Disasters and dating in Petra

Several years ago, I published a paper in the journal Levant arguing that the end date of a key layer in Petra, the Spätrömisch II phase at al-Zantur, had been dated at least a century too early. To summarize the argument of this paper very briefly, the excavators identified the end of Spätrömisch II as an earthquake destruction, attributed it to the earthquake of 419 AD, and dated the material in this phase to the narrow window between 363 AD, the earthquake destruction that ended Spätrömisch I, and 419 AD. As I pointed out, there are several problems with this identification, notably that there is little other evidence for this earthquake causing damage south of the Dead Sea, that clear “matching” 419 AD destruction layers have not been found elsewhere in Petra, and that there is clearly post-419 AD material in Spätrömisch II, including coins and imported ceramics. If we accept that this phase did end with an earthquake destruction, this is much more likely to be the earthquake of ca. 597 AD, damage from which is well-documented in Petra.

Considering that I was calling into question the dating of a key phase for the early 5th century in the region, I expected that this paper would generate a bit of controversy and lead to some rejoinders. I’ve therefore been a little surprised that in the nearly five years since its publication the response has been, well, basically nothing. Up until recently, the only citation was in Daniel Plekhov’s dissertation, where he cites the paper in a general discussion of earthquake damage in Petra. Because of that, I was excited to find recently that Yvonne Gerber had also cited the paper in her chapter on the ceramics in Humayma Excavation Project 3, particularly as I had thought she would disagree (she had, in fact, confirmed that she disagreed at a conference several years ago).

(As a side note, from the perspective of someone preparing an upcoming Humayma Excavation Project volume, HEP 3 is pretty daunting. As expected, the volume is very thorough and well-edited, and, as with the previous volumes, it sets a high standard for the volumes to follow.)

I quote Yvonne’s response to my paper here in full, as it is quite short, and the volume is not yet widely available:

“This is also not the place for a comprehensive rebuttal of Ian Jones’ (2021) approach to the Byzantine ceramics from az-Zantur (notably from EZ I), which amounts to date-shifting: the closing date (as accepted, first half of the fifth century) is tentatively pushed to the end of the sixth century. The forthcoming publications of all ceramics from the Nabataean mansion on az-Zantur IV (EZ IV; first to fourth centuries) and of the ceramics from the ‘Roman Street in Petra Project, 1997’ (fourth to sixth centuries) will demonstrate in detail that Jones’ hypothesis cannot be validated” (Gerber 2024: 504).

This is a rather disappointing rebuttal. While this does indicate several more thorough responses are forthcoming, if they follow the same tack, these seem unlikely to address the core of my argument regarding al-Zantur Spätrömisch II. Although perhaps premature, given the very short nature of this rejoinder, I think it is worth responding to these points here. Time will tell if the more detailed rebuttals change my position.

The primary problem is that, within these two sentences of rebuttal, Gerber concedes the entire argument of my paper, which suggests that we actually agree (and that she has potentially misunderstood my argument). She argues that the “closing date” of Spätrömisch II is, “as accepted, first half of the fifth century.” This is, of course, not the case. The date proposed by the excavators for the end of this phase is 419 AD, well within the first quarter of the 5th century. Gerber is, of course, likely aware that there is ceramic material in this phase that postdates this, but that much (but not all) of it would be comfortable in the first half of the 5th century. The problem is that if we accept Gerber’s “first half of the fifth century” date, we still most likely have to reject the dating of the Spätrömisch II destruction to 419 AD. If we accept that it is an earthquake destruction, this leaves open the question of what earthquake the destruction should be attributed to. It is possible that it is not an earthquake destruction, and I consider this in the paper. This could open up a broader range of dates, but here I trust that the excavators have correctly identified an earthquake destruction. If this is the case, the next likely candidate is the Areopolis earthquake of ca. 597 AD, which, as noted above, is known to have caused destruction elsewhere in Petra.

This leads to the second problem. Gerber seems to interpret my argument as a “date-shifting” of all of the ceramics in Spätrömisch II to the late 6th century. This is simply incorrect. As I point out in the paper, several sites in Petra, including the Great Temple and the Main Theater, have late 6th century destructions (possibly mid-8th century, in the case of the Main Theater) that post-date most of the material in their latest phases, suggesting that the destruction occurred after a partial or total abandonment of the structure. There is no reason this cannot have occurred in al-Zantur, and I would note that I do not argue in the paper that there are any late 6th century types present in Spätrömisch II. My primary arguments concerning the ceramics are that the Negev wheel-made lamp first appears in the early 6th century and that there are imported types or local interpretations thereof in Spätrömisch II that are unlikely to appear before the late 5th. It’s possible that Gerber’s upcoming publications will change my mind about some of these specific dates, but to “demonstrate in detail that Jones’ hypothesis cannot be validated” requires evidence that all of these types appear in the first two decades of the 5th century or earlier. We must, of course, await these publications to see whether this is the case.

