Robert Schick - Böcker

Includes 384 illustrations, some in colour. In 1986 and 1987 Oleson and a small team surveyed an area of 250 sq km around the site of al-Humayma (ancient Hawara) in Jordan’s southern desert. Hawara was founded sometime in the first century BC by the Nabataean king Aretas. The flourishing settlement was occupied by a unit of Roman soldiers after AD 107, and it became the largest settlement in the Hisma desert during the Byzantine period. The Abbasid family built a manor house and mosque at Humayma in the late seventh century. This is the second volume of a projected four volume series about the research on this important site. This volume reports on a Nabataean campground, which provides unique testimony to the flexible character of Nabataean settlement design, and provides detailed information on the Nabataean necropolis, which shows parallels with those at both Petra and Hegra. The volume also includes the excavation records and analysis of five Byzantine churches, two of which lay above Nabataean structures, and three of which were modified for re-occupation in the Early Islamic period. There are also short reports on the probing of an Early Islamic structure of undetermined character, and on an important hoard of coins and jewellery found in the countryside. A number of subsidiary studies concern the human remains, botanical and faunal remains, fish bones, and molluscs found at the site in the course of the 11 seasons of excavation. The ceramics and small finds associated with the structures are analyzed, along with the many marble chancel screen fragments. The main audience will be archaeologists of the Near and Middle East. The presentation highlights issues such as the projection of culture from Petra outward to peripheral settlements, transitions between nomadic pastoralist and sedentary agricultural ways of life in Arabia Petraea, design eccentricities in rural church architecture, the spread and practice of Christianity in this region, and rural architecture of the Early Islamic period. There is also discussion of the physical evidence for local desert agriculture, stock raising, hunting, the import and export of foodstuffs, and the state of human nutrition at ancient Humayma.

In 1991, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of Jordan, the American Center of Research (then known as the American Center of Oriental Research), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) initiated a project to create an archaeological park in the heart of Madaba. The park includes a well-preserved stretch of what appears to be a Late Roman street and buildings from the Roman, Byzantine, and Early and Late Islamic periods. The excavations also yielded finds from the Middle Islamic period as well as the Modern period. The goals of the park project were to explore the history of Madaba, to protect its archaeological heritage from destruction, and to revitalize downtown Madaba. This volume—more than 450 pages and well illustrated—presents the results of the excavations of 1992 to 1993, with brief coverage of the follow-up excavations in 1994 and 1995-1996, focusing on the western half of the Madaba Archaeological Park, around the Burnt Palace and the Roman Street to its south. Pierre Bikai, Ghazi Bisheh, Karen Britt, Alysia Fischer, Debra Foran, Jaakko Frösén, James Pokines, Robert Schick and Thomas Maria Weber-Karyotakis contributed to the book.

In 1991, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities of Jordan, the American Center of Research (then known as the American Center of Oriental Research), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) initiated a project to create an archaeological park in the heart of Madaba. The park includes a well-preserved stretch of what appears to be a Late Roman street and buildings from the Roman, Byzantine, and Early and Late Islamic periods. The excavations also yielded finds from the Middle Islamic period as well as the Modern period. The goals of the park project were to explore the history of Madaba, to protect its archaeological heritage from destruction, and to revitalize downtown Madaba. This volume—more than 450 pages and well illustrated—presents the results of the excavations of 1992 to 1993, with brief coverage of the follow-up excavations in 1994 and 1995-1996, focusing on the western half of the Madaba Archaeological Park, around the Burnt Palace and the Roman Street to its south. Pierre Bikai, Ghazi Bisheh, Karen Britt, Alysia Fischer, Debra Foran, Jaakko Frösén, James Pokines, Robert Schick and Thomas Maria Weber-Karyotakis contributed to the book.

The concept of »transformation« or simply »reshaping« contains the elements of what remains, the conservative, the kernel of what continues, as well as the elements of what changes, the innovative. In the framework of this publication of articles from a conference in 2016 on »Transformations of City and Countryside in the Byzantine Period«, we draw attention to this dichotomy and investigate the social dynamics behind changes in urban and rural life in the Byzantine period that can be detected by archaeology, history and art history.The Byzantine Empire is an ideal subject for studying how social transformation proceeds, what triggers transformation, what factors underlie it and what the processes involved are. Who were the agents of transformation and how did they and their environment change? How flexible were the state or its citizens in handling external and internal pressures of innovation? In what manner and to what extent were the Byzantines able to preserve their identity and the internal cohesion of their empire in the course of these processes of adaptation?

An assessment of the nature and social continuity of Christian communities in Palestine from 602-813. By synthesizing literary and archeological evidence, it provides a detailed discussion of disparate historical and archeological data. In the first part, the Sasanian, Byzantine and early Muslim invasions of southern Syria and the changing of government policies towards Christians are discussed. Topical studies about church use, conversion and iconoclasm, are also included. The second part offers a useful alphabetical list of more than 500 sites that document Christian and Muslim presence and settlement in the area. ... the book does a great service to those interested in the area and its Christian population... (John Haldon)