The Kingdom of Copper

 Faynan, Jordan , is a small region in southern Jordan's Wadi Arabah, a dry rift valley running from the Dead Sea to the Red Sea. The region is home to members of several Bedouin tribes, who live in and around the village of Qirayqira. 

However, Faynan was once the epicenter of one of the largest nomadic kingdoms in the history of the entire southern Levant.

Let's learn a little more about how complex society was able to develop 3,000 years ago in this part of Jordan.

In the ancient world, copper was an incredibly important resource. In some ways, copper in the Iron Age was like oil today, playing a critical role in the daily functioning of life. Copper would ultimately also drive the development of complex society in Faynan.

Copper was used for many purposes, including making jewelry, ritual items, tools, and weapons.

Prior to the Iron Age, in the Late Bronze Age, copper in the Southern Levant came from Cyprus, where enormous, industrial-scale production took place.

The main evidence for copper smelting in the archaeological record is not actually copper artifacts, as most of the metal was traded away. Instead, archaeologists often identify ancient copper production by the waste byproduct left behind which is called “slag”. Producing copper requires purifying metal ores in a furnace, and the extracted impurities solidify as slag. 

Slag gives archaeologists important insights into the technology and scale of ancient copper production. Though many of Cyprus' copper resources have been exploited even into the modern era, the slag mounds that are remnants of the Late Bronze Age industry are still impressive in their scale.  

The actual result of this industry were large copper ingots, called "oxhide" ingots because of their similar appearance to a stretched ox hide. These ingots were specially designed to be easy to carry and transport.

These ingots were the perfect trade commodity for the economic system of the Late Bronze Age, when a thriving seafaring trade carried goods between the Egypt, the Levantine coast, the Hittite Empire, Cyprus, and the Aegean.

The political and economic power vacuum during the early Iron Age created an opportunity to step into the gap created by Cyprus no longer manufacturing and exporting copper on an enormous scale.

Faynan was uniquely positioned to take advantage of this opportunity due to the underlying geology of the region.

These mines, strategically situated to take advantage of the copper ores in the Dolomite Limestone Shale, provided the impetus for development of Khirbat al-Jariya, Khirbat en-Nahas, and other sites in the region.

The tens of thousands of tons of copper smelted in Faynan during the Iron Age, fueled by systematic harvesting of local trees and shrubs for fuel, left their mark across the region and created an industrial landscape. 

To learn more about Iron Age copper production in Faynan, its technological sophistication, and the corresponding development of social complexity in the region, the  Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeological Project , directed by Thomas E. Levy and Mohammad Najjar as a joint collaboration between UC San Diego and the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, was founded.

By combining survey and excavation, archaeologists have powerful tools at their disposal. At Khirbat en-Nahas, balloon photography survey allowed for the creation of a high resolution 3D model of the site. The 3D model shown above, with an integrated 3D model of an excavation unit in a slag mound, allows us to more fully understand the site and make excavation decisions.

Explore the 3D model below to discover the details of Khirbat en-Nahas.

The stories of the ancient copper-producing society in Faynan are only able to be told because of a close collaboration between archaeologists from the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and UC San Diego and the inhabitants of the Faynan/Qirayqira region.

The people of Faynan and Qirayqira play an important role as ELRAP team members and have an active role in survey and excavation.

The people of Faynan are members of several Bedouin tribes (the ‘Ammarin, Sa’idiyyin, Rashaydah and ‘Azazmah) which call the region home. 

These people live either in the villages of Faynan and Qirayqira, or in the surrounding areas, melding traditional life in tents with village life. Many of the locals are engaged in agricultural work with the irrigated fields that now line the region, or as pastoralists, raising goats.

The Faynan region has also developed as a tourist destination. The  Dana Biosphere Reserve  is the country's largest nature reserve, and exists to protect much of the wildlife of the Faynan region (and incidentally, many of the archaeological sites in the region).

Visitors can stay at the  Faynan Ecolodge , a ecohotel that offers visitors a unique experience in the region.

Finally, the  Faynan Museum , created by the Jordanian Department of Antiquities, is one of the best places to learn more about the people of Faynan and the region's long history as a Kingdom of Copper.

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• Precipitation Data:  Fick, S.E. and R.J. Hijmans, 2017. Worldclim 2: New 1-km spatial resolution climate surfaces for global land areas. International Journal of Climatology. 
• Copper Ore Photograph Credit: Thomas E. Levy, UCSD Levantine Archaeology Laboratory
• Fire Photograph Credit:  Pavel Ševela, CC BY-SA 3.0 
• Descriptions of LBA Destroyed Sites (except where otherwise cited): Drews, R., The End of the Bronze Age: Changes in Warfare and the Catastrophe ca. 1200 B.C. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
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• "Industrial Landscape" Photograph Credit: Thomas E. Levy, UCSD Levantine Archaeology Laboratory
• Geology Map: Rabba', I. 1991 The Geology of the Al Qurayqira (Jabal Hamra Faddan) Map Sheet No. 3051 II. Amman: Geology Directorate Geological Mapping Division Bulletin 28.
• Geology Map Vectorization: Matthew D. Howland, Brady Liss, and Tyler Tucker
• "Archaeological Research" Photographs Credit: Thomas E. Levy, UCSD Levantine Archaeology Laboratory
• "Archaeological Research" Videos Credit: Thomas E. Levy, UCSD Levantine Archaeology Laboratory
• KEN Vectorization: Tyler Tucker and Matthew D. Howland
• "Faynan Today" Photograph Credit: Thomas E. Levy, UCSD Levantine Archaeology Laboratory