Thomas E. Levy

Caravan Archaeologies Workshop/Taller de Caravanas Arqueológicas

Iron Age Nomads, Copper Production and Caravans in Southern Jordan

Sometime during the 10th century BCE, the first industrial revolution occurred in the southern Levant and its focus was the production of copper metal. The locus of this transformation was in the copper ore district of Faynan in southern Jordan where the extraction of copper began in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period and continued until Medieval Islamic times. The provisioning of Iron Age industrial scale copper production involved a chaîne opératoire that included local and international market forces, the social organization of production, procurement of raw materials and fuel, technological production, recycling and export strategies. Many of these processes involved transport systems that relied on caravans that may have operated with donkeys, camels or both. The earliest historical documents linked to this region come from ancient Egyptian sources including the late 13th century BCE Papyrus Anastasi VI that refers to “The Bedouin tribes of Edom” suggesting that the Edomites were a nomadic people at that time. Long-term Late Bronze Age and Iron Age excavations by the University of California, San Diego and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan have demonstrated many of the links between this nomadic population and the early Levantine industrial revolution. Based on excavations and field surveys, using the chaîne opératoire approach to anthropological studies of technology, this paper explores the web of networks that were connected by nomads and their caravans during this formative period of local archaic state formation in the southern Levant.