KHIRBET AL-MAFJAR New Excavations and Hypotheses for an Umayyad Monument

Donald Whitcomb, Michael Jennings, Andrew Creekmore, and Ignacio Arce

78 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 79:2 (2016)

KHIRBET AL-MAFJAR New Excavations and Hypotheses

for an Umayyad Monument

View of Khirbet el-Mafjar from the southeast with the palace in the foreground. Photograph by Donald Whitcomb.

The Umayyad palace at Khirbet al-Mafjar, also known as Qasr Hisham, has been known and appreciated as the most beautifully decorated of the Umayyad qusur (so-

called desert castles). Its fabulous mosaic carpets, human and animal figures, extensive stucco wall decorations, and frescoes have made this monumental complex, located just north of the city of Jericho, an extraordinary archaeological site. Excavated by Dimitri Baramki for some 13 seasons, in the 1930s and 1940s, the site has been assumed to be completely revealed (Hamilton and Grabar 1959; Whitcomb 1988).1

A new research project for the past five years has proved this assessment completely unfounded. At the instigation of Dr. Ham-dan Taha, director of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities, the Jericho Mafjar Project was conceived as a joint venture of the Palestinian antiquities department and the University of Chicago. This was a truly joint project, with equal Palestinian and foreign ar-chaeologists and specialists working, living, and eventually writing reports together. The result is a new archaeological monument, one which is situated within an archaeological park; well-marked paths with bilingual signage guides the visitors after they have seen an introductory film and visited a modern museum, displaying both older and very recent discoveries from the excavations (fig. 1).

The purpose of this article is to suggest the role of hypothesis formation and testing in the re-examination of an old monu-ment. As Dr. Hamdan had sensed, there remain many stories to examine within the complex site (Taha 2005). The dominant interpretation was that of Mr. Robert Hamilton, director of an-tiquities under the British mandate. His theory maintained that the palace, with its decorated halls embellished with dancing la-dies, was a place of “debauchery,” created by an Umayyad prince, Walid ibn Yazid (709–744), the nephew of the Caliph Hisham.2 While no one would deny the Umayyad court had its parties, the purpose of the palatial complex should have a more profound set of meanings, one that might be explained to modern spectators.

A First HypothesisBaramki had excavated a formal entrance, a typical Umayyad gate flanked by round towers, south of the palace (1953: 4–5). This was the entrance from the south, leading to the road south to the town of Jericho, which was still an important focus of the entire oasis in the early Islamic period. North of the gate was a free-standing pavilion that Baramki called the shaderwan, since it stood in a shallow pool of water. North of the pavilion was a wall leading out from the back of the Audience Hall. A quick

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NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 79:2 (2016) 79

Figure 1 (above). Plan of the archaeological park of Khirbet al-Mafjar. Plan by Donald Whitcomb. Figure 2 (below). Reconstruction of the palace complex. Modified by Donald Whitcomb from drawings by Vito Cantore

and Francesco Erriquez, Bari University.

measurement revealed that the distance to the pavilion was the same as that to the south gate. This suggested that the pavilion was in the center of a garden between two gates. Trenches were laid out and, within a few days, a guardroom with pots was re-vealed just below the surface. Weeks later, an entire gate was revealed, with paving stones, iron plate and bands once adhered to the actual gate, and then ornate carved stones of an arch, once surmounted with crenellations.

The discovery of the gate had two major implications: first that the palace and Audience Hall was not a jumbled mass of buildings (as suggested by Hamilton), but an ordered garden with a long arcade looking east toward the fields, the Jordan river, and highlands (fig. 2). It was a belvedere or manzara, an important aspect for the planning of Umayyad palaces. The gate also provided a transitional structure from the palace complex into what we called the Northern Area. This was an area as large as the formal monuments to the south but little understood. It was speculated to be servants’ quarters, or perhaps a caravanse-rai; excavated by Awni Dajani in the 1960s, it suffers from a total lack of publications and even recovered artifacts. The delineation of the meaning of the Northern Area would be the main focus of our recent research (see Whitcomb and Taha 2013).

