Jericho Mafjar
Project
The department of Antiquities inherited a jumble of excavated ruins in 1997 and made a plan of the visible remains. This comprised walls and structures of various interlocking phases and a system of baulks, a grid of one meter wide unexcavated soils. The first goal of the 2011 season was the creation of a new GIS survey of the visible remains, coupled with a database of wall types, using the iPad technology. This survey yielded a putative original orthogonal structure and subsequent alterations and reoccupation(s).
Three small excavations were placed at locations to test differing approaches to the archaeological problems of this site. This first was 3100 near the northwest corner found an upper level with tabun and transitional Umayyad/Abbasid painted wares. The walls showed two phases with a doubled exterior wall. Another trench was 3200, a set of three rooms separated by a Jordanian baulk. This was cleaned revealing relationships of walls, which were cleared to foundations in sterile bricky soil. The third trench excavated a Jordanian trench, revealing two separate occupation layers. The upper contained complete lamps, numerous glass vials, storage jars, burnt basketry and seeds (even complete charred dates), beads and buttons, etc. The earlier layer also contained numerous artifacts of an Umayyad phase. These sondages hold promise for future discoveries in this area.
