| Living in drylands is hard, yet many people do now, and did in the past. Recent global archaeology has realized this and is in the process of systematizing the issue. Within ongoing research of University of Leiden in Syria and Jordan this subject was also touched upon but the scope of these two projects to tackle the problems of how and why the local steppe was settled needed to be widened. The recently established project funded by NWO aims to contribute to this recent discussion in global archaeology and history about the inhabitation of drylands, in particular the steppe zones of the Near East. This will be specifically studied in two site-and-landscape clusters, namely Tell Deir Alla in the Eastern Jordan Valley and Tell Hammam al-Turkman in the Syrian Jezireh, during the Early Bronze through Iron Age (ca 3000-400 BC). |
