Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-2006

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Anthropology

Major Professor

J. P. Dessel

Committee Members

Aleydis Van de Moortel, David G. Anderson

Abstract

The Karak Plateau lies at the foot of the Dead Sea in central Jordan. It has been occupied continuously from the Paleolithic and has been the sit of several cultures including the Moabite, Nabataean, Roman and Byzantine. It is thus uniquely suited to the investigation of land use and resource exploitation over time. During the Roman period, the plateau was densely populated by a variety of settlements among them small farms, large agriculture villages and military posts as well as nomadic pastoralists; thus the use of land and resources in the plateau encompassed great variability (Green 2002: 48).

This study examines a corpus of Nabataean and Roman pottery collected by the Karak Resources Project during its 1995-2001 surveys of the Karak Plateau, in order to study distribution patterns of pottery in the Nabataean and Roman periods. The Karak Resources Project is an expansion of the original survey performed on the plateau by J. Maxwell Miller and Jack M. Pinkerton from 1978 to 1983 (Miller 1991); its purpose is to investigate how the inhabitants of the plateau utilized its natural resources and exploited the access to trade its central location allowed (Mattingly 1996: 349). The purpose of this study is threefold- first, to determine whether survey pottery can be used to identify assemblages which are linked to each site’s specific function (such as agricultural and military sites) second, to determine whether pottery of comparable quality and similar form was consumed across sites of differing function, and third, to establish the extent of distribution of Nabataean pottery in the Karak Plateau.

Macroscopic analysis was performed upon the pottery in order to discern the type vessel as well as any use wear that may be evident such as wear on the rims of cups from drinking, scraping on the inside of bowls and pots from eating or cooking utensils or scorching on the exterior of cooking pots. The microscopic analysis of the pottery was performed by the late Dr. Otto Kopp and Mr. Robert Reynolds of the department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Kopp and Mr. Reynolds conducted thin section analysis on a sample of pottery from the study collection, in addition to trace element analysis using x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, to determine the petrographic and chemical composition of clays used in the production of the pottery.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Included in

Anthropology Commons

Share

COinS