Another HypothesisThe earliest mosque in Jericho was in the Umayyad palace excavat-ed by Baramki. It was a standard design, placed between the palace and Audience Hall, with a private entrance for the Caliph from behind the mihrab or prayer niche. Within the palace, Baramki had found another large mihrab in a narrow room flanked by four similar rooms. He thought this was a curious private prayer room (1953: 40–42). Our architec-tural archaeologist found this interpretation quite unac-ceptable. He noted the dis-proportionately large mihrab, the exterior doorway, and the fact that partition walls were not attached to the north or south walls. Demonstrating his hypothesis, he told me that there should be column bases, like the one he sketched in the sand. Standing behind him, I stated, “You meant like the one over there?” His hypothesis is clearly persuasive: there was an original broad mosque within the palace, later replaced by Baramki’s mosque on the exte-rior (fig. 3; Arce, in press).

The importance of this dis-covery is again two-fold. The mosque was an important part of the original palace, occupy-ing one quarter of the ground floor. Moreover, the palace was



not incomplete, as suggested by Hamilton, but had undergone significant structural changes during its Umayyad occupation (and subsequent Abbasid pe-riod (750–late 9th century). This would in turn lead to further speculations on the changing conception of the palace in its residential and administrative functions. This most elaborate-ly decorated qasr would seem to have broad implications for authority and patterns of rule.

This project has been blessed with the lively imagi-nation of Ignacio Arce, and the remaining sections of this arti-cle will present, from three dif-ferent perspectives, another of his hypotheses. These new data sets seem to suggest that there was a Roman occupation ante-cedent to the Umayyad monu-ments at Khirbet al-Mafjar.

A Landscape with Umayyads and Romans – Michael Jennings

A study that covers both Roman and Umayyad Jericho poses a problem best addressed by landscape archaeology (fig. 4). For the Roman period, we have a wealth of historical texts (we even know the exact year the Tenth Legion was stationed in Jericho), but only scattered archaeological remains and no direct evidence related to the location of a legionary camp. For the Umayyad period, conversely, we have nearly eighteen years of excavations at Khirbet al-Mafjar but not a single mention in any written sources. At the intersection of these divergent challenges is the framework of the land-scape itself, common ground as it were.

Most studies of the Jericho plain are based on the idea of an oasis landscape, with settlement clustered around the spring of Ayn al-Sultan (Elijah’s Fountain). While Ayn al-Sultan is one of the most important water sources in the Near East, at Jericho there is more than one water source capable of sustaining a settlement, along with plenty of arable land. The variety of potential sites means that a settlement’s location has a

particularly strong correla-tion with the motivations of its builders; location informs more about the cultural pa-rameters that underlie a site than the physical constraints of the landscape.

One must begin by ad-dressing the essential ques-tion: with all the available places in the Jericho plain why did the Umayyads, and possibly the Romans before them, choose to build a major complex in the area of Khir-bet al-Mafjar? Its primary dis-advantage is obvious: it has no internal water source and is separated from Ayn al-Sultan by a major obstacle, the Wadi Nueima (fig. 5). This wadi ar-rives from the west and cuts across the Jericho plain to the Jordan River. Water supply was instead dependent on ex-

ploitation of the springs of the Naaran area, which offered con-tinuous and abundant supply, but required a major investment in hydraulic infrastructure, including two bridge-aqueducts, to reach the area of Khirbet al-Mafjar.

At first glance, the area of Khirbet al-Mafjar – squeezed up against the Wadi Nueima and other wadi systems and hills, with no immediate water source – seems like a poor choice to build a major new construction. But disadvantage is in the eye of the be-holder and the area of Khirbet al-Mafjar had the exact things the Umayyads were looking for: 1) protection and isolation from the still predominantly Christian city of Jericho; 2) the opportunity

Figure 3. Plan of the palace mosque, as excavated and published by Baramki, and according to the hypothesis by Ignacio Arce. Plan by Donald Whitcomb.

