This project, supported by a CBRL Team-based Fieldwork Research Award, is part of the wider Eastern Badia Archaeological Project. The 2016 fieldwork took place in the Wadi Qattafi, on and around the spectacular basalt topped mesa that form an incredible and inspiring landscape (), that are home to a large number of buildings and occupation structures on their tops and flanks.
Fig. 1. Some of the mesa of the Wadi Qattafi, with our camp site for scale.
The focus of this part of the project is to reconstruct the environments in which people were living, in the case of the structures being excavated in 2016, approximately 7000 years ago on the flanks of one of the mesa ().
Fig. 2. Looking down on the excavations and the Wadi Qattafi.
We are particularly interested in the amount of water that might have been available to the people living in and using these structures, and to whether this can add to our interpretation of how long in a given year they may have used these locations. Linked, to our understanding of past hydrological conditions, we are also gathering what information we can, about past vegetation cover and landscape stability, in the area. The amount of occupation suggested by, the archaeology has lead us to hypothesize that the, environment that these early Holocene people lived in, was very different to that of today, with greater water, availability and a potential soil cover supporting vegetation. The project aims to collect evidence to allow us to critically test that hypothesis.
Fig. 3. The auger rods give an idea of the amount of sediment that has filled the local qa’.
The water to support our own occupation of the mesa came from a well about 10 km across the qa’ from our campsite. Talking to the well managers provided some interesting information about water use in the immediate region in the present day. Typically the well pumps approximately 80,000 l a day from the aquifer, which is at about 75 m below the surface, in the summer months of June through September. This water is then mostly transported by truck, about 15 a day, out to local settlements for providing sheep with water, in addition to smaller scale domestic use and occasional visits from the local camel herd.
In winter pumping is reduced to, at most, 80,000 l a week, due in part to a reduced need for water in the cooler months, but also due to more water being available in the landscape. The local qa’, for example, can fill with up to about 40 cm of water each winter, and depending on the amount of winter rain, and spring climate conditions impacting evaporation, can remain in the qa’ well into February. How this may have varied, compared to present day conditions, in the past is one of the questions we will be testing as part of this project.
From digging and augering into the qa’, we know that the basin could have had a much larger storage capacity for water in the past, there is at least 3 m of sediment in the deepest part of the basin (photo 3) and samples are currently being analysed to age the sedimentary fill. We know from our work elsewhere in the eastern Badia that much of this qa’ fill is Holocene in age, such that the basin would have been able to hold more water in the past, but how much more, and for how long are questions still to be answered.
Understanding more about the hydrology of the region today, also helps us interpret the potential complexities of the hydrology in the past. The well we used, for example, has remained at, or close to, its current level for most of the last 40 years, whereas another, shallower, well another 15 km away has water, but not that is suitable for drinking and groundwater levels and spring discharge in Azraq have fallen significantly over that time, the latter to zero. As we try and reconstruct local environments in the past to inform specific site evidence, we must take into account this regional complexity in hydrology in linking these local records to larger scale patterns of environmental or climatic change.
The first year of this project has provided some more interesting evidence for past environmental change in the Badia. This coming year the project plans to undertake some wider survey of the area, to identify further occupation sites and make further observations of the surrounding landscape, the third year of the project will see another field season focussing on another area of interest, east of Wadi Qattafi at the Wisad Pools. Our research question and approach at this site will be similar to the work done in the Wadi Qattafi as we build up our picture of early- to mid-Holocene environments in the region.
Many thanks to the rest of the 2016 field team for providing support and for demonstrating what amazing food can be made from the contents of a can!