The Beidha Pastoralism Project

This study was developed as a response to some of the perceived gaps in the application of theory to data in the study of the archaeological remains of nomadic pastoral groups in the Near East. Middle-range theory in the last few decades has made great strides in connecting High Theory with lowly archaeological data. However, many of these middle-range theories were pursued no further after their initial introduction, and consequentially the archaeological community has both ignored many middle-range theories and simply repeated over and over many others as “good things to do”, without necessarily understanding why they were such good things. The result is that many very useful middle-range theories have stagnated and have not taken advantages of the phenomenal advances in technology or the increases in the corpus of archaeological data that have occurred since their inception. With the exception of a few dedicated researchers, most of the Near Eastern archaeological community has ignored this growing gap, and it has become painfully obvious that something needs to be done.

The archaeology of nomadic pastoralists is one of the research areas of Near Eastern archaeology that is most critically affected by these problems. As a consequence of the marginality of their work to mainstream Near Eastern archaeology, many of the researchers who were doing the best work in the area have moved on to other research topics. This paper is an attempt to carry the flame that they ignited into the new millennium.

This paper has a two-fold purpose: to build an empirically-based site-location model for Near Eastern nomadic pastoralists that does not ignore the cultural data gained from the few ethnoarchaeological studies that have been conducted with these groups, and to explore the process of implementing this type of model through the construction and interrogation of small-scale, highly detailed spatial models developed from maps and satellite data with advanced GIS systems. The data set used in this study comes from a highly detailed ethnoarchaeological and archaeological survey that Banning and Köhler-Rollefson conducted in the Beidha region of southern Jordan in 1982. This survey was the source of two important papers (Banning and Köhler-Rollefson 1986, 1992) and is especially suited to the development of this type of predictive modeling because of the tightness of the survey methodology and the varied terrain of the survey area. ESRI’s ArcGIS 8.3 program suite provides the robust computing power and the high-precision tools needed for the development and analysis of the 3-D spatial model of the Beidha region and survey data.

Scroll down for some of the maps generated for the Beidha Project, or download the entire text of the paper. This thesis is also available in the University of Toronto Department of Anthropology's thesis and dissertation collection.

Location of Beidha in Southern Jordan

Beidha lies just North of the famous Nabatean site of Petra.

Topographic map of Beidha showing site locations

Nomadic Campsites and other Archaeological Sites in Beidha.

Satallite image overlay

The satallite image overlay allows us to see the different geologic facies which create the different terrains of the Beidha region.

3-D visualization of Beidha

3-D visualization helps us gain the perspective nescessary to better understand the relationship between topography and site location.

Reults of the predictive model

The first map shows areas that fit the characteristics defined for summer campsites while the second map shows the areas that match the criteria for winter sites. The final image is an overlay of both areas on 3-D topography.

Both sumer and winter areas overlain on 3-D topography.

Isaac Ullah