Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For thousands of years, plants and animals including humans moved back and forth along the Levantine corridor—a geographic region that connects Africa to Eurasia. At the margin of this corridor lies the Azraq Basin in the Eastern Desert of Jordan, which previously had extensive spring-fed wetlands at its center. These wetlands remained intact until the early 1990s when the combination of climate change and years of water overdraw led to desiccation of the springs. This session explores human resilience in the face of climate change and documents the shifting relationships between people, plants, animals, and objects in this challenging ecosystem from the Lower Paleolithic to historic times.

Other Keywords
Geoarchaeology • Paleolithic • Landscape Archaeology • Neolithic • Environment and Climate  • Hunter-Gatherers/Foragers • Protein Residue Analysis • Settlement patterns • Digital Archaeology: GIS • Dating Techniques: Radiometric

Geographic Keywords
Republic of Turkey (Country) • Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Country) • Republic of Iraq (Country) • Islamic Republic of Iran (Country) • State of Israel (Country) • Lebanese Republic (Country) • Syrian Arab Republic (Country) • West Bank (Country) • Republic of Cyprus (Country) • Arab Republic of Egypt (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-6 of 6)

  • Documents (6)
Documents
  • From Wetlands to Deserts: The Role of Water in the Prehistoric Occupation of Eastern Jordan (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Lisa Maher. Danielle Macdonald. AJ White. Jordan Brown.

    This is an abstract from the "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Azraq Basin of Jordan, dramatic landscape changes from wetlands to desert resulted in shifts in settlement and land use over time suggesting that, like today, water availability was crucial for past populations. Changing environmental conditions throughout the Pleistocene and Holocene had...

  • Human-Environment Dynamics at the Arid Margin of the Levant: Fluctuating Freshwater Resources between 400,000 and 40,000 Years Ago in the Greater Azraq Oasis Area, Jordan (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Ames. April Nowell.

    This is an abstract from the "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Azraq Basin is a 12,000 km2 internal drainage system at the eastern margin of the Levant. The center of the basin, which we refer to as the Greater Azraq Oasis Area (GAOA), is characterized by a mudflat flanked by two historical wetlands. Desiccation of these wetlands in the early 1990s and...

  • The Late Neolithic Expansion in the Black Desert, Jordan (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Yorke Rowan. Gary Rollefson. Alexander Wasse. Chad Hill. Morag Kersel.

    This is an abstract from the "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spanning the early–mid-Holocene and the global climate event at 8200 BP (“8.2 event”), the Late Neolithic (ca. 7000–5000 BCE) is a crucial time for understanding cultural trajectories in southwest Asia. In hyperarid deserts such as that in the Black Desert of eastern Jordan, questions remain about the...

  • Orbiting the Oasis: Protein Residue Analysis Illuminates Past Interspecies Interactions in Jordan (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Cam Walker.

    This is an abstract from the "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lithic tools excavated at Shishan Marsh (SM-1) dating to approximately 250,000 years have provided insight into human adaptability to the factors of climate change, water shortage, and ecological stress. Shishan Marsh was likely a refuge due to being a wetland in the middle of a desert, the paleomarsh...

  • Paleoenvironmental Signatures of a Persistent Place at Kharaneh IV, Jordan (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only AJ White. Lisa Maher.

    This is an abstract from the "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental data are pertinent to understanding the processes that form persistent places. This paper presents new physical and chemical geoarchaeological data, including faunal C and O isotopes, sediment composition, and geological survey data, from Kharaneh IV, a large Early...

  • Settlement Patterns, Water Accessibility, and Circulation in the Azraq Watershed during the Neolithic Colonization (Seventh–Sixth Millennium BCE) (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marie-Laure Chambrade.

    This is an abstract from the "Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The end of the neolithization process (seventh–sixth millennium cal BCE) was a period of settlement peak in the arid margins of the Fertile Crescent. In northeastern Jordan, the combination of a long sequence of Neolithic occupation and several decades of field investigation provide the opportunity of...