Overview
The Damiyah dolmen field, located along the eastern foothills of the Jordan valley, is the largest such field in Jordan. It was first surveyed in 1817, by explorers C. L. Irby and J. Mangles. In 1942–1943, M. Stekelis conducted an extensive survey of the field and identified 164 dolmens, while more recent surveys have counted upwards of 300.
The dolmens are constructed from the abundant travertine and sandstone in the foothills. Most are oriented north-south, though a few are aligned in other directions. The side and top stones are rough, but the front and back stones are often well worked. Many of the front stones have a small porthole set in a frame in the middle of the stone, suggesting that accesses to the dolmen was desired after likely interment. Many of the dolmens were found to be covered by a tumulus. Stekelis excavated some of the dolmens. The human remains he found in the dolmens consisted of both cremated bodies and bodies in contracted position, and it appears at least some of the dolmens were used for collective burials. The ceramic record associated with the dates them to the Early Bronze I period.
Surveys here at Damiyah indicate some 250-300 dolmens standing overall, but today these monuments to human culture are being threatened by nearby quarrying operations, despite the fact that as of this writing they are listed among the World Monuments Fund’s seventy-seven endangered sites on its annual world watch list. Here the dolmens are endangered by the travertine quarrying operations of the Travco Company, which received a license to quarry the valuable stones from the middle of the field. As a result, several dolmens are consumed by the quarrying operations each year, and bulldozers were in operation as the virtual reality images were being captured for the VWP site. Please note that the navigation map of this field is schematic and not laid out to scale. Only dolmens in the southern portion of the field have been photographed, and are numbered for reference purposes only.
