DEPARTMENT FOR BUSINESS, ENERGY & INDUSTRIAL STRATEGY

A multi-isotope base map for Jordan: a tool for re-examining movement and community in the past

Project disclaimer

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Description

The relationships between mobile pastoralists and sedentary agricultural communities, between "the steppe and the sown", have historically played a key role in the formation of the national identity of the modern state of Jordan. In recent decades, however, a high rate of immigration has had a significant impact on Jordan's social fabric and its natural environment, with substantial implications for sustainable development and for its sense of self. Issues of identity and community, and of how these are constructed, have become matters of significant debate. We seek, therefore, to use a case study from the past to advance new perspectives on the nature of community and expand consideration of these issues. A recent project at Durham University demonstrated through isotopic analysis of skeletal remains that more than 50% of the individuals interred in a major 7th-9th century CE cemetery at Bamburgh, capital of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, did not originate from northeastern England, but from a world extending from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia. The diverse nature of the community at this major Anglo-Saxon site raises important questions about traditional narratives around British identity. We therefore seek to explore issues of diversity in a Jordanian context through a comparable case study. For this purpose, we have selected the site of Pella, an important community in the Jordan Valley that has produced a long sequence human skeletal material spanning a period of ca. 4000 years. Traditional ways of identifying migration and mobility in the archaeological record, which often rely on substantial changes in material culture, are problematic. Isotopic analysis of skeletal remains, in contrast, can provide direct evidence for mobility, and its application has informed major reconsiderations of the European past. The accurate interpretation of patterns of movement requires an understanding of spatial variation in local isotopic signatures in the natural environment - in effect, baseline mapping. The absence of this information in Jordan has hampered previous efforts to employ isotopic studies and has prevented the kind of nuanced understandings of past communities that are now reshaping our view of the European past. As a result, this project seeks to create through laboratory analysis an essential baseline dataset that will enhance the value of existing archaeological collections by using isotopic geochemistry as a technique to understand patterns of movement in the past. We will use this technique to investigate the relative homogeneity/diversity of an important Jordanian community at different points in time. While this case study offers exciting possibilities, we first aim to create a major piece of research infrastructure, in the form of a multi-isotope base-map for Jordan. This will provide the underpinnings for this project, but will also provide an essential point of reference for all future isotopic analysis in the country. We believe that this base-map will spur a rapid increase in the uptake of isotopic techniques within Jordanian archaeology. We therefore propose a two-part project: 1) Construction of a multi-isotope base-map for Jordan (87Sr/86Sr, 18O, 34S, 13C, 15N), comparable to the Biosphere Map of Britain. This would represent the first bioavailable multi-isotope map for any country in the Middle East. The data underlying the construction of this map will be made available as an online database, and map resources of spatial variability in bioavailable isotope values will also be made freely available online, to allow them to be used for future studies. 2) Undertake a study that employs a deep-time approach to the history of mobility and community in Jordan, by analyzing human remains from multiple periods at Pella. This site, located in the Jordan Valley, has one of the longest sequences of human burials in Jordan, and thus offers an ideal long-term case study of changes in mobility.

Objectives

The Newton Fund builds research and innovation partnerships with developing countries across the world to promote the economic development and social welfare of the partner countries.

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Location

The country, countries or regions that benefit from this Programme.

Jordan

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