Umm al-Biyara 2003 Overview

Umm al-Biyara, Jordan
Piotr BienkowskiThe grant is requested for two years towards the preparation of the final report on the excavations at Umm al-Biyara, inside Petra, southern Jordan, excavated by the late Crystal-M. Bennett from 1960 to 1965. This is the third and final unpublished Iron Age site excavated by Mrs Bennett which was passed to the applicant for publication after her death.

Umm al-Biyara (30¼21’N, 35¼25’E, PGR 191970) is the highest mountain in the centre of Petra in southern Jordan (the area known as Edom in the Iron Age). It remains the key to the absolute chronology of the Iron Age in southern Jordan. The ancient site is on the mountain’s flat, trapezoidal summit. Bennett’s excavations uncovered an unfortified Iron Age settlement consisting of a group of houses with long corridor rooms. The settlement was evidently domestic, judging from the quantity of loom weights and spindle whorls recovered. The pottery shows characteristic Iron II shapes, but, unlike assemblages at other Edomite sites, it was largely unpainted. Several apparently similar nearby ‘mountain-top’ sites, now seen as characteristic of the Petra area in the Iron Age, have been surveyed in recent years, but Umm al-Biyara remains the only one that has been excavated. Recent research suggests that Edom was a tribal kingdom rather than a nation state, and the Petra area had its own unique characteristics in terms of settlement type and location and pottery assemblages. An absolute date was provided by a clay seal impression discovered in one of the rooms; its restored inscription reads ‘Qos-Gabr, King of Edom’, who can be cross-dated to between 673 and 667 BC. This seventh-century date is the only absolute date available for Edom, and the dating of all Edomite sites and their associated material is still largely dependent on this seal impression.

The final report will include a full stratigraphic and architectural analysis, and reports on the pottery, inscribed material and small finds. A concluding chapter will place Umm al-Biyara in the wider context of the Iron Age in the region. The report will be published in the series British Academy Monographs in Archaeology, published for the Council for British Research in the Levant by Oxford University Press.