The Shammakh to Ayl Archaeological Survey, Southern Jordan (2010–2012) by Burton MacDonald et al. (review)

The Shammakh to Ayl Archaeological Survey (SAAS) is the latest in a series of surveys in central and southern Jordan directed by MacDonald since 1979. Taken together, these surveys have sampled a substantial block of upland territory between Wadi al-Hasa in the north and Ras an-Naqab in the south, with extensions down to the rift margins in the west and out towards the Desert Highway in the east. The SAAS study area comprised ca. 590 km² of the southern Edomite plateau, being that 30 km north-south × 20 km east-west area lying above the 1,200 m contour between Shammakh in the north and Ayl in the south.

This volume presents the primary data collected by the SAAS, but not its detailed interpretation nor integration with the earlier surveys, for which one must turn to two separate publications (MacDonald 2014, 2015) which are not reviewed here. The sevenfold objectives of the SAAS are clearly articulated (on p. 1) and ambitious, forming a benchmark against which the success or otherwise of the survey can be assessed:

1. 1. “to discover, record, and interpret archaeological sites in an area of approximately 590 km²”;

2. 2. “to determine the area’s settlement patterns from the Lower Paleolithic . . . to the end of the Late Islamic period”;

3. 3. “to investigate the Pleistocene . . . sediments and lakes in the eastern segment of the survey territory”;

4. 4. “to document the many farms, hamlets, and villages that provisioned the major international sites of the area”;

5. 5. “to investigate further the Khatt Shabib”;

6. 6. “to record the inscriptions, rock drawings, and wasms . . . within the area”;

7. 7. “to link up with previous work that the project director and others have carried out in southern Jordan.”

Scrutiny of the small print makes it clear that the bulk of the fieldwork was completed over one six-week and one seven-and-a-half-week season, each with a team of six people in the field. In this context, it is difficult to avoid coming to the conclusion that the ambition of the survey outstripped the resources allocated to it. Although MacDonald is to be congratulated on covering so much ground with limited resources, one wonders whether the survey might have benefitted from a more targeted approach?

The book comprises eight clearly presented chapters and a number of appendices.

Chapter 1 (“Introduction”) sets the context and outlines the methodology. The survey area was divided into three zones on the basis of elevation: Zone 1 in the west (1,200–1,500 m asl), Zone 2 in the centre (>1,500 m asl) and Zone 3 in the east (1,200–1,500 m asl). Each of these was sampled by means of randomly generated 500 × 500 m squares, representing approximately 5% of each zone. Transects were walked across each square and artefacts collected. Sites were recorded in and adjacent to squares, and also whilst transiting between squares. Whilst this approach does, as the authors note, “force survey team members into all areas of the territory” (p. 7), it also has significant limitations. First and foremost, human settlement is rarely randomly distributed, especially in a dry environment like southern Jordan, but tends instead to be highly clustered around sources of water, agricultural land, lines of communication, etc. Unless random squares are combined with purposive sampling of resource-rich ‘hotspots,’ one runs the risk of missing significant parts of the settlement record entirely. On a more positive note, a useful list of SAAS sites that are promising candidates for further investigation is provided (Table 1.4).

At 425 pages, Chapters 2 (“Random Square Descriptions”) and 3 (“Site Descriptions – 1–366”) comprise the meat of the volume. Random squares and sites (“any location where humans...