The Beginning of the Early Bronze Age in the North Jordan Valley: New¹⁴C Determinations from Pella in Jordan

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This article reports on 10 new accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dates from early phases of the Early Bronze Age at the long-lived settlement of Pella (modern Tabaqat Fahl) in the north Jordan Valley. The new AMS dates fall between 3400 and 2800 cal BC, and support a recent suggestion that all Chalcolithic period occupation had ceased by 3800/3700 cal BC at the latest (Bourke et al. 2004b). Other recently published Early Bronze Age 14 C data strongly supports this revisionist scenario, suggesting that the earliest phase of the Early Bronze Age (EBA I) occupied much of the 4th millennium cal BC (3800/3700 to 3100/3000 cal BC). As this EB I period in the Jordan Valley is generally viewed as the key precursor phase in the development of urbanism (Joffe 1993), this revisionist chronology has potentially radical significance for understanding both the nature and speed of the move from village settlement towards a complex urban lifeway.

Contextualizing Early Urbanization: Settlement Cores, Early States and Agro-pastoral Strategies in the Fertile Crescent During the Fourth and Third Millennia BC

“…That this process is broadly contemporaneous with the first well-dated fortifications in the area in the final centuries of the fourth millennium BC (Bourke et al 2009) is probably not fortuitous. Fig.…”

“…While KKW was traditionally ascribed to EB III, the revised chronology discussed above places this development around 2900 cal BC, that is, not long after the demise of the late EB I occupations at Shuna and Beth Shan and the construction of the first fortifications at Khirbet Kerak and Pella (Bourke et al 2009;Greenberg et al 2012, p. 90). The appearance of quantities of KKW stratified above deposits containing typical late EB I material might therefore indicate that the surviving polities in the Jordan Valley sought to revive agricultural production by introducing immigrants who would work the land but (unlike the previous inhabitants) would have no direct claim to its ownership.…”

“…While sites such as Khirbet Kerak, Tell Abu al-Kharaz, and Pella were fortified (Bourke et al 2009;Fischer 2008, p. 345;Gibbins 2001;Greenberg et al 2012, pp. 92-93), others such as Tell esh-Shuna and Beth Shan appear to have undergone either temporary abandonments or marked reductions in activity (Mazar 2012, pp.…”

Testing feldspar luminescence dating of young archaeological heated materials using potshards from Pella (Tell Tabqat Fahl) in the Jordan valley

“…Excavations in more recent times have focussed on the south-central area of the main mound (Area XXXII), where the largest Bronze Age temple ever discovered in Jordan has been under excavation for the past 15 years (Bourke, 2012). More recently attention has shifted to the west of the temple, where a series of Bronze and Iron Age (around 1650-750 BCE) Civic Buildings contemporary with the nearby temple are being uncovered (Bourke, 2011(Bourke, , 2014.…”

“…Since the early 1990s, a program of intensive radiometric sampling has been carried out (Bourke et al, 2006(Bourke et al, , 2009Wild and Fischer, 2013), to complement traditional typological methods of establishing relative chronology (McNicoll et al, 1992;Bourke, 2000 andBourke et al, 2006). Table 1 lists a selection of 14 C ages from the Iron Age destruction horizon from which the OSL samples were collected (Wild and Fischer, 2013) 1 .…”