About the lecture

The last three field seasons of the Jawa Hinterland Project have revealed a number of prehistoric hillfort sites, located on volcanoes in the basalt desert of North-East Jordan. These sites are additionally characterized by terraced gardens located on the slopes at the foot of their elevations, and that was once irrigated by artificial run-off irrigation. Radiocarbon dates from two of these sites give an occupation between the 2nd half of the 5th millennium BCE and the middle of the 4th millennium BCE, which is the Late Chalcolithic and the Early Bronze Age I (A and B) period. This means that these two sites, therefore, predate the Jawa fortification, which was in use around the mid and the second half of the 4 th millennium BCE. The lecture will present an overview of the hillfort phenomenon in the harra of Eastern Jordan with special consideration of the preliminary results of the recently completed field work season, 2017.

About the speaker

Dr Bernd Müller-Neuhof’s research interests lie in lithic technologies from the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age, early pastoral nomadism, early pastoral nomadism, evolution of societies, warfare and conflicts in prehistoric societies, ancient technologies, archaeology and museology. Since 2010, he has been a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Oriental Department of the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and Director of the Jawa Hinterland Project (Phase I & II) which is funded by the German Research Foundation and an affiliated CBRL project.

Dr Müller-Neuhof wrote his PhD on Neolithic conflicts in the Near East from the Freie Universität Berlin (2005). Among his previous roles, he was Assistant Director of the German Protestant Research Institute in Amman (GPIA) (2000-2001) and Curator for the special exhibition “Babylon” at the Museum of the Ancient Near East in Berlin (2006-2009). In 2017, he held an American Institute of Archaeology (AIA) /DAI Research Fellowship at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California – Los Angeles, and was awarded his Habilitation from the Freie Universität Berlin where he also now teaches as a private lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Archaeology.