The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan occupies the geographical and cultural crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, traversed and settled over the millennia by societies that have left archaeological traces across the landscape. The Story of the Land of Jordan is an account of the country's immense history for the first time in English from the perspective of a Jordanian, one of the region's most respected archaeologists, Zeidan Kafafi.
Thoroughly referenced and illustrated, the volume first grounds the reader in Jordan's geography and environment and a history of its archaeology. Then it delves into sites that preserve the story of the country's earliest hunter-gatherer communities of the Lower Palaeolithic, through the development of agricultural communities and towns during the Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic, and into the urbanization that marked the Chalcolithic period and the development of Bronze Age city-states, ultimately culminating in the Iron Age kingdoms of Ammon, Moab, and Edom and the arrival of the Persians. Includes illustrations, maps, tables, bibliography, indices.