(For larger views of images, click on the thumbnails on this page.)
| Nature of the Site | History and Plans of the Project | Results | |
| Geographical setting Occupational sequence | Beginnings Early research | Research plans Virtual Nimrin | Major finds |
The Tell Nimrin (TN) Project is an archaeological expedition designed to examine the paleoenvironment of the southern Jordan Valley region of the Royal Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. First conceived in 1986 as a salvage or rescue operation, the project held field seasons in 1989, 1990, 1993, and 1995. In each season, a team of approximately 25 individuals, mostly faculty and students representing 12 or more U. S. universities, museums, and colleges excavated from five to eight weeks during May, June, and early July. In every season except 1989, between seven and fifteen Jordanians, Palestinians, and Moroccans from the University of Jordan and Yarmouk University participated in the field seasons and in post-season research. A complete list of field staff and specialists is provided separately.
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Satellite photo of Near East | Satellite photo of Jordan rift | LANDSAT image of Nimrin region
Three co-directors led the project: two Americans, James W. Flanagan of Case Western Reserve University and David W. McCreery of Willamette University, and for the 1990, 1993, and 1995 seasons, a Jordanian, Khair N. Yassine of the University of Jordan. Their institutions share responsibility and jointly held the licenses issued by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities (DoA).
The project was graciously supported by the Directors-General of the DoA from 1985 forward. In that year, Dr. Adnan Hadidi first invited Flanagan to plan a small salvage project and in 1989 issued the first license for excavating. His successors, Dr. Ghazi Bisheh, Dr. Safwan Tell, and Dr. Bisheh again, continued to enable the research by their encouragement and cooperation. In every season, Mr. Sa'ad Hadidi, Director of the Salt District, served as DoA Representative on the project. His assistance proved invaluable both on the site and in the community where he led the project in establishing positive relationships with the citizens and officials of the town and the state.
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Co-director K. Yassine |
S. Hadidi
(left)and Dr. Bisheh (2nd from rt.) |
In addition to support for field seasons and publication stated above, the project received a number of in-kind contributions of time, equipment, and expertise. These include metallurgical and ceramic analyses provided by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Department of Geology at CWRU, historical analyses of the Byzantine hoard at the Walters Gallery in Baltimore and the American Numismatic Society in New York, neutron activation analyses at Oregon State University Radiation Center with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, geological analyses at Georgia State University and the University of Montana, faunal analyses at Kansas State University, ceramic analyses at the Milwaukee Public Museum, University of California, Berkeley, University of Pennsylvania, and Willamette University, floral analyses at Willamette University, and computer and world wide web assistance at CWRU. The final repository for hard copy records, slides and films, electronic records and databases, and the VN web site is the Kelvin Smith Library at Case Western Reserve University. Qualified individuals who need access to those records and materials may contact the Special Collections Librarian at the Library. Museum quality artifacts are in the custody of the DoA. Some may be on display in museums in Amman or Salt, Jordan.
Field staff came from a score of museums, research institutions, colleges, and universities in Jordan and the United States.
Over the centuries, TN has appeared repeatedly in literature, history, and archaeology. Beth-Nimrah ("house of abundant waters") is mentioned in the Bible (Numbers 32:26). The 4th century C.E. Byzantine writers, Eusebius and Jerome, refer to Bethnamaris, the successor to Beth-Nimrah, and locate it five Roman miles north of Livias, today's Tell Rama. An image that appears to be remnants of a lion or leopard (Arabic "nimr") can be seen on the 6th century C.E. mosaic map in a church in Madeba. The image is in the approximate location of TN which leads to speculation that the ancient cartographers intended to mark the site.
In this century, early explorers and travelers visited the site and mentioned it in their writings. These include F. M. Abel, W. F. Albright, C. R. Conder, A. Mallon, and S. Merril. It was Nelson Glueck's survey in the late 1930s, however, that shaped thinking about the site. He reported no pottery earlier than the Roman period. This impression was corrected by a 1976 DoA survey conducted by James Sauer, Moayiah Ibrahim, and TN co-director Khair Yassine who found Bronze and Iron age remains.
In 1980 during construction of a house on the northwestern slope of the tell, a bulldozer cut a mosaic pavement that was soon excavated by Michele Piccirillo. In his 1982 report, Piccirillo reported a Byzantine church with a central and two side naves which together measured 18.45 m x 13.52 m. The church had been in use for more than two centuries from the 6th century C.E. through the 7th and 8th centuries and into the Umayyad Period. The mosaics, now displayed in the museum in Salt, dated from two periods, the 6th century and the 7th/8th century respectively.
