Wadi Feinan in the Fourth and Third Millennia BC, Wadi Feinan, Southern Jordan Co-Directors: Dr Katherine I. Wright , Dr Mohammed Najjar A project of the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History (BIAAH), the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, and the Department of Antiquities, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan The Wadi Feinan 4th and 3rd millennia Project is one of several sub-projects of the British Wadi Feinan Regional Project, co-ordinated by the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History (BIAAH). The overarching general goals of the BIAAH Wadi Feinan Project are to explore long-term land use, human adaptations and social change in the Feinan valley from the late Pleistocene to the present. Other sub-projects include the Geomorphology, Landscape and Field System Survey (G. Barker, D. Mattingly, University of Leicester, D. Gilbertson, University of Aberystwyth), the Feinan Palaeolithic Project (S. Mithen, University of Reading, B. Findlayson, Univ. of Edinburgh), Roman-Byzantine Project (P. Freeman, University of Liverpool). Wadi Feinan lies in an arid landscape but has access to considerable amounts of water by virtue of its proximity to a permanent spring. The wadi is also one of the largest sources of copper in the Levant. Consequently, Wadi Feinan represents a region of particular importance for understanding the development of technology, exchange systems, prestige goods and emerging social complexity in the Levant in the 4th and 3rd millennia BC. The aims of the 4th-3rd millennia BC project are therefore to explore regional settlement, interregional interactions and social changes in Wadi Feinan at the dawn of the Early Bronze Age. | |
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