Population Aggregation at the Early Bronze Age Settlement of al-Lajjun, Kerak Plateau, Jordan

Summary

The University of Minnesota Duluth Project is working at al-Lajjun to understand the initial period of population aggregation in the southern Levant. At this time, settlements of 5-10,000 people, some with fortification walls, developed. The economic and political organization of these larger groups of people, whether hierarchical or heterarchical, competitive or cooperative, embedded in or separate from kin groups is under debate. Our research seeks to add to this discussion by detailing the intrasite location of craft production and the distribution of architectural features at one such 3rd millennium site. Al-Lajjun is unburied by later settlement so the visibility of artifacts and architectural features offer a valuable space within which to experiment with intensive site survey and GIS mapping techniques.

During our initial season, we identified two areas inside the fortification wall with concentrations of lithic debitage and established the feasibility of extensive artifact mapping. In our second season, we mapped and recorded at least 100 domestic and non-domestic architectural features visible on the surface of the site. Next steps include excavation to understand the function and sequence of occupation of the various structures and additional intensive survey to map the distribution of craft production across the site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16120