POSTPONED: The Archaeology of Olive Oil: New Excavations at Khirbet Ghozlan in the Wadi ar-Rayyan, Jordan

When the earliest urban systems of the southern Levant collapsed in the mid-3rd millennium BCE, the economy is thought to have contracted to simple forms of agro-pastoral subsistence. However, the appearance of several small, enclosed sites in upland areas suggests that post-collapse communities maintained a complex rural economy through the exploitation of different environmental zones.

SEM image of carbonised olive sapling at Khirbet Ghozlan (Image by C Cartwright, courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum)

This British Museum/University of Sydney excavation project investigates the 0.4 ha enclosure site of Khirbet Um al-Ghozlan, in Jordan’s east rift escarpment. These excavations test the hypothesis that enclosure sites served as specialised processing centres for upland horticultural crops such as olive and grape, and were enclosed to protect seasonal caches of high value liquid commodities such as oil and wine. The implication is that so-called urban features such as monumental defense systems and specialised production were reconfigured within rural settlement networks in a period of urban recession.