlement landscape, then why are dolmens found close to some EB I settlement sites but not others?

Distribution of dolmens and EB I settlement sites in Jordan (© J. Fraser).

 

Dolmens and geology

An answer lies in understanding the distribution of dolmens within the geological landscape. Figure 7 depicts different groups of geological formations by age.

Distribution of dolmen fields mapped with geological strata by age in Jordan (© J. Fraser).

 

At the base of the sequence are outcrops of hard sandstone formations, as well as a local outcrop of travertine at Damiyeh. These strata are overlain by microcrystalline limestone formations, which are overlain in turn by soft limestones inter-bedded with phosphates, chalks and marls. The Golan and Leja are characterised by hard lava flows.

Dolmens are found in areas dominated by hard sandstone, limestone and basalt formations that are conducive to the extraction of large slabs, and are absent in areas dominated by softer chalks and marls that are suitable for the excavation of subterranean chambers. In short, there’s a distinct correlation between dolmens and EB I settlements in areas dominated by microcrystalline strata, and a marked absence of dolmens in areas where softer strata are found, even if these areas were also settled in the 4^th millennium BCE.

Trilithon dolmen in the Wadi Rayyan, Jordan (Photo by Adam Carr, © Khirbet Ghozlan Excavation Project).

 

Dolmens in context

The relationship between dolmens, EB I settlements and geology suggests that dolmens are better understood as part of a local settlement system than as a regional, megalithic phenomenon. The striking implication is that monumentality was secondary to more prosaic factors concerning the ease of construction of above- or below-ground chambers. In other words, we may have significantly overstated the distinction between above-ground tombs built on hard rock, and below-ground tombs hewn in soft rock.

While the impressive subterranean EBA cemeteries at Jericho and Bab edh-Dhra have long been considered unique, this settlement-geology model suggests that the vast dolmen cemeteries of the escarpment are simply their upland counterparts, associated with an intensification of upland settlement in the 4^th millennium BCE.

 

James Fraser is Senior Curator at the Nicholson Museum (University of Sydney), and the author of Dolmens in the Levant, published as an Annual of the Palestine Exploration Fund. James currently directs excavations at Khirbet Um al-Ghozlan, investigating olive oil production in Jordan around 2000 BC.