Figure 4. Air photograph of the Jericho oasis, looking south (Jennings 2015: fig. 2). Photograph taken with a drone by Michael Jennings.



to exploit a different water source than that used by the urban population; and 3) a position on the Jordan Valley road leading to Baysan, the Galilee, and onto Damascus. Could a similar set of gen-eral objectives, in a different historical context, have made this area appealing to the Ro-man army?

After Herod, the central theme in Palestine was the developing struggle between Roman authority and various Jewish communities unwill-ing to accept its political rule. The first centuries c.e. was a period of protracted military campaigns in Judea. They would see the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the violent suppression of a number the rebellions against Ro-man power. The Judea that emerged was a changed region, now fully out of the Hellenistic and into the Roman era. Josephus’ account that Jewish fighters fled to Jericho during the Great Re-volt – “the whole army of the Romans were upon them, they put them into great fear on every side; so they got in great numbers together, and fled to Jericho” (1998, 4.7.5: 281) – suggests that the urban core of Jericho was sympathetic to the rebels.

Just as it did for the Umayyads, the area of Khirbet al-Mafjar would have offered a key set of advantages for the Roman army. It was separated from the urban core of Jericho, but close enough to maintain a strong military presence and to respond swiftly to poten-tial trouble. The ability to have access to an alternate water source to that of the urban core would increase autonomy; it is not good strategy to be reliant on a potentially hostile population for water. The Roman army was certainly capable of con-structing an aqueduct to bring water from elsewhere on the Jericho plain. Finally, this area would have allowed the Roman army to control movement and access along the Jordan Valley road to and from Bet Shean, Tiberias, and beyond. Together with a few strongholds in key positions around the urban core (a strategy also employed by the Umayyads), including in the highlands above Jericho, Roman domination of the Jeri-cho plain would be assured.

Thus, by constructing a diachronic picture for the con-nections between settlement typology and environmental conditions, the aims and ob-jectives of different groups that settled in Jericho come into focus. Landscape archaeology offers the potential to bridge historical periods which have different source materials, seeking to provide a new per-spective that starts with the surroundings of the site. In this way, an examination of the physical and cultural con-text in which Khirbet al-Maf-jar was built has the potential to shed light on the possibility of Roman settlement over six hundred years earlier.

Looking Beneath the Surface – Andrew Creekmore

In modern archaeology, the large-scale exposures of Baramki and Dajani in the 1930s are rarely possible due to cost and a de-sire to preserve portions of sites for future research. In addition, the magnificent architecture and mosaics at Khirbet al-Mafjar draw a steady stream of tourists, which presents challenges for maintenance of standing structures, excavation of new contexts, and stewardship of buried remains. Geophysics surveys are one solution to these challenges.

The Jericho Mafjar Project applied geophysical methods in-cluding ground-penetrating radar (GPR), magnetometry, and resistivity during the 2014 season (figs. 6, 7).3 Not long ago these

techniques were used rarely but they are becoming an in-tegral part of the archaeolo-gist’s toolkit, applied across the Near East (Casana 2014; Creekmore 2010; Matney and Donkin 2006). The team collected data in open spaces throughout the site in eight designated remote sensing (RS) areas, including within the Northern Area, between this agricultural estate and the Audience Hall, to the east of the hall, and between the palace and the hall (fig. 8). Most of these areas were as-sumed to be empty but now have revealed clear or prob-able architecture. The follow-ing sections will highlight

Figure 5. Plan of the Jericho oasis, with landscape settlement zones (Jennings 2015: fig. 39). Map by Michael Jennings.

Figure 6. Magnetometer survey with Andy Creekmore. Photograph by Donald Whitcomb.



preliminary results and interpretations from some of the most promising areas.

