IDENTIFICATION OF OCCUPATIONAL CONTEXTS AT TALL DHIBAN, JORDAN

The area surrounding the town of Dhiban, in west-central Jordan, has supported human habitation since at least the Early Bronze period. The site provides a sedimentary archive of human activities and landscape processes in the form of a tall, which has been preserved adjacent to the modern town. Recovering stratigraphic evidence of occupation, however, is not completely straight-forward, as a series of bedrock benches have resulted in a terraced hillside. Colluvial activity has been mitigated in part by these stepped slopes, but their presence has also led to extremely localized episodes of colluvial deposition that may overlie both archaeological deposits and earlier colluvial materials. The search for deposits relevant to any particular time period is therefore complicated by the sedimentary history of erosion within the context of the site.

Investigations into colluvial deposits at the base of the tall reveal a regular stratigraphy of datable artifacts, suggesting that erosion has been relatively continuous, if punctuated, throughout the majority of the site’s occupational history. However, geomorphic variations in the area have only recently been recognized and investigated in an effort to identify periods of localized or regional landscape instability. The timing of colluviation on these terraces was likely variable and dependent in part upon the geomorphic expression of older deposits. Sedimentary survey of the site on a terrace-by-terrace basis may be aided by micromorphological studies in order to identify colluvial versus occupational areas without extensive archaeological excavation into non-primary contexts.