Khirbat Faris
Alison McQuitty
A project supported by CBRL
The site of Khirbat Faris lies to the west of the town of al-Qasr, south of the Wadi Mujib. It has been the focus of a major BIAAH/CBRL project since 1988. Khirbat Faris was chosen for detailed study because it was a typical village site, occupied for most of the Islamic period, from the 7th century A.D. until the present. It takes its name from Faris al-Majali who lived at the turn of this century. He built the two ruined farmhouses which dominate the site, and is buried there.
Until recently, archaeological knowledge of the Islamic period came from ‘special’ sites, such as the Umayyad qusur (‘desert castles’) or Crusader castles. The co-directors of the Faris Project, Jeremy Johns and Alison McQuitty, felt that it was time to look at the rural background of such ‘special’ sites. Excavation, survey, detailed study of the environmental remains, ethno-archaeology, and thorough examination of the historical sources were the tools chosen.
Excavations and anthropological studies have built up a picture of the highly diversified, flexible and multi-resource economy which still exists on the plateau. The ancient site has been occupied since at least the Middle Bronze Age (1950-1500 B.C.). Although the earliest structures have not been investigated in detail, two Iron Age (1200-539 B.C.) cylinder seals and a cosmetic palette attest to the site’s significance.
The earliest standing structure is a vaulted Nabataean room. It is not surprising to find Nabataean occupation so close to the religious centre of al-Qasr. When, in the late 19th century, Faris al-Majali built a farmhouse against the room, the occupants used it as a oven-house.
Excavation in this area revealed more domestic buildings, used and re-used from the Nabataean to the Ottoman (1516-1918 A.D.) periods. There was a Byzantine church on the site: many glass tesserae and fragments of marble cladding were found in a building which seems to have been damaged by at least one earthquake, probably in the mid-8th century A.D. The arches which supported a flat roof of stone rafters collapsed spectacularly on the flagged floor and lay there undisturbed until excavation.
On the western edge of the site, a jumble of barrel-vaulted structures and oven-houses around a courtyard was built into earlier Iron Age levels during the 15th- to 17th-century A.D. The character of the structures and of the finds, which include simple hand-made pottery, a metal horseshoe and iron sickles, confirm that Khirbat Faris was a rural farming community. Analysis of the bones and seeds is still under way but preliminary conclusions point to a village economy based on both grain production and sheep / goat rearing. Large quantities of cattle bones may indicate that oxen were used as draft-animals for ploughing.
The final season of excavation in August 1994 emptied the contents of a flask-shaped cistern, six metres deep: complete pottery vessels, copper finger rings and well-preserved bones and seeds. The cistern was sealed in the late 13th century A.D. and thus constitutes a most valuable dated deposit. The analysis of the finds and results from Khirbat Faris is taking place in Oxford and Amman, and final publication is expected in the next couple of years.
References
- Johns, J. & A. McQuitty: Levant XXI, 63-95
- McQuitty, A. & R. Falkner: Levant XXV, 37-62