Within the northern walled estate, RS area 1 sought to deter-mine whether an unexcavated block of soil was an open court-yard. Within the walls that enclose this space to the north and east, there was a rectilinear area of lower resistance that may in-dicate mudbrick architecture. Within this low resistance space was an area of higher resistance marking a possible installation, or stone debris (fig. 9d). The GPR data shows this feature to be consistent with stone or brick arranged in a somewhat circular feature buried 0.25 m–1 m deep.

In RS area 4 between the Audience Hall and the estate, the GPR data show multiple structures with radar reflections char-acteristic of stone block construction (fig. 9a). These walls have a shared orientation at a depth within the first 1 m beneath the surface. Resistivity data corroborates some of these walls and re-veals a linear feature of low resistance several meters wide that may be a street or passageway (fig. 9b). Although the structural plans are incomplete, the dimensions of the architectural units, the largest of which is 15 m long, could indicate houses or spe-cial-use buildings. These structures are oriented at an oblique angle to the estate to the north, and the monuments to the south; normally this would suggest that they belong to a different pe-riod of construction.

The GPR data from RS area 8, northeast of the Audience Hall and the north gate, present rectilinear architecture features

oriented at an oblique angle to the Audience Hall (fig. 9c). The walls seem relatively wide and diffuse but the interior spaces are fairly clear as areas of weaker reflections. The character of the reflections indicates that the walls are probably built from something other

Figure 7. GPR survey, Area 4, 250 mhz antenna. Michael Jennings (L), Andrew Creekmore (R). Photograph by Eleanor Moseman, ©Andrew Creekmore.

Figure 8. Site map showing Remote Sensing Areas (RS1, 2, etc.) with selected data as follows: RS1: Resistance; RS2 through RS7 GPR; RS8: GPR (north) and

resistance (south). Photograph by Andrew Creekmore.



than solid stone blocks. A test trench excavated in 2013 uncov-ered a building with robbed-out walls but intact sub-foundation packing consisting of small, irregular fieldstones (Whitcomb and Taha 2013: fig. 8, Area 4). This discovery, when combined with the character of the GPR reflections, indicates that many of the origi-nal walls in this area were robbed for construction, possibly in the Abbasid period. As in RS area 4, the dimensions of the architec-tural units in this area, the largest of which is perhaps 20 meters in length, could indicate houses or special-use buildings.

The most surprising results of our survey come from RS areas 5, 6, and 7, beneath the mosque and open space in between the palace and the Audience Hall. Both the GPR and magnetometer data show buried architecture oriented at an oblique angle to the standing buildings (fig. 9e). These buried structures lie within one meter below the surface and are likely part of a single stratum that predates the palace, mosque, and bath. The clearest structure within this open space was approxi-mately 12 x 13 m; and it would seem to have internal divisions that might suggest a courtyard house. This structure and the widespread extent of oblique walls would all seem to date before the Umayyad monu-mental architecture, but are unlikely to be an earlier Islamic occupation (see Arce, below).

The geophysics surveys were highly successful, re-vealing a continuous spread of architecture from the pal-ace to the northern estate. Al-though geophysics data can-not provide a date for buried remains, the oblique orienta-tion of all newly discovered architecture aside from that within the northern estate suggests that these buildings date to a different period of construction. This evidence provides the springing of a new hypothetical ex-planation, as will be suggested by Arce in the next section.

A Roman Fort at Khirbet el-Mafjar? A Working Hypothesis

– Ignacio ArceIn February 2014 a series of remote-sensing surveys (magnetom-eter, resistivity, and ground-penetrating radar) were carried out as part of the Jericho Mafjar Project (Whitcomb 2015). The most remarkable characteristic of the walls identified in the survey was their oblique orientation (in contrast with the “Cartesian” orthogonal arrangement of the exposed Umayyad structures – oriented N–S according to the points of the compass). These two

different ways of setting buildings in the landscape correspond respectively to the patterns found in most Roman forts from the Limes Arabicus (oblique orientation with the corners pointed to the compass’ points; Arce 2015) and subsequent Umayyad qusur (predominantly “Cartesian” orthogonal orientation). This has led the author to put forward a working hypothesis that would make sense of these structures; the two orientations would imply the pre-existence on the site of a Roman fort 100 m2 (approx-imately 300 x 300 Roman feet), probably dating from the Late Roman period. This fort would have had similar dimensions and orientation to the Roman forts at Daja’aniya, Avdat, Umm al Ji-mal, or Khirbet el Khaw (fig.10).