Finally, a brief probe was excavated by the DoA directed by Sa'ad Hadidi, but its conclusions have not been published.
The designation "salvage" implies that a site is endangered. TN in fact has been repeatedly threatened by economic development and military usage. In recent times, for example, the top of the site was leveled by bulldozers in order to be used as a military post in 1967 (used again in 1990). School rooms, homes, commercial businesses, and government offices have been built on the mound's flanks, and a road, widened to four lanes in the 1980s, cut the northern edge. When field operations began in 1989, Shuna South had several town-plans and engineers' reports proposing that the tell be landscaped and developed as a playground and park. The TN directors were invited by the DoA to plan and initiate the excavation in part to preserve the site from further losses. These circumstances strongly influenced the research design. However, other factors also weighed heavily, especially the directors' interest in environmental and paleoenvironmental factors that play a prominent role in ancient and modern economies, cultures, and societies of the Jordan Valley.
TN, also known as Tell esh-Shouneh ej-Junubiyyeh (Tell South Shouneh or Shuna), marks the intersection of N-S and E-W arteries in the Jordan Valley approximately 12 km north of the Dead Sea and eight km from the Jordan River due east of Jericho. The mound stands 12.75 m high on the south bank of the Wadi Nimrin (Wadi Sua'eib), one km west of the transjordan foothills. Its base is 200 m below sea level, and its top, although lowered by military activity and bulldozing in modern times, is 187.25 m. Today the tell covers approximately 3.1 hectares (7.7 acres), the remains of a site that once spanned five hectares (12.5 acres). TN is located at 35° 37' 30" east longitude and 31° 54' 00" north latitude with a Palestinian grid reference of 2094E/1451N. Excavations at neighboring sites such as Ghassul, Jericho, Iktanu, Deir 'Alla, Mazar, and Sayyadiyah have documented the long history of continuing occupation in the surrounding region.
Interests in the technologies of scholarship also played a deciding role in the project, particularly technologies that facilitate the generation and dissemination of scholarly knowledge. The TN project determined to encode information in ways that would eliminate unnecessary and repetitious steps along the way toward publication and dissemination. This meant, for example, that field drawings should be publishable, field records should be computerized, and photos should be digitized.
In the planning years 1986-1988 when the project's goals were being outlined, new technologies were emerging rapidly. The digitized images would come later, but from the beginning a computerized record system (named for staff use "TNall" and based on FoxPro 2.5) was conceived. Although plans to program for both PC and Macintosh platforms were eventually abandoned in favor of the PC version only, the system provided 1) consistent, standardized categories and vocabulary, and 2) restraints that prevent field staff from imposing their interpretations on the primary field records.
The project had four initial research goals:
With the rapid developments in technology, the project soon realized that this system must allow later users to interact with and interpret the data without being restrained by the directors' views. In so far as economically and technically feasible, the images and databases should offer users a virtual Tell Nimrin for them to examine unencumbered by the directors' interpretations.
Similarly, the project sought local participation. In 1990, Dr. Khair N. Yassine, then Professor of Archaeology at the University of Jordan, joined the project as co-director. Then and in subsequent seasons a number of young archaeologists from UJ and Yarmouk University participated fully in excavations and post-season analyses.
At the start of the 1989 season, surveyors laid out a 10 m x 10 m grid across the tell. In the 1989 records these 10 x 10 units are identified as “areas,” a designation that was abandoned in later seasons. The areas were each subdivided into four 5 m x 5 m squares. (A topographical drawing of the site and grid may be viewed in the "Primary Data" area of VN). However, during the 1989 season the directors became convinced that the nature of the materials and the steep slop of the site, especially along the road cut, required them to excavate and record individual 5 m x 5 m squares separately. This practice was followed in all seasons except 1989 when labeling followed the 10 m x 10 m grid.
The 00/00 point was set at the highest elevation of the mound which conveniently was central to its N/S and E/W expanse as well. From there, the site was divided into quadrants, and for consistency and to facilitate computer records, polar points on the grid were used to identify the squares. Each was labeled according to the point closest to 00/00. For instances, N40 / W20 (in some files NW40/20) identified both the point 40 m north and 20 m west of 00/00 and the five meter square to the north and west of that point. Following archaeological conventions wherein one meter balks are left between squares, square supervisors initially excavated only 4.5 m x 4.5 m portions of each square. In some cases, the balks were eventually removed to expose the entire 5 m x 5 m square.
