By Kate Rix
With no natural water source and less than 12 inches of rainfall each year, the site of ancient Dhiban, Jordan offers no immediate explanation for why Middle Eastern societies have settled, left and then re-settled the area since the Bronze Age.
Yet the mounded settlement east of the Dead Sea bears evidence of Iron Age, Classical, and Islamic societies. Located on the King’s Highway, Dhiban was home to the Moabites, who left behind the famous Mesha Stele, an inscribed black basalt stone that describes victory over the ancient Israelites and confirms certain biblical passages.
It is these historical features, as well as the persistent attachment people have had to the arid plateau over five millennia, that attract scholars like Benjamin Porter, a professor of Near Eastern Studies and a director of the Dhiban Excavation and Development Project.
“How do people live together under harsh conditions? It’s not simple at all,” Porter says. “They had to develop a system for collecting, storing, and sharing all kinds of resources, including water. Today, there is real interest in how these ancient societies found sustainable ways to subsist.”
Evidence of five thousand years of intermittent settlement is concentrated over a 37-acre site, immediately adjacent to the modern city of Dhiban. The excavation project reflects the concerns of many disciplines—history, anthropology, environmental sciences, development studies and the materials sciences—so the project Porter helps direct takes an integrated approach, combining field research with student training and community outreach.
Graduate student Alan Farahani has participated in two seasons at Dhiban and plans to go next summer as well. Within ancient history and archaeology, Farahani specializes in paleoethnobotany—the study of ancient plants and what they reveal about people’s lives.
He collects soil samples at the site and processes them through water, sending light material to the top of a big barrel and heavier objects to the bottom. In the lab, he sorts through and identifies ancient, carbonized wheat seeds, fig seeds and burned wood. For this work he has help from three undergraduate research apprentices.
“It isn’t just finding the plants, but what the plants say about the ancient societies that have lived there,” says Farahani. “These remains reveal how they were able to subsist and what resources were available to people at that time.”
This past summer was a study season. Farahani conducted interviews with modern-day farmers in Dhiban to find out how they handle pests, what they grow and how they bring water to their crops. Three thousand years ago, Dhibani farmers had sustained irrigation. They hand-sifted seeds to separate out the weeds and, most likely, had built limestone canals and pipes to deliver water. Today, farmers are part of the modern agricultural marketplace.
“There has even been a difference between the 1950s and today,” he says. “They use plastic tubing and drip irrigation and pesticides. The world is changing very quickly.”
Other debris that is analyzed and catalogued includes bone fragments, ceramic pieces and bits of glass. The team works, in part, in the U.C. Berkeley Paleoethnobotany laboratory headed by anthropology professor Christine Hastorf, who provides Alan Farahani with methodological training and laboratory space. Ultimately Porter, Farahani and other members of the team hope to secure funding for their own permanent research space on campus.
Recently, Porter’s team identified the possible remains of a massive reservoir from Dhiban’s Iron Age Moabite settlement. This summer team members will continue digging to uncover more of the reservoir, which is mentioned in the Mesha Stele. The stone inscription—essentially a chronicle of King Mesha’s military prowess and building projects—includes the king’s order requiring each household to build a cistern for collecting rainwater.
“This command speaks to the sustainable practices that are required of people to live in this place,” says Porter. “Today, water is brought to the Dhiban community using a complicated and unreliable piping system, so many homes still capture rainwater with cisterns.”
The entire site presents opportunities to study community sustainability at different moments in Middle Eastern history. Porter and his colleagues have uncovered buildings built by one group of residents, but which were then abandoned and modified hundreds of years later by new occupants.
“There are walls for buildings made around 830 BCE that are added to and modified as late as the 15th Century CE,” says Porter. “This is a phenomenon called ‘adaptive reuse.’ Structures are built, used and then abandoned, but then new users come along centuries later and make subtle changes in design to suit new desired uses.”
The ability to revive these dormant resources is what likely made Dhiban an attractive location in an otherwise difficult landscape.
During excavations, residents of contemporary Dhiban work along side researchers to retrieve and process materials. There are also plans to develop elementary school teaching materials for the Dhiban school. Last year a graduate student researcher developed a photo show about the excavation.
By integrating field research with the contemporary community, researchers find themselves examining the question of sustainability in a different way. With a grant from the Townsend Center for the Humanities, Porter and Bahador Jafarpur, a recent Berkeley graduate from Near Eastern Studies, have studied ways that Middle Eastern archaeological sites are developed and managed for tourism. In Dhiban, researchers hope to create sustainable jobs for the local community based on the archaeological site.
“We are looking at how people protect antiquities in a way that enhances the local economy,” Porter says. “Dhiban is one of Jordan’s most important archaeological sites. With some infrastructure and commitment from the local government, it could grow to become a sustainable resource for the contemporary community.”
To learn more about the Dhiban Excavation and Development Project, visit www.dhiban.org.