The “stratigraphic fact” that the buried walls identified by the survey run under the sec-ond Umayyad congregational mosque wall (and are appar-ently cut by the Umayyad pal-ace), indicates without doubt that these structures predate the extant Umayyad struc-tures. The question wheth-er they belong to a Roman fort (abandoned and looted, or maybe transformed and reused in Late Antiquity), or if they correspond to an-other kind of Late Antique structure (a monastery or an estate, or even to an “early Umayyad” structure) remains open. Comparative cases like the lower Roman fort at Av-dat (Erikson-Gini 2002) show similar complexity, with later walls built atop earlier ones (Roman walls or their foun-dations). They provide clear examples of how a joint anal-ysis of the stratigraphy of the buried deposits and standing

architectural remains is key to clarifying these situations.In terms of shape, orientation, and dimensions in plan, there

are several parallels for this hypothesized fort: Daja’aniya in South Jordan, the lower fort in Avdat, and those of Khirbet el-Khaw and Umm al-Jimal (Arce 2015). The last two examples fol-low the same pattern of growth identified at Hallabat and Deir el-Kahf, with a 4th century Tetrarchic quadriburgium embracing a 2nd–3rd century Severan fort without towers, giving as a result 100 meter-sided almost-square-forts (Arce 2015).

The structure identified in the “open space” between the pal-ace and the Audience Hall (fig. 11, the Garden House) seems to be built inside a massive wall reinforced in that point with a slightly projecting tower (similar to those from Daja’aniya). This structure could be thus a simple building with a court, or remains of the Praetorium, or the Aedes of a fort (due to its

Figure 9a–e. Geophysics data. 9a: RS4 GPR (62–86 cm time slice); 9b: RS4 resistance (–16 to 16 ohm, black is high value, white is low); 9c: RS8 GPR (21–34 cm time slice); 9d: RS1 resistance (20 to 134 ohm, black is high value, white is low); 9e: RS5 GPR (72–94 cm time slice). 9a and b cover the same area, showing rectilinear

architecture especially between 0–45 m W–E, with a possible street labeled. In 9c the red triangles mark probable interior spaces of rectilinear structures. In 9d the area of

high resistance is circled and walls are labeled. Images by Andrew Creekmore.



shape and location within the hypothesized fort). Similarly, the two square structures identified by the survey and located to the north (near the Umayyad north gate), might be the towers flank-ing the main entrance: the Porta Praetoria (usually looking SE or NE in standard Roman forts of the region).

The confirmation of the hypothetical pre-existence of this fort would represent another sample of similar cases in which abandoned Roman forts were reused in the 5th–6th centuries, of-ten transformed into monasteries, and then later modified into Umayyad qusur (Arce 2015). In the case of Khirbet al-Mafjar, the new Umayyad structures were built beside (and over) it. The

fact that this hypothetical Roman fort was apparently not reused could be due to the original building technique of the fort, us-ing probably mud-bricks (like the one at Qasr el-Hayr el Ghar-bi) which would have been heavily weathered. This hypothesis could also further clarify the setting of the Umayyad buildings in relation to the hydrogeology of the area, due to the impact of the courses of water that run across the site from west to east (fig. 10; maybe combined with the effect of earthquakes). These fac-tors could have heavily damaged the Roman fort making reuse impossible and making it necessary to rebuild ex-novo (but not ex-nihilo) the new Umayyad structures.