Works Cited

Gerber, Yvonne. 2024. “Ceramic Analysis of the Roman Fort.” In Humayma Excavation Project 3, edited by John Peter Oleson. ASOR Archaeological Reports, vol. 31. Alexandria, VA: ASOR.

Jones, Ian W. N. 2021. “The southern Levantine earthquake of 418/419 AD and the archaeology of Byzantine Petra.” Levant 53(1): 107-121. https://doi.org/10.1080/00758914.2021.1916157.

That new coin hoard from the Sasanid invasion

Hello, and welcome to the latest installment of "Ian rambles about the latest archaeology news." I've seen this story shared in various forms on the various Near Eastern archaeology social media thingummies, and I've read it with interest each time. This is, in part, because much of the reporting on it has been . . . rather strange. The gist of the story is that archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority found a hoard of nine 6th and early 7th century AD copper folles in salvage excavations at 'En Hemed, and based on the dating of the latest coins have suggested that they were hidden prior to the Sasanid invasion of 614.

It's been reported in the Jerusalem Post (use an ad blocker!), which seems mostly to rely on the IAA press release, and a much stranger article has also appeared in the Washington Post. I'm sure there are other versions out there, too, though I can't imagine any are quite as strange as that one.

First, the less strange one. As I mentioned, the Jerusalem Post story mostly seems to repeat the IAA press release, but with nicer photos. The major contribution seems to be that in the JPost story the hoard is called "rare," which is probably not the word I would use, as quite a few hoards can be attributed to the Sasanid invasion. In fact, to quote Alan Walmsley (2007: 324), "Quite a few hoards can be attributed to the Sasanid invasion." Beyond that, it's a bit weird that both the JPost article and IAA release give dates of birth and death for each emperor, which, when discussing coins, is somewhat less useful than regnal dates. (It would, indeed, be quite rare to find a coin of Phocas dating to 547 AD, as that's 55 years before he became emperor. . .) This isn't a huge issue, though, and the rest of the release seems pretty straightforward.

The dating issue is corrected, at least for the reign of Phocas, in the Washington Post version. Sort of. They give the dates as 604-609, which is not quite right for the reign of Phocas, but I suspect the archaeologist, Annette Landes-Nagar, has narrowed this down on numismatic grounds. I'm not a numismatist (and the coins are, as would be expected in a news story like this, not presented in much detail), so I'm not totally sure. I am, however, more sure that it is not accurate to say that Landes-Nagar "estimated that the coins were minted sometime between 604 and 609 because they bear the faces of Byzantine emperors of the time," considering that the hoard also contained issues of Justinian and Maurice, neither of whom was Byzantine emperor at that time.

I imagine that at this point you're saying to yourself, "I don't know. That doesn't seem that weird." Agreed. That is just me being nitpicky. What's weird is that, of the 18 paragraphs that make up the article, only five are about the 'En Hemed excavations. The rest seems to be about the archaeological evidence for early Christianity in Israel and, uh, the existence of Jesus, for some reason. The first, we're told, is "a potent point, offering proof of the Christian connection to the Holy Land and the Middle East, alongside that of Judaism and Islam." This seems fairly obvious, but on the other hand, I don't think anyone who follows the archaeology of Israel will be surprised to see the phrase "proof of the X connection to the Holy Land" in an article. So, fair enough?

Stranger is the point that archaeologists haven't found "physical evidence of [Jesus'] existence." True, but . . . what does that have to do with a hoard of 6th and 7th century coins? I think the idea here is something to do with the development of the Christian community, but it seems like a strange way of introducing this coin hoard, especially since that connection is never made very clear.

None of that is, of course, a critique of the excavations, and I'll be curious to see the publication when it comes out. Considering that the hoard was found in collapse, I'll be interested, in particular, to see if they consider the possibility that it might actually have been dropped during the earthquake of 633, as Russell (1985: 46) suggested for three houses at Bet She'an (where the latest coins, it turns out, were also issues of Phocas). That does seem less likely in this case, but still possible.

Works Cited

Russell, Kenneth W. 1985. "The Earthquake Chronology of Palestine and Northwest Arabia from the 2nd through the mid-8th Century A.D." Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 260:37-59.

Walmsley, Alan. 2007. "Economic Developments and the Nature of Settlement in the Towns and Countryside of Syria-Palestine, ca. 565-800." Dumbarton Oaks Papers 61:319-352.