JORDAN: Digging up the past

The past is truly another country to archaeologists such as Dr Phillip Edwards, a fascinating country he has explored for almost 30 years. Edwards hit the headlines earlier this year when he announced the remarkable discovery of an ancient tool kit used by a hunter-gatherer in Jordan 12,000 years before the birth of Jesus Christ.

A senior lecturer in archaeology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, his main research interests include developments in the Middle East during the pleistocene epoch, and in the origins of food production and settlement of the early people.

"I have specialised in the prehistory of the East Jordan Valley, working on a series of lower, middle, upper and epi-palaeolithic, and neolithic sites, as well as sites in Melbourne," he says.

Edwards began his research at Pella in Jordan in 1980 as a Sydney University undergraduate, digging on the great mound of Khirbet Fahla with Professor Basil Hennessy and Dr Tony McNicol. He says Sydney archaeologists are still digging there under Dr Stephen Bourke, who began with him as an undergraduate student.

Like many other students, Edwards continued with postgraduate studies at Pella and this was how he began to dig several prehistoric sites in Wadi al-Hammeh. He says Pella is not just a single occupation mound but an archaeologically rich region covering some 10 square kilometres and ranging in time from about 500,000 years ago to the Ottoman period.

One of the major reasons for this extraordinary continuity of occupation has been the availability of fresh water. It now exists as a freshwater cold spring at Pella and a hot water spring in Wadi al-Hammeh. News of the discovery of the 14,000-year-old tool kit attracted media attention because it is one of the most complete and well preserved of its kind and has provided rare insights into the daily activities of prehistoric humans.

Edwards says the tool kit was likely to have been carried in a hide or wicker bag over the shoulder. It contained 36 objects, including a sickle, flint spearheads, core for making more spearheads, smooth stones, possibly used in a slingshot to kill gazelles, and toe bones of the animals used to make beads.

He located the kit during the excavation of two large, oval huts. It was found near a wall of one of the huts where the hunter-gatherers lived and where it had been left in an unobtrusive place and eventually abandoned. His research has raised questions about whether the tool kit belonged to an individual or a group of foragers, whether it was used for short trips or longer.

Then there is the question of whether the kit's owner was a man or a woman. Edwards says women are thought to have been in charge of plant gathering but if the tools belonged to a woman hunter-gatherer, the activities of the sexes "were more gender-blind than thought during prehistoric times".

Archaeologists believe that for at least part of the year, these Natufian people lived in communities, some quite large, of semi-subterranean houses. These semi-circular one-room structures were excavated partly into the soil and built of stone, wood and perhaps brush roofs.

Edwards says the sickle was used to harvest wild wheat or barley and it was made out of two carefully grooved horn pieces and fitted with colour-matched tan and grey bladelets: "It would have been a marvel of form and function for its day and is the only tool of its kind ever linked to the Natufian people who made it."

The other the items in the kit were designed to immobilise and then kill game such as deer, hares, storks, partridges, owls, tortoises and the major source of meat -- gazelles. These probably weighed less than 25 kilograms "so a strong adult could carry an entire carcass over his shoulders without much trouble".

Because the work of digging on a prehistoric site is slow, Edwards only takes small numbers of students on the dig in Jordan, up to10 people for six to eight weeks. From time to time, La Trobe lecturers take undergraduates on their excavations overseas but Edwards says he has focused on postgraduates and so far four doctorates have been completed on aspects of the project.

The Jordan Valley is "ferociously hot" in summer so he conducts the dig in that country's winter when the conditions vary from cool and showery to warm and sunny - not unlike a Melbourne spring or early summer.

"It is very expensive and time-consuming to plan and finance international excavations, so only a small proportion of our students get the chance to go on them," he says. "That is why I have undertaken local excavations here in Melbourne to train larger numbers of students."

geoff.maslen@uw-news.com