Figure 10a–c. 10a: Walls identified in the remote sensing survey (Whitcomb 2015) with the hypothetical location of a Roman Fort in red shadow (note the blue arrows indicating the hypothetical lines of flow of the branches of wadi Nueima crossing the site); parallel structures from the Limes Arabicus (all of them 100x100m approx.); 10b:

Daja’aniya (Parker 2006); 10c: Avdat (Oboda, Lower fort -Erickson-Gini 2002). Plans by Ignacio Arce.



There are ample references to Roman forts in Jericho, now missing. At least three different Roman forts are referenced from the 1st century c.e. throughout the Tetrarchic period. Herod built new fortresses and reinforced pre-existing Hasmonean ones, creating a chain of three forts and the new fortress of Cypros that dominated wadi Quelt and Jericho. In the winter of 68/9 c.e., with the Jewish Revolt in progress, the Tenth Legion was stationed at Jericho. Jericho’s strategic location in the Judean des-ert, with access to the Jordan Valley and the Judean highlands, necessitated Roman military control of the city. While there is no direct archaeological or written evidence that the Tenth Legion built a legionary camp at Jeri-cho, the contemporary case of nearby Masada suggests it is likely. We also know from written sources that a Roman fort was established in Jericho oasis in 130 c.e. The loca-tion of this military installa-tion should be in a place near crossroads, close to easily accessible water sources, not amidst an existing city or vil-lage, but most probably away from it. Finally, we know that under Diocletian new forts (quadriburgia) of vari-ous sizes were built to protect main roads across the region. The aforementioned parallels to our hypothetical structure date also to the Tetrachic pe-riod: Avdat itself, Daja’niya, Khirbet el Khaw, and Umm al Jimal). Thus, the hypothetical Roman structure at Khirbet al-Mafjar might have been part of this same plan to reinforce key strategic crossroads in the Araba-Negev region during the Tetrarchy.

Once abandoned by the regular Roman army in the 5th century, many of these forts became monasteries patronized by the Ghas-sanid Phylarchs. Several different accounts mention monasteries around Khirbet al-Mafjar (including the famous monastery “of the Eunuchs”) that were apparently razed and abandoned during the Persian invasion. They could have also provided spolia and material for construction (like the columns with crosses used in the courtyard of the palace). All these characteristics would make this area one that could be claimed, built, and exploited by the Umayyad elite in a pattern of physical transformation and change identified in many sites in the region.

All these hypotheses are at this point purely conjectural and would require excavations to be confirmed. They would give a plausible explanation to the evidence produced by the remote sensing survey in connection with the exposed remains. And more importantly, they would follow a pattern of transformation of Ro-man forts into Umayyad qusur that has been identified in several places and would help to answer the question regarding the loca-tion of the Roman forts we know were built in the oasis of Jericho.

Some Additional Thoughts – Donald Whitcomb

As the team members of the Jericho Mafjar Project discussed this newest hypothesis, we had a surprising intervention. Ta-sha Vorderstrasse has worked with the project, reporting on the evidence of coins and ostraca. While she was in the Pal-estine Archaeological Museum (the Rockefeller) in Jerusalem, she found and researched a statue from Khirbet al-Mafjar (fig. 12). This was a classical marble head of Athena (or possibly Minerva; Merker 1987), prominently on display. Vorderstrasse was shown the statue’s marble arms, one apparently holding

a spear, the other resting on a shield. More importantly, the find spot was recorded in 1944: about one meter below surface from “outside apse II of Building B II.” This would place its discovery just outside the Audience Hall, within RS area 5 and near the garden house. Were this stat-ue in a proper archaeological context, it might suggest a temple attached to the prae-torium. We should be clear that this discovery is hardly proof of the new hypothesis presented here; rather, this tantalizing figure of Roman art may add a new dimen-sion, that this important Is-lamic monument had a for-gotten Roman past.

