Khirbat al-Mudayna al Aliya: Production, Politics, and Power in an Iron Age Village

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

With the support of the National Science Foundation, Dr. Routledge and his colleagues will conduct a program of archaeological excavation and survey in the vicinity Khirbat al-Mudayna al-`Aliya (KMA) on the eastern edge of Jordan's Karak Plateau, ca. 35 kilometers due east of the Dead Sea. KMA is an exceptionally well-preserved village occupied for a brief period of time in the last half of the eleventh century BC (Iron Age Ib). Importantly, this occupation immediately precedes the emergence of territorial states in the region, including the biblical state of Moab into which this part of Jordan was incorporated in the ninth century BC. The founding, and brief occupation, of substantial villages in what is now an agriculturally marginal part of Jordan raises many questions about economic and political developments during this period of significant social change. Dr. Routledge's research aims to address these issues by elucidating the cultural form, political economy, and local ecology of Khirbat al-Mudayna al-'Aliya and its surrounding Iron Age settlement system. In particular, evidence will be sought for past environmental change, crop husbandry practices, herding strategies and off-site pastoral activities, household organization, the spatial distribution of activity areas in relation to architectural variation, and exchange "paths" between households. This evidence will not only shed light on the political economy of local agro-pastoral production strategies, it will also illumine the structuring practices of everyday life that are the social context for these strategies. One key idea to be tested in this research is the suitability of African models of state formation that emphasize social relations over Eurasian models that emphasize control of land.