Gerrit van der Kooij
Institute of Archaeology, Leiden University
The excavations of Tell Deir 'Alla - a joint project of Leiden University and Yarmouk University - revealed the existence of settlements on the site from ca 1600-300 BC. This was not a continuous use, but rather an interrupted one, especially during the Iron Age. Recent research on the excavated data made it also clear that the character of settlements varied strongly: from intensive use of the site and surrounding landscape (walled town or dense settlement with irrigation agriculture) to little use of both (hamlet or perhaps even camp with herds and some dry farming). Also the processes that started and ended the settlements varied from gradual starts and ends to abrupt ones. Current research is trying - on the one end - to get a more detailed idea about the different types of use of the site and its surroundings, and - on the other hand - to understand the processes that brought them into existence and those that ended them.
Both the settlements and the processes referred to have to be studied within the framework of the Jordan Valley as a "reversed valley" - an agriculturally unattractive steppe region in between agriculturally attractive Mediterranean mountainous zones to the East and West. It appears that the central part of the Jordan Valley was used for gradual settling of pastoral nomads as well as for colonizing agriculturalists with irrigated fields. However such settlements and processes have to be studied on a regional level in order to consider settlement patterns and common processes. This needs - to start with - synchronizations of the strata of neighbouring sites.
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