When Creekmore showed the magnetometry image of the Garden House to the director of archaeology, Dr. Hamdan Taha, his reaction was, “Ah, this is for the future.” He is correct of course, in that the five-year research commitment is now com-plete for the Jericho Mafjar Project and the production of final reports is now necessary. The archaeological results have been very satisfying, and the site is left with a museum and archaeo-logical park. But the larger purpose of this work, and this article, is to demonstrate the interaction of hypotheses and fieldwork at this extraordinary and continually exciting monument.

AcknowledgmentsThe Jericho Mafjar Project is a new kind of cooperative re-search, the inspiration of Dr. Hamdan Taha, with Jehad Ya-sin, our field director and constant companion. The fieldwork benefited from talented archaeologists of the department, particularly Awni Shawamra. Likewise, we came to rely on well-trained students from al-Quds University. Drs. Sy Gitin and Matt Adams at the Albright Institute have provided timely logistical support. We are indebted to Silvia Krpyuko for fa-cilitating this archival research at the Rockefeller Museum, and to the IAA for permission to refer to the Khirbet al-Mafjar Athena statue.

Figure 11. Magnetometry image of the Garden House in RS 5, located between the Audience Hall (red), the palace (blue) and mosque (green). During the

excavations, this was assumed to be an empty garden and structures flattened. Images by Andrew Creekmore and Donald Whitcomb.



Endnotes1. “The “desert castles” or qusur (qasr, sing.) are a large set of rural

estates founded in the Umayyad period (661–750). These had their inspiration from the pre-Islamic Hijaz and Yemen and are similar to the Roman villa (Whitcomb and Taha 2013).

2. The case for Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik (691–743) as the builder of Khirbet al-Mafjar is much stronger. Baramki found an ostracon with his name on the site, and the very similar palace of Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi, located near Damascus, is clearly the work of this Caliph.

3. For magnetometry we used a Bartington Grad 601-2 fluxgate gradi-ometer to collect a sample density of one half meter by one eighth meter. This instrument is most sensitive to magnetic fields within 1 m of the ground surface. For resistance we used a Geoscan RM85 Resistance Meter to collect a sample density of one half meter by one half meter in a twin configuration with maximum penetration of 0.5 m depth. For GPR we used a Mala Pro Ex system with 500 mhz and 250 mhz antennas to collect data at variable resolutions but at least one half meter by 5 centimeters. These antennas are capable of recording data to several meters in depth but our results indicate that maximum penetration was about 1m. Magnetometry measures the susceptibility of soil and buried features to the pull of the earth’s

magnetic field, as well as thermoremanent magnetism caused by heating such as in a hearth or house fire. Resistance measures the resistance of a volume of soil to the passage of an electric current. Ground-penetrating radar sends radar waves into the ground and records how long it takes them to reflect back to the receiving an-tenna, and the strength or amplitude of the return waves. For fur-ther reading about these methods, consult Aspinall, Gaffney, and Schmidt 2008, Schmidt 2013, and Conyers 2013.

ReferencesArce, Ignacio. In press. A New Umayyad Mosque at Khirbet al-Mafjar:

Physical Transformations and Changes of Use of the Umayyad Com-plex. In Recent Advances in Islamic Archaeology, eds. Katya Cytryn-Sil-verman and Kristoffer Damgaard. Chicago: Oriental Institute.. 2015. Severan castra, Tetrarchic quadriburgia, Justinian coeno-bia, and Ghassanid diriyat: Patterns of Transformation of Limes Arabicus Forts during Late Antiquity. Pp. 98–122 in Roman Military Architecture on the Frontiers, eds. Rob Collins, Matt Symonds, Meike Weber. Oxford: Oxbow.

Aspinall, Arnold, Chris Gaffney, and Armin Schmidt. 2008. Magneto-metry for Archaeologists. Lanham: Altamira.

Baramki, Dimitri. 1953. Arab Culture and Architecture of the Umayyad Period: A Comparative Study with Special Reference to the Results of the Excavations of Hisham’s Palace. PhD diss., University of London.

