New Insights into the Iron Age Archaeology of Edom, Southern Jordan

"Situated south of the Dead Sea, near the famous Nabatean capital of Petra, the Faynan region in Jordan contains the largest deposits of copper ore in the southern Levant. The Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP) takes an anthropological archaeology approach to the deep-time study of culture change in one of the Old World's most important locales for studying technological development. Using innovative digital tools for data recording, curation, analyses and dissemination, the researchers focused on ancient mining and metallurgy as the subject of surveys and excavations related to the Iron Age (ca. 1200-500 B.C.E.), when the first local, historical state-level societies appeared in this part of the eastern Mediterranean basin. This comprehensive and important volume challenges the current scholarly consensus concerning the emergence and historicity of the Iron Age polity of biblical Edom and some of its neighbors, such as ancient Israel"--