Excavation has yielded a number of museum quality artifacts. Nine ostraca dating to the 5th-4th centuries B.C.E. have been found, an Iron II ceremonial krater is on exhibit in the Amman National Museum, and in 1993 34 Byzantine gold solidi coins and four earrings were discovered in a single jug. A four meter high stone and mudbrick structure (platform?) is the highest standing Middle Bronze Age architecture extant in Jordan. Because of the emphasis on the paleoenvironment of TN and its environs, excavations have focused on an exceptionally rich repertoire of paleobotanical materials.
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The TN project research design includes plans for publishing preliminary reports in the Annual of the Department of Antiquity of Jordan, as required by licensing agreements, and to publish a final report electronically. These reports are posted in the " Integrative Studies" portion of VN. Print copy of major portions of the electronic publication may be scheduled later. In light of developments since the inception of the project, the directors now intend to use the world wide web as the initial primary medium for disseminating the final report. The web site, names "Virtual Nimrin" (VN) may eventually be prepared as a CD-ROM archive.
Four seasons of excavation at TN clarified its long history as an agricultural town site located in a present-day settlement that plays (more or less) the same role today as it did in antiquity. Excavations indicate that TN was a substantial settlement and was inhabited continuously for the past four millennia, except for a 500 year period. The site appears to have been abandoned in the Late Bronze / Early Iron Ages (ca. 1500-1000 B.C.E.). The pattern corresponds to that at nearby Jericho.
A fuller description of the occupational sequence and periodization is provided separately.
A limited geological survey of the Dead Sea basin from TN to Ghor es-Safi was carried out over several seasons. The most extensive survey was conducted by geologist William Fritz, director McCreery, and DoA Representative Sa'ad Hadidi following the 1995 excavations. The survey used GPS equipment to document the regression of the ancient freshwater lake -- Lake Lisan that once filled the Jordan Valley -- and to determine how the change from a freshwater to a saline body affected the pattern of ancient settlements in the region.
Early and tentative evaluation of the survey data and comparison with world-wide historical climate patterns contradict the generally accepted theory that the water level of the Dead Sea/Lake Lisan fluctuated substantially in recent millennia. Instead Fritz and fellow geologist Johnnie Moore hypothesize that the lake gradually rose to its maximum level of 180 meters below sea level approximately 15,000 years ago. A rapid and nearly linear retreat followed until approximately 5,000 years ago. Then the lake stood at approximately 380 meters below sea level. During the last 3,000 years, the lifetime of Nimrin, the level has dropped only approximately 30 meters to its current level approximately 410 meters below sea level. Studies indicate that ten meters of that has occurred in the past two decades. This suggest that the sea level is dropping faster now than at any other time during the past 3,000 years.
The lake level curve theory proposed by the TN staff tentatively correlates with the locations and elevations of various archaeological sites in the valley. Thus, land around TN emerged from underwater in approximately 8000 B.C.E., but the site was not settled then, perhaps because the ground was too gravelly to be useful for agriculture.
The electronic presentation of TN, i.e. VN, was prepared at Case Western Reserve University under the supervision of director Flanagan. It was designed for the general public as well as for research specialists. The four entry points on the homepage (shown in the frame on the left of this window) are "Tour," "Major Finds," "Interpretive Studies," and "Primary Data." They are arranged in order of increasing complexity and technicality. General users, for example, may be satisfied to take the tour and view museum quality artifacts and major finds while specialists may want to interact or download the databases created from the field records of the excavation.
Terminology and labels throughout VN conform to those used during the field seasons. Thus, squares are identified by polar points on the TN grid as described above. Drawings are scans of inked versions that were completed in the field by draftsperson Dr. Thomas R. Lee. The databases, and the TNall interface, used in the field were initially designed and programmed by Professor Jan Reiff, formerly of a member of the CWRU history department and later of UCLA. Additional programming was done my Ms. Lizann Slotta of CWRU's Digital Media Laboratory and several students working under her supervision. James A. Barker, Director of the DML, served as a consultant throughout all phases of VN development.
In the years after the 1995 season, materials were processed and a web site developed by a number of staff and students. Ms. Mayyada Jarallah from Jerusalem and Mr. Ahmed Momani from Amman analyzed ceramics with co-director McCreery at Willamette University. CWRU students edited records and programmed and developed the web site. Principal among them were Ms. Angela Hummel, Mr. Joseph Peck, Ms. Kimberly Robard, Mr. David Carlin, Mr. Joseph Frazee, and Mr. Douglas Kupec.
(For additional information regarding the project and its history, please consult "Integrative Studies").