Casana, Jesse. 2014. New Approaches to Spatial Archaeology: Applica-tions from the Near East. Near Eastern Archaeology 77: 171–75.

Conyers, Lawrence B. 2013. Ground-Penetrating Radar for Archaeology. Lanham: Altamira.

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Hamilton, Robert W. and Oleg Grabar. 1959. Khirbat al Mafjar: An Arabian Mansion in the Jordan Valley. Oxford: Oxford University.

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Matney, Timothy and An Donkin. 2006. Mapping the Past: An Archae-ogeophysical Case Study from Southeastern Turkey. Near Eastern Archaeology 69: 12–26.

Merker, Gloria S. 1987. A Statuette of Minerva in the Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem, Eretz-Israel: Michael Avi-Yonah Memorial Volume: 15*–20*.

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179–88 in Tutela, conservazione e valorizzazione del patrimonio culturale della Palestina, ed. F. Maniscalco. Naples.

Whitcomb, Donald. 1988. Khirbet al-Mafjar Reconsidered: The Ce-ramic Evidence, BASOR 271: 51–67.. 2015. Jericho Mafjar Project, The Oriental Institute Annual Report, 2013–2014: 83–87.

Whitcomb, Donald and Hamdan Taha. 2013. Khirbat al-Mafjar and Its Place in the Archaeological Heritage of Palestine. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 1: 54–65.

Figure 12. Photograph of a marble sculpture found in 1944. This is described as a head of Athena and is now in the Rockefeller museum.

Photograph by Tasha Vorderstrasse.


ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Donald Whitcomb is a Research Associate (Associate Professor) at The Oriental Institute and the Middle East Center, University of Chicago. He directs a program in Islamic Archaeology in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He has been a curator at the Field Museum of Natural History and held research fellowships at the Smithsonian Institu-tion and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. His archaeological research includes direction of the excavations at Quseir al-Qadim, a port on the Red Sea, and at Luxor. He was director of the excavations at the early Islamic port of Ayla (Aqaba) and at Hadir Qinnasrin, the early Islamic capital near Aleppo. His most recent work at Khirbet al-Mafjar is available at www.jerichomafjarproject.org.

Michael Jennings is Director of Field Data at the Center for Digital Archaeology (CoDA) at the University of California, Berkeley. His dissertation was recently submitted to the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, The University of Chicago (2015). This research explores the relationship between landscape and settlement in Jericho from the Hasmonean to early Islamic periods and this contribution is a first presentation of his methodology. An inter-est in urbanism and urbanization has led Michael to investigate cities throughout the Mediter-ranean and Near East, including field projects in Italy (Palermo and Ravenna), Jordan (Qasr al-Hallabat and Aqaba), in addition to Jericho.

Andrew Creekmore is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Northern Colo-rado. His research focuses on the spatial organization of settlements, especially urban sites, and the application of geophysics to archaeological problems. His most recent publication on this topic is Making Ancient Cities: Space and Place in Early Urban Societies, with Kevin Fisher (Cam-bridge 2014). He is currently mapping urban space with geophysics at the Middle Bronze Age city of Kurd Qaburstan, Iraq.

Ignacio Arce is an architect and archaeologist specializing in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, with emphasis on heritage preservation and stratigraphy. His dissertation research was on Amman Citadel (summa cum laude). For many years he has directed the Spanish Archaeological Mission to Jordan, and the excavation and restoration of the Umayyad complexes at Amman Citadel, Qasr al-Hallabat / Hammam as-Sarrah, Qusayr Amra, and Deir el-Kahf in Jordan. He also directs the From Rome to Islam project and the Anastasius Edict project. His collaboration with the Jericho Mafjar Project is supported with a Marie-Curie Grant from the University of Copenhagen.



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KHIRBET AL-MAFJAR New Excavations and Hypotheses for an Umayyad Monument

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