Meredith S. Chesson

A recipe for disaster: emerging urbanism and unsustainable plant economies at Early Bronze Age Ras an-Numayra, Jordan

The intensification of agriculture as farming communities grew in size did not always produce a successful and sustainable economic base. At Ras an-Numayra on the Dead Sea Plain, a small farming community of the late fourth millennium BC developed a specialised plant economy dependent on cereals, grapes and flax. Irrigation in this arid environment led to increased soil salinity while recurrent cultivation of flax may have introduced the fungal pathogen responsible for flax wilt. Faced with declining yields, the farmers may have further intensified their irrigation and cultivation schedules, only to exacerbate the underlying problems. Thus specialised crop production increased both agricultural risk and vulnerability to catastrophe, and Ras an-Numayra, unlike other sites in the region, was abandoned after a relatively short occupation.

Differing in status, but one in spirit: sacred space and social diversity at island monasteries in Connemara, Ireland

Abstract The Christianisation of Ireland in the fifth century AD produced distinct monastic practices and architectural traditions. Recent research on Inishark Island in western Ireland illuminates the diverse material manifestations of monasticism and contributes to the archaeological analysis of pilgrimage. Excavations revealed a ritual complex (AD 900–1100) developed as both an ascetic hermitage and a pilgrimage shrine. It is argued that monastic communities designed ritual infrastructure to promote ideologies of sacred hierarchy and affinity that legitimated their status and economic relations with lay worshippers. In a global context, this research emphasises how material and spatial settings of pilgrimage can accommodate and construct social distinctions through patterns of seclusion, exclusion and integration in ritual.

Risky Business: A Life Full of Obligations to the Dead and the Living on the Early Bronze Age Southeastern Dead Sea Plain, Jordan

During the Early Bronze Age I, on the eve of establishing fortified towns on the southeastern Dead Sea Plain, people buried their dead in secondary mortuary rituals in cemeteries at Bab adh-Dhra‵, Fifa, and an-Naqa/es-Safi. While we know nothing of the living communities or their primary mortuary practices, we know the EBA people carefully collected even the smallest bones of their dead and transported them down to this area for burial in shaft or cist tombs. Drawing on ethnographic analogies and recently published skeletal analyses from Bab adh-Dhra‵, I explore potential anxieties attached to the living and dying in these communities.