Tell Ushayer: A Late Bronze Age Fortress in North Jordan

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dominik Bonatz
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 446400018

An archaeological pilot study at Tell Ushayer, close to Irbid in North Jordan, has brought to light evidence for an extremely interesting architectural structure of the Late Bronze and Iron Age. On its plateau, the Tell is surrounded by a monumental circular fortification wall. The stone wall encloses a settlement area of about only 0.6ha. That is why the site rather is interpreted as a fortress than a naturally grown settlement. This interpretation is stressed by pottery evidence, which indicates no occupation prior to the Late Bronze Age. Instead, everything speaks in favor of a strictly planned fortress construction erected on an artificially raised substratum of about 14m height.The project aims to investigate the building history and the architectural layout of the fortress on Tell Ushayer including its intramural occupation until the collapse of the site in the Early Iron Age. It discusses the relevance and the function of the site in the context of regional developments and large-scale relations, which shape the picture of an internationalized and globalized period in the Late Bronze Age. By means of a volumetric architectural analysis, the energy behind the construction of the fortress will be calculated in order to establish measurable parameters for the relation between labor and time in the context of contemporary strategies of planning and hierarchies of control. The reasons for the abandonment of the site in an advanced phase of the Early Iron Age and its resettlement after a hiatus during the Iron Age II, finally drives the research perspectives towards social developments and their materializations after the collapse of the Late Bronze Age political systems until Hellenistic times.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants