Jebel Qurma Project - Jordan

This beautiful creature, a Huntsman spider (Eusparassus), sometimes takes up residence inside the cairns and startles excavators…. The huntsman ambushes its prey (cockroaches are a favorite!) and chases it with incredible speed.

Enjoying a delicious dinner, with our good friend Abu Sultan (the guard of camp Hamza) and two of his sons. On the right: Ashraf Suleiman Alkhreisha, representative of the Dept. of Antiquities and valued friend!

The team is currently working at site QUR-74 on a very interesting constellation: four small tower tombs in a row! Excavating these tombs means unraveling their complex histories of use and re-use.

Mid-season break, starting in beautiful Wadi Dana and Qasr Shobak, and ending in Madaba, in restaurant Haret Jdoudna!

Huge stones in the wall of the tower tomb, with Zoë for scale

Working on a small tower tomb with a cist grave attached to it, at the site of QUR-1084.

Helping out another car, bogged in sand

Excavating a tower tomb, in spring weather!

About weaponry and rock art at Jebel Qurma!

Weaponry Tales from Jebel Qurma: Decoding figurative art, tombs’ preservation AMMAN — The Safaitic inscriptions within the Black Desert depict scenes from the daily life of the pre-historic inhabitants, in this arid and inhospitable environment. The Black Desert, like Hishma Desert in the south, contains thousands of inscriptions and petroglyphs spanning from immemorial tim...

About the beauty of the desert in east Jordan

About the Azraq basin (and beyond):

Northeast Jordan’s Azraq basin challenges perceptions of harsh landscape AMMAN — With human presence known for at least 400,000 years ago, the Azraq basin and adjacent areas of northeast Jordan preserve one of the most continuous and well-known sequences of early prehistoric settlement in the Levant.

Yorke Rowan about the prehistory of the Black Desert in Jordan!

See:

Beyond the Fertile Crescent: Life in the Black Desert The forbidding landscape known as the Black Desert may be arid and inhospitable today, but recent research shows that at one time it supported both humans and large mammals.

The endless plains of north-eastern Jordan, seen from the Jebel Qurma range. In front, we see an extensive group of stone-walled enclosures for camping, dating to the Byzantine and Early Islamic periods.

The astounding beauty of Jebel Qurma

Some beautiful pieces of recently found rock art from Jebel Qurma, made over 2000 years ago.

The time has come for us to leave the field. We spent some 9 weeks in the desert, busy with the investigation of tombs long forgotten. These were 9 great, exciting weeks. Work was not always easy, due to the relentless heat, the regular sand storms and the occasional thunder storm. However, our work was never dull but always exciting and entirely worth our efforts. After all, Jordan’s eastern desert is a great and most rewarding place for archaeological research!

From left to right: Wesam Esaid, Keshia Akkermans, Bobby Leahy, Isabelle Fontijne, Vera van Heel and Peter Akkermans.

Our final project in the field: the excavation of a small tower tomb and its attached cist grave. The latter grave dates to the beginning of the common era, but the tower tomb is much older and dates at about 600 BCE. Both were heavily looted in antiquity, but they still gave us lots of insights. The tower tomb may originally have been up to 2 m high. The looting done some 2000 years ago resulted in the collapse of the tower. We had to remove enormous amounts of fallen stones, as well as tons of later, wind -blown, sand between the stones.

Jordan's beautiful, cursed landscape The Black Desert offers visitors millions of years of natural and human history – but this may all change with plans to build a new capital city on the desert's edge.

Our current research area, in the eastern half of the Jebel Qurma range. Amazingly beautiful!

We are busy with a beautiful tower tomb of the 1st millennium BCE, located on a hill top. It is a very large tomb, up to 6 m in diameter, with its height preserved to about 1.25 m. Inside is a huge burial chamber with a corbeled roof. The outer wall of the tomb has partially collapsed to its very foundation, probably due an earthquake.

Today and yesterday: first came the sand, then the heavy rain

The long walk through the basalt in the early morning (photos: Isabelle Fontijne)

We’re investigating thousands-of-years-old burial cairns somewhere in the middle of nowhere

While, indeed, we try to travel light, each day we must lug back and forth our tools through the basalt

I feel I am being watched….

Our small but experienced team investigates the many burial cairns in Jebel Qurma from thousands of years ago. Unfortunately, most of the tombs have been looted in a search for treasures, often quite recently. However, we’re still able to retrieve great insights into ancient burial practices, through careful work and attention for details. It comes with a price though: we have to remove tons of sand and stones…

The Jebel Qurma area is quite deserted these days, with no bedouin tents or the like. We see just this lone herdsman and his camels passing by.

We’re in the field for some time now, living la vida loca amidst the rocks and the sand!