Amman Citadel, Umayyad Palace

1992] IN JORDAN ARCHAEOLOGY 531 B.C.Ammoniteobjects. Fig.26. AmmanCitadel,Templeof Hercules.Seventh-century greater detail the temenos wall and the associated colonnades(fig. 25); 2) to investigatethe relationship between Islamic and Roman walls; 3) to extend two trenches from the south and east sides of the temple area to the lower slope beneath the Islamicfortification wall to see what remains were preserved from the periods earlier than Roman. More than 1800 m2have been exposed. At the time of writing we have been able to analyze on a very preliminarylevel a relativelylarge amountof the data. Four major and six minor architecturalphases are represented by structures.The earliest one dates to the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 17th centuries B.C. The second goes back to the seventh century B.C. The third major phase could be dated to the "Classical"(Hellenistic,Roman,and Byzantine) period while the latest (fourth) phase dates to the eighth-13th centuries A.C. and is representedby the Abassidfortificationwalls and Ayyubidtower. Probably the most significant result of the 1990 seasonsis the discoveryof the remainsof an Ammonite temple. Although there was no direct evidence for the function of the building discoveredto the east of the Roman temple (due to limited area of the excavations and the disruption of the building in the Roman period by the construction activities of the Roman temple), the nature of the finds suggests that the building may have served a special cultic community function (fig. 26). In conclusion,the 1990-1991 seasons have considerably increased our knowledge of the occupational history of the Amman Citadel. The six seasons of excavationswere very successfulin startingto provide us withanswersfor manyof the outstandingquestions regardingthe Roman temple area. Amman Citadel, Umayyad Palace. Antonio Almagro,Julio Navarro, and Antonio Orihuela report on the 1989 season of excavationand restorationof the UmayyadPalaceon the Amman Citadel: After several years of interruption, the work that the SpanishArchaeologicalMissionhad begun in the Umayyad Palace of the Amman Citadel in the late '70s continuedin the season of 1989. That season was made possibleby the collaborationof the Ministryof Cultureof Spain and DAJ. One of the purposesof our workwasthe restoration of one of the residentialareasof the Palace,the central building of the east side, "buildingB," after A. Almagro (El palacio omeyade Amman,Madrid 1983). This building (fig. 27) had nearlydisappearedduring the excavationsof the Italian Missionin the '30s and with more recent work in the early'70s, both of which concentratedon the recovery of the Roman carved stones and ashlars reused by the Umayyads in their rubblewalls. Following the plans drawn by the Italian Mission and the remainsof Umayyadfoundations, it was possible to rebuild the Umayyadwalls up to a height of 60-70 cm in order to help the visitor visualize the ground plan of the Umayyadbuilding. Besides the restorationof building B the main goal of the 1989 season was the excavationof building F 532 BERTDE VRIES [AJA 96 Fig.27. AmmanCitadel,UmayyadPalace.BuildingB afterpartialrestoration. (fig. 28), which is situated west of courtyard2 and is one of the six residential units that the Umayyads built inside the Roman temenos. Our first objective was to delimit the different rooms, and later to excavate them separately.The highest stratumwas full of stones of several sizes, all of them coming from the debris of the building. The depth of this stratum is about 100 cm in the three ranges of surrounding rooms, but only 30 cm in the center of the central courtyarditself. After delimiting the walls we realized that the hypotheticalplan drawnby Almagroin 1983 wascorrect in the main lines, as the building has a courtyardwith ranges of rooms on only three sides: east, south, and west. Both east and west ranges have five rooms or spaces each, while there are only three on the south side. Although the number of rooms is the same as we expected, their size and shape are different. The entranceis not in the axis of the east facadebut north of it. The staircase is in the west range, exactly in front of the entrance. Another difference is that the south range is deeper than the others and, therefore, the courtyard is rectangular in shape, instead of square. The uncovering of walls less thick and differently constructedthan the Umayyadones is clear evidence of the reuse of the buildingat a latertime. The pottery found in the upper strataindicatesthat the period of reuse was the Ayyubid-Mameluk period. Some of these late wallsdivide the former Umayyadrooms, as Fig.28. AmmanCitadel,UmayyadPalace.BuildingF areaduringexcavation. 