Nicolo Pini

“The different fates of architecture: reoccupation patterns in the Madaba Plains (Jordan)” (ReMaPla)

The project investigates the phenomenon of reoccupation of archaeological sites in antiquity, a recurring feature in most sites in the Middle East. Given the multiplicity of experiences of local communities across such a wide area and the strong regionalism that affects several aspects of settlements’ development, the project will start considering one single regional context, the Madaba Plains in modern Jordan, in its historical occupation – tentatively from the Hellenistic period onwards – embracing not only the major sites, but also the landscape in its entirety.
Reoccupation can take place in different ways, also within the same site: reoccupation with limited restoration in a restricted portion of the complex (e.g. re-roofing, re-plastering of cisterns, etc.); reoccupation with radical functional changes, often connected with a marked re-organisation of the built environment; and finally a proper re-building – or better, building anew –, consisting in the complete demolition of earlier structures and the reuse of their building materials or of spolia coming from elsewhere in the site to build a completely new complex. Among these different forms, reuse of building materials appears to be particularly frequent and challenging to interpret.
Even though pragmatism/opportunism is most likely the more reasonable explanation for many episodes of reoccupation, it does not appear to be dealing with a homogeneous phenomenon, as it has been treated so far by the vast majority of the studies on the topic. On the contrary, if we take a closer look a dramatically complex picture emerges. Because of the lack of extensive and comparable evidence from a sufficient number of excavated case studies across the Middle East, it would not be scientifically correct, or meaningful, to seek for “global” answers and it seems more reasonable for now to focus only on the Madaba Plains.
The Madaba plains are a valid case study for the following reasons: long occupation; specific material culture, since in several periods it was a coherent cultural region (for instance, in the Islamic period it was part of the Balqa); availability of a vast archaeological documentation from previous excavations and surveys, since the region has been under investigation for a long time thanks to the Madaba Plains Project, that had been running for over forty years; still on-going fieldwork at some sites, including an archaeological excavation season and regional survey.
Recently, the topic of reoccupation – and in particular, reuse – often recurs in the field of preservation and development of conservation plans for cultural heritage and historical centres. Aside its historical and archaeological relevance, the present project offers a systematic tool to investigate the phenomenon of reoccupation in general: it is not only one of the few attempts to deal with the topic on a regional level, investigating an important historical region of the Middle East; but represents potentially a support for plans for conservation and development, not strictly archaeological, but also practical. The social impact can appear in form of engagement of local communities in the process of preserving and valorising the natural and cultural heritage of the region, as well as in learning from the past modalities of land use and different economic strategies better responding to the climatic crisis that is hitting the region.