ABSTRACT
One of the most exciting aspects of the archaeology and history of Jordan is the extent to which their study provides a window on some of humanity’s most momentous and consequential achievements. To highlight just a few examples, Jordan is where some of the earliest experiments with agriculture and village life took place during the Neolithic period (Rollefson 2003). It is where some of the initial attempts were made to intensify agriculture through artificial collection of rainwater and control of run-off by means of terraces and dams during the Chalcolithic period (Levy 2003). It is where some of the first herders ventured forth onto the desert margins of settled areas to become pastoral nomads specializing in production of animal products and long-distance trade as a means of survival and a modest profit also during the Chalcolithic (Levy 1983). It is one of the core areas for the development of metallurgy, specifically copper and iron smelting, on which so many subsequent improvements in human technology have since depended, during the Chalcolithic through the Iron Age (Levy and Najjar 2006a). Jordan is where we see some of the earliest attempts by recently coalesced imperial powers (such as those of Egypt and Mesopotamia) to take control of a vital intercontinental land bridge—the Levantine corridor—of which Jordan is a vital part (Adams 2002; Postgate 2002). It is where some of the first historic secondary states (such as Ammon, Moab, Edom and Israel) arose in response to repeated and often oppressive imperial domination during the Iron Age (LaBianca and Younker 1995). It is where nearly every empire that has arisen in the Middle East and Circim-Mediterranean regions—Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Sassanian, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman, British—has deemed it essential to have a controlling presence (see n. 6). And, perhaps most important of all to the contemporary world, it is where many of the prophets and chroniclers sojourned whose visions and writings gave rise to the sacred texts and innumerable religious movements of the three great Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These traditions, which have left an indelible imprint on Jordan’s landscape, have been universalized in some form in nearly every country in the world.
