From Wetlands to Deserts: The Role of Water in the Prehistoric Occupation of Eastern Jordan

Summary

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 significant impacts on human population movements and land use. Recent work at the 20,000-year-old site of Kharaneh IV indicates settlement of this intensively used aggregation site around the end of the Last Glacial Maximum with abandonment by the start of a second drying period, Heinrich Stadial 1. In contrast to narratives that associate aggregation and “settling in” during the Epipaleolithic with climatic amelioration, intensively occupied sites in eastern Jordan are also associated with shrinking wetlands. Drying at the onset of H1 led the visitors and occupants of Kharaneh IV to reconsider their use of this location for large-scale settlement, and aggregation sites soon disappear entirely from the region—perhaps even the very practice of aggregation as a socioecological strategy. Epipaleolithic occupants of the Azraq Basin, and elsewhere, experienced similar situations to modern-day inhabitants of this region, where water is an increasingly dwindling and precious resource that continues to shape how people engage with the landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Water in the Desert: Human Resilience in the Azraq Basin and Eastern Desert of Jordan

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38692.0