Pic of the Day 2019-01-11: Dolmens and Tombs (you don’t get this on the bus tour)

Dolmen scholar James Fraser’s work was featured in a Jordan Times article yesterday that I shared on Facebook earlier today. In his honor I present this related POTD post. Dolmens are megalithic structures known in northern Europe and elsewhere, but are especially numerous in hills adjacent to the Jordan River, particularly (and almost exclusively) on the east side in the country of Jordan.

These dolmens have been variously interpreted, but are almost certainly tombs dating to the Early Bronze I period (about 3700-3000 BC). Under this interpretation, the mystery is why some, but not all, Early Bronze I settlements have dolmen fields nearby.

David Maltsberger and I conducted the Irbid Region Dolmen Survey, Jordan, in 2012-2013, with a primary interest in dolmen orientation. During the work, I concluded that dolmen construction was determined by the type of bedrock present (and suspected that orientation was largely a function of the terrain and slope). David and I met James Fraser when we presented our study at a conference. He was finishing a dissertation on dolmens and kindly shared his research with us. It has now been published as Dolmens in the Levant, PEF Annual XIV, 2018.

Fraser beat us to the punch on the geology issue and added the astute observation that dolmens were used as family tombs for EB I settlements in areas of hard bedrock, while other EB I settlements carved family tombs into their softer geological substrate. There is one place where both types of tombs exist side-by-side; at Dahmiyah, overlooking the Jordan Valley.

At Dahmiyah, a number of dolmens have “porthole” entrances (above), in which a framed opening is carved through the closing slab. This feature doesn’t make much sense functionally. But this odd entrance mimics the openings of nearby carved cave-tombs from the same period. In other words, it represents a cultural continuity even with a change of tomb type.

The difficulty of access to Dahmiyah earns this post a “You Don’t Get This on the Bus Tour” cross-categorization.

Unfortunately, difficult access does not prevent exploitation of the hillsides there. The area is now a quarry —the tragic fate that threatens many dolmen fields (that hard bedrock is still in demand). Indeed, dolmens are disappearing from the landscape at an alarming rate . . .

Next up: something almost completely different; a dolmen in Ireland (click here to go to it).

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