Includes 114 illustrations, some in colour. Recent scholarship on
the Roman Empire has focused on the nature of its economy,
including sites that served as nodules of commercial exchange. Aila
was such a port city on the Red Sea on the southeastern frontier of
the Empire, now within modern Aqaba in Jordan. The city of Aila
emerged in the late 1st century BC within the Nabataean kingdom, a
client state of the Roman Empire. The port continued to flourish
into the early Islamic period, handling trade between the Empire
and south Arabia, east Africa, and India. The Roman Aqaba Project
aimed to reconstruct Aila’s economy diachronically. The project
research design included a regional archaeological and
environmental survey, excavation of the ancient city, and analysis
of material remains relevant to Aila's economy. Six field seasons
were conducted between 1994 and 2002, providing a detailed picture
of the economic history of the city. Excavation revealed major
elements of the city, such as domestic quarters, industrial
facilities, fortifications, and a monumental building interpreted
as an early Christian church. This first of three projected volumes
of the project’s final report focuses on the regional environment
and the regional survey. Analysis of the environment employs a wide
range of evidence to analyse the physiography, geology, soils,
seismic history, climate and natural resources. Various lines of
evidence are employed to reconstruct the paleoclimate, which seems
to have remained essentially hyperarid since early historical
times. The report also includes results of an intensive
archaeological survey of Wadi Araba, the shallow valley extending
north from Aqaba to the Dead Sea. The project surveyed the
southeastern the valley, recording 334 archaeological sites, most
previously unrecorded. These of these were small and unobtrusive
and ranged in date from Paleolithic to Late Islamic, but especially
common were sites of the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age and the
Early Roman/Nabataean periods, suggesting more intensive occupation
in these periods. The volume also includes chapters on artifacts
collected by the survey, including chipped stone tools, pottery,
and Nabataean inscriptions. Aila apparently lacked any significant
agricultural hinterland. The city was largely dependent on imports
from more distant sources.
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