ABSTRACT
The Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey is a study of the landscape evolution of Wadi Faynan in southern Jordan from prehistoric times to the present day, as a contribution to the issue that is the central theme of this volume: the importance of providing a long-term archaeological perspective on how people have lived in arid lands. How did past societies in marginal environments learn to cope with risk? What solutions did they develop and how successful were they? Why did they take the choices they took? To what extent did their actions affect their landscape, and for good or ill? The rationale of the project has been to bring together an inter-disciplinary team of archaeologists, geographers and environmental biologists in the investigation of the landscape history of the chosen study area within a single integrated research framework. (The Acknowledgements at the end of the chapter detail the numerous colleagues working in the project whose researches are summarized in these pages.)
The Wadi Faynan is situated about 40 km from Petra, the world-famous capital of the Nabatean kingdom that flourished in the last few centuries BC before the Roman conquest of the region (Fig. 4.1). The catchment of the wadi forms a transect about five km wide running for some 15 km westwards from the rim of the Jordanian plateau c.1,500 m above sea level to the floor of the Wadi Arabah rift valley at about sea level. The main wadi today is a bleak landscape, arid and largely denuded of vegetation (Figs. 4.2, 4.5), though where they cut through the plateau escarpment the channels of the three main feeder tributaries (the Dana, Ghuwayr and Shayqar) are in places well watered and comparatively well vegetated from ground springs. The Wadi Faynan today (part of the Dana Nature Reserve of Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature) is used mainly by nomadic bedouin herders, but is also well known for its abundant archaeological remains.
