Larry G. Herr

Douglas R. Clark

Øystein S. LaBianca

Randall W. Younker

The year 2008 marks the 40th anniversary of Mabada Plains Project archaeological research in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The Madaba Plains Project is one of the longest-lived, continuously running archaeological excavation projects in the Middle East. Spanning four decades, the project, with its beginnings at Tall Hisban in the late sixties, has engaged 1,500 participants, produced scores of publications and spawned a dozen other projects. Its legacy includes being one of the first major Near Eastern archaeology projects to adopt a multi-millennial, regional approach; to incorporate ethnoarchaeology and environmental studies; to construct data around a food-systems' approach; and to computerize procedures for archaeological data acquisition and analysis, thus helping advance both the theoretical underpinnings and the field methods of archaeology in the southern Levant and beyond. Madaba Plains Project directors, wishing to celebrate this major scientific and historical milestone, have produced this anniversary volume which: highlights the value of ongoing collaborative research across the region of central Jordan, attempting to explain life and survival from the Bronze ages through the Islamic and early modern periods and features the latest results from ongoing research; enlivens the discussion by hearing from major scholars in the field who, in the process of assessing the contributions of the project to the archaeology of the southern Levant, broaden the discussion in the context of ancient Near Eastern archaeological research; and, expands the horizons of the project's research by presenting the ever enlarging number and extent of projects conducted by dig directors once on staff with the Madaba Plains Project, thereby taking readers all over Jordan and beyond.

Forty Years of Archaeological Research into Jordan's Past

The Madaba Plains Project

Geoffrey A. Clark

Burton MacDonald

Michael C. A. Macdonald

D. Scott Quaintance

Presented here are the results of the ARNAS project, a systematic survey of the southern segment of the Transjordanian Plateau, that is, the Edomite Plateau. Encompassing the region from the village of Ayl in the north to the edge of the escarpment at Ras an-Naqab in the south, members of the ARNAS team investigated the settlement patterns of this region beginning with the Lower Paleolithic (ca. 1.4mya) and running up to the end of the Late Islamic period (AD 1918). Although segments of the ARNAS territory have been investigated for the past one hundred years, a comprehensive and systematic survey of the area had never been undertaken prior to the work of the ARNAS team members. The main goal of the project was to discover, record, and interpret archaeological sites within the survey territory.

The Ayl to Ras An-Naqab Archaeological Survey, Southern Jordan (2005-2007)

James A. Sauer

Typological and Technological Studies of the Pottery Remains from Tell Hesban and Vicinity

Ceramic Finds

Larry G. Herr

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