A Public lecture by the Australian archaeologist Dr. James Fraser

About the Lecture:

Megalithic dolmen tombs are some of the most striking features in the archaeological landscape of Jordan. Yet their visibility has made them an easy target for tomb robbers over the last 5,000 years. Consequently, archaeologists have struggled to place these mysterious monuments into their true cultural contexts.

This lecture presents the results of recent fieldwork investigating dolmen cemeteries in Jordan. This fieldwork underscores a new theory that proposes that highly-visible dolmen tombs helped reconfigure the ways in which people engaged with the landscape at a time when the region’s earliest civilizations developed a new urban way of life.

About the Lecturer:

James Fraser is Curator for the Levant at the British Museum. He has worked on archaeological projects in Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kashmir, Greece, Cambodia and the Solomon Islands. He directed the North Jordan Tomb Project as part of his Ph.D. research, investigating dolmens and other megalithic structures in the eastern escarpment of the Jordan Valley. He currently runs the Khirbet Um al-Ghozlan Excavation Project in the Wadi Rayyan.

James Fraser completed his Ph.D. in Middle Eastern Archaeology in 2015 and a B.A. with Honors in Archaeology in 2003. Both degrees were awarded from the University of Sydney in Australia.