Adapa Monographs – serie

The Orontes Valley in western Syria is a land 'in between', positioned between the small trading centres of the coast and the huge urban agglomerations of the Euphrates Valley and the Syro-Mesopotamian plains beyond. As such, it provides a critical missing link in our understanding of the archaeology of this region in the early urban age.

After Alexander: The Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods at Pella in Jordan details the excavation of Hellenistic and Early Roman period horizons carried out at Pella in Jordan by the University of Sydney since 1979. It deals with both the stratigraphy of the Hellenistic and Early Roman levels at Pella, and catalogues the pottery recovered from them. Short summaries of relevant work by the College of Wooster are also included.After a brief introduction to the site and history of excavations, a detailed description of the Hellenistic and Early Roman levels on the main mound of Khirbet Fahl, on nearby Tell Husn, and in select hinterland locations, then follows.The heart of the study centres on a detailed catalogue of the corpus of some 900 individual Hellenistic-Early Roman pottery fragments, accompanied by outline drawings for each fragment, and a smaller number of images of the more important pieces.Discussion of the relevance and importance of the material remains to the history and archaeology of the Hellenistic and Early Roman periods at Pella and more broadly to Jordan and the southern Levant concludes the study.

The eastern frontier of the Roman Empire its network of roads, trade routes, towns and forts is often conceived of as an 'edge' of both empire and civilisation but this 'borderland' is also part of a rich cultural landscape.