A generous grant from ASOR—the Charles Harris Project Grant—helped support the 2023 excavation season of the Khirbat al-Mukhayyat Archaeological Project (KMAP), directed by Debra Foran. Mukhayyat (or the ancient town of Nebo) is located approximately 9 km northwest of the city of Madaba in Jordan.

Excavations at Mukhayyat this season focussed on the southern end of the site (Fields A and B), specifically on a plateau inside the major Iron Age fortification wall identified in previous seasons. Our goals for this season were to clarify several remaining questions related to the Hellenistic and Iron Age fortification system and to identify clear, stratified contexts that would reveal the nature and sequence of occupation in this area. In particular, excavations sought to clarify the length of the occupation during the early first millennium BCE and to ground-truth hypotheses derived from the analysis of survey material from the early 2000s. The excavations succeeded in the identification of architecture and contexts from the Iron Age and in the unexpected discovery of architecture and installations from the Hellenistic period. These results have created a strong foundation for continued excavation in this area.

Concomitant with these goals, the survey component of KMAP succeeded in mapping and conducting limited surface collections at two nearby sites: Khirbat al-Fayha and ‘Ayun adh-Dhib. This survey sought to document the Iron Age and Early Bronze Age remains found there and to better understand the region surrounding Mukhayyat during these periods. Similarly, the grant from ASOR helped to support specialist research on subsets of the larger project. In previous seasons, salvage excavations conducted at the behest of the Department of Antiquities recovered human remains from several mortuary contexts under threat and, in 2023, an inventory and preliminary analysis were completed. Lastly, as a part of the development of a Community Based Archaeology Program, a portion of the excavation team recorded past and ongoing illicit collecting episodes (“looting”), considering the motivations for such activity in order to better understand how sites might be protected in the future.

The KMAP team is grateful for the support of ASOR and looks forward to building on this research in future seasons.

Andrew Danielson, Field Director of the Khirbat al-Mukhayyat Archaeological
Project (University of British Columbia)

Debra Foran, Director of the Khirbat al-Mukhayyat Archaeological Project
(Wilfrid Laurier University)

With the collaboration of:

Mashour Fshaikat (Department of Antiquities of Jordan, Madaba Directorate), Gregory Braun (University of Toronto), Rose Campbell (University of California, Los Angeles), Grant Ginson (Trent University), Věra Doležálková (Central Bohemian Archaeological Heritage Institute), Jennifer Botica (North Island College), Heidi Fessler (Loyola Marymount University)

Learn more about the Khirbat al-Mukhayyat Archaeological Project on their website or their Instagram!