Overview

Bibliography

‘Ain al-Jammam is situated high on a ridge overlooking the Hisma plateau that extends into Saudi Arabia. The site consists of two distinct sites: a Late Roman–Byzantine farmstead and a Neolithic village. The farmstead remains had been recognized as early as N. Glueck (though it does not appear to have been excavated), but it was not until 1986 that N. G. Gebel identified Neolithic remains. The excavation of ‘Ain al-Jammam was necessitated by the widening of the Desert Highway, the construction of which threatened the site. The site was excavated in 1995 and 1996 by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan under the direction of Mohammed Waheeb.

The Neolithic site probably covers an area of 6-8 hectares, though only a small portion of that has been excavated. The excavations revealed three Strata of settlement – the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (two subphases), Pre-Pottery Neolithic C (two subphases), and the Pottery Neolithic Period (3 subphases) – covering approximately 2800 years. Most of the structures in the center of the excavation area date to the LPPNB period. These houses are similar in construction to the houses at Basta, with some features similar to the houses at Beidha. The few PPNC structures are similar to the LPPNB buildings, but with the addition of cobbled flooring. During the Pottery Neolithic period, the houses are built with a curvilinear floor plan, often with larger rooms

It appears that many of the excavation records and artifacts have been lost or destroyed. Moreover, “there was very little documentation of daily work, locus descriptions, and only one incomplete top plan of a single building (although as many as ten buildings had been exposed)" (Rollefson 2005, 22). As a result, little is known about Neolithic ‘Ain al-Jammam, including the basic layout of the site. The plan for the site has thus been reconstructed from the VWP photos, which were shot 11 years after the excavations. Room for the completely (or mostly) exposed building are numbered and are assigned to one of eight reconstructed houses. Although the delimit of houses in the buildings is uncertain — some rooms may belong to other houses or some houses maybe combined into a single house — the numbering of houses at least enables the viewer to refer to specific units of the site intelligibly. The organization of rooms at the northern and southern end of the excavation area, however, is uncertain and they have not been numbered nor assigned to houses. No attempt has been made to distinguish between different phases of construction or different periods of occupation, though an astute observer will recognize evidence of multiple phases from the visible remains.

The archaeological strata uncovered at the site, as illustrated in the site plan, date to the following periods:

	Late Roman–Byzantine Period
	Primarily Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B