Social Archaeology & Early Metallurgy:
The Jabal Hamrat Fidan Project, Jordan

While researchers from the German Mining Museum at Bochum carried out technological studies of early copper metallurgy and mining in Faynan in the 1980s and early 1990s, they ignored the social context of early metalworking. The result of this research has been a series of publications, which present a history of technology detached from the communities who exploited copper ores from Faynan. Based on a recent pilot excavation in the Jabal Hamrat Fidan by the students in the summer of 1997, even these technological-based studies in Faynan are already in need of revision.

The new field research here will be carried out from the spring of 1998 through the summer of 2004 and will clarify the social implications of early metallurgy. While the new work includes technological-based studies (carried out by the German Mining Museum), it goes well beyond the earlier research. Using the Jabal Hamrat Fidan region as the basic unit of analysis and anthropological theory, the new fieldwork will include a series of large-scale excavations and surveys that will provide new data concerning ore procurement and changing pyro-technologies related to evolving economies. This work will provide the social context of technological change from the advent of food producing societies (Neolithic) to the rise of chiefdoms (Chalcolithic), the emergence of the earliest urban centers (Bronze Age) to the advent of the first historical kingdoms in the region (Iron Age). By using copper metallurgy as a lens for examining social change through time in the southern Levant, this research will systematically monitor social evolution through the key periods of cultural evolution and contribute to the broader fields of archaeology, anthropology and the ancient history of the Near East.

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Project Aims