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Excavation archive of the Tell Deir Alla project, Jordan - Slides
The archive of the Tell Deir Alla project originates from the archaeological excavations in the East Jordan Valley from 1960-2009. By organisation and goals it should be divided in three sub-projects.
Subproject A: 1960-1967; 5 excavation seasons. Headed by Franken of Leiden University and financed by ZWO this was the first to apply the strictly stratigraphic Wheeler-Kenyon method of excavation outside Jericho, being trained by Kenyon. Focus was on the Late-Bronze to Iron Age transition around 1200 BC, a historically highly challenging timeframe in that region. The project used pioneering pottery studies and became famous by the Late-Bronze Age temple and the Iron Age “Balaam Texts”, triggering biblical and more general interest.
Subproject B: 1976-2009; 12 seasons. As a joint project of LU, the Jordanian DoA and YU, fieldwork was jointly set-up, financed and executed, with co-directors from LU (Franken, followed by Van der Kooij in 1979) and YU (Ibrahim, followed by Kafafi in 1996). The main goal became settlement history, for which also the earliest and last strata were excavated, from Middle-Bronze Age through Late-Iron Age (ca 1700 - 350 BC). The large scale detailed excavations gave the site a chronological authority for the periods concerned.
The neighbouring Tell Hammeh (subproject C), with its very early iron production, was part of the project from1996-2009.
It should be noted that the excavations not only had a scholarly goal but were also set up to train DoA-staff and students from mainly Dutch and Jordanian universities (especially LU and YU).
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The 1960-’67-archive is stored at LU but will be transferred to RMO as the new owner, after digitization. The documentation of 1976-2009 and T.Hammeh (partly originals, partly copies) is at each of the three cooperating institutions: LU, YU and (partly) DoA
It should be noted that the data as presented are to be supplemented in due course, especially after finalisation of the ongoing study of the excavation results to be published as a ‘final’ general report of the Tell Deir Alla 1976-2009 excavations. This also applies to the Tell el-Hammeh excavations.