1992] ARCHAEOLOGY IN JORDAN in the entrance, which was blocked. A circularstructure made of square bricksthat is likely to have been a kiln probablyalso belongs to this later period. Due to the shortness of the season, we were only able to reach the Umayyadlevel in some rooms. The Umayyad pavement is about 3 m under the present surface level. There is another level of occupation 1.20 m above the Umayyad level. This great difference between the levels shows that the eighth-century building was reused after suffering an importantdestruction. We could find other evidence of postUmayyad use in the entrance as well: the gate was reduced in size, reusing Umayyad carved ashlar blocksupside down for this purpose. In our estimation, only 50% of the work has been done to finish the excavation of building F; further work is planned. Wadi Jerash. Gaetano Palumbo, ACOR and Universitadi Roma, reports: Four months of salvageexcavationswere conducted by Ali Musa, Chief Inspector of the Jerash office of DAJ, at the site of a large Roman building of the second century A.C. at Palestine Grid coordinates 234.03/180.66, on the path of the new Amman-Irbid highway. The building is located on a slope above WadiJerash, close to its confluence with WadiZerqa, 7 km to the south of Jerash. It was probablya fort or a watchpost,and was identified by chance during the recordingby the DAJ/ACORCRMteam of some rockcut tombs threatened by destruction due to road works. Unfortunately, only salvage excavationcould be conducted at the site of the building. Road construction was already at an advanced stage and no protection could be provided for the structure;however, it had already been heavily disturbed by road and constructionworks conducted in the area in the last 30 years. Excavation revealed a large portion of the south corner of the building, with well-preservedexternal walls and internal partitions. The external west wall wasexcavatedfor a total length of 18 m and its height was preserved to between 2 and 3.5 m. The external south wall was excavated for a length of 29 m and was preserved to a height of between 1.5 and 3.5 m. The main entrance to the building was found along this wall, at approximately 17 m from the south corner. This entrancemayhave been locatedin the center of the southern wall. Unfortunately that hypothesis could not be verified, since the east and north corners and the entire eastern wall (together, of course, with the internal partitions) had been bulldozed during previousroad works.The exterior wallswere built on one to five courses of foundation stones, roughly squared, with some gaps between them. More nicely built are the three or four courses of stones above the 533 foundations, many of which are embossed with a "corniche"characterizedby two or three parallel incisions surrounding the embossed area. There are also stones not embossed, showing only a pattern of incisions inclined 45?. All the stones used for the construction of the building come from quarries in the area, where sandstone rocks of light brown color prevail. Most probably the structure was built on a slope, with the southern corner exposed for two to four courses more than the upper southern and western walls. Inside, a well-preservedseries of four rooms were found along the west wall. From a central courtyard only two of those rooms could be accessed.No passage between these two rooms was found, while both of them had an entrance leading into a smaller room. Quantitiesof restorablepottery were found in the rooms as well as a number of coins. One coin was minted during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. This points to a constructiondate in the second half of the second century A.C. Other coins range in date between the second and the third centuries A.C. Two more rooms found along the external south wall are later additions to the building. A later kiln, probably Byzantine, was found in the rooms to the west of the main entrance, partiallysitting above earlier walls, and using the entrance to the room as the access to the kiln itself. The courtyardprobablyhad a portico surrounding the central area. Pillar bases were found in front of the entrance (one still with the base of a square pillar sitting on it), and between the entrances to rooms 2 and 3. Squatterreuse of the building was evident in almost all the rooms of the building. Under a later, heavy collapse, the pattern was usually that of ephemeral walls built of stones reused from the building or unhewn stones. Three out of five entrances were found blocked at a later stage. In a further reuse a large basalt millstone was found on top of a wall. Unfortunatelythis later phase of occupationwas found very close to the surfaceand heavilydisturbed,so that only a tentative date between the Late Byzantine and the Mamlukperiod can be provided. At the end of the excavation and documentation phase the building was covered with wadi gravel, and the new road built above its remains. Yasileh. Zeidounal-Muheisen,Instituteof Archaeology and Anthropology, Yarmouk University, reports: The discovery of two burial caves in 1988, on a bank of the WadiYasileh(or Wadi Shellaleh),was the beginning of a long-term projectdirected by Zeidoun al-Muheisenand funded by the YarmoukUniversity Institute of Archaeologyand Anthropology in coop-