Jebel al-Mutawwaq
A Fourth Millennium bce Village and Dolmen Field. Six Years of Spanish-Italian Excavations (2012–2018)
Abstract
The Early Bronze Age site of Jebel al-Mutawwaq, located on a hill overlooking the Zarqa River in Jordan, was a thriving centre of population from the second half of the fourth millennium into the third millennium bce. During this time, the settlement developed both in population and social complexity, undergoing the beginnings of an urbanization process that fundamentally changed the relationship between this community of the Transjordanian Highlands with the surrounding landscape, until it was completely abandoned around 2900 bce. This volume offers a new assessment of the site by combining data from the first surveys of the site, under a Spanish team led by J. A. Fernandez-Tresguerres, with the new results from six seasons of excavations led by teams from Perugia in Italy, and San Esteban in Spain. In doing so, this work sheds new light on this walled settlement and its huge megalithic necropolises, and offers a fresh understanding of the site.
