A multi-isotope base map for Jordan: a tool for re-examining movement and community in the past

The relationships between mobile pastoralists and sedentary agricultural communities, between "the steppe and the sown", have historically played a key role in the formation of the national identity of the modern state of Jordan. In recent decades, however, a high rate of immigration has had a significant impact on Jordan's social fabric and its natural environment, with substantial implications for sustainable development and for its sense of self. Issues of identity and community, and of how these are constructed, have become matters of significant debate. We seek, therefore, to use a case study from the past to advance new perspectives on the nature of community and expand consideration of these issues.
A recent project at Durham University demonstrated through isotopic analysis of skeletal remains that more than 50% of the individuals interred in a major 7th-9th century CE cemetery at Bamburgh, capital of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, did not originate from northeastern England, but from a world extending from the Mediterranean to Scandinavia. The diverse nature of the community at this major Anglo-Saxon site raises important questions about traditional narratives around British identity. We therefore seek to explore issues of diversity in a Jordanian context through a comparable case study. For this purpose, we have selected the site of Pella, an important community in the Jordan Valley that has produced a long sequence human skeletal material spanning a period of ca. 4000 years.
Traditional ways of identifying migration and mobility in the archaeological record, which often rely on substantial changes in material culture, are problematic. Isotopic analysis of skeletal remains, in contrast, can provide direct evidence for mobility, and its application has informed major reconsiderations of the European past. The accurate interpretation of patterns of movement requires an understanding of spatial variation in local isotopic signatures in the natural environment - in effect, baseline mapping. The absence of this information in Jordan has hampered previous efforts to employ isotopic studies and has prevented the kind of nuanced understandings of past communities that are now reshaping our view of the European past.
As a result, this project seeks to create through laboratory analysis an essential baseline dataset that will enhance the value of existing archaeological collections by using isotopic geochemistry as a technique to understand patterns of movement in the past. We will use this technique to investigate the relative homogeneity/diversity of an important Jordanian community at different points in time. While this case study offers exciting possibilities, we first aim to create a major piece of research infrastructure, in the form of a multi-isotope base-map for Jordan. This will provide the underpinnings for this project, but will also provide an essential point of reference for all future isotopic analysis in the country. We believe that this base-map will spur a rapid increase in the uptake of isotopic techniques within Jordanian archaeology.
We therefore propose a two-part project:
1) Construction of a multi-isotope base-map for Jordan (87Sr/86Sr, 18O, 34S, 13C, 15N), comparable to the Biosphere Map of Britain. This would represent the first bioavailable multi-isotope map for any country in the Middle East. The data underlying the construction of this map will be made available as an online database, and map resources of spatial variability in bioavailable isotope values will also be made freely available online, to allow them to be used for future studies.
2) Undertake a study that employs a deep-time approach to the history of mobility and community in Jordan, by analyzing human remains from multiple periods at Pella. This site, located in the Jordan Valley, has one of the longest sequences of human burials in Jordan, and thus offers an ideal long-term case study of changes in mobility.

One of the primary impacts of this project will be in the area of capacity building in the higher educational sector, via a collaboration between Durham University and Yarmouk University. By involving Jordanian researchers fully in the project lifecycle, this project will make a major contribution to capacity building by creating a major piece of research infrastructure. The multi-isotope base-map will be the first of its kind for any country in the Middle East, and will become an essential point of reference for all future isotopic analysis in the country. Its impact will be significant, as it will encourage the rapid adoption of isotopic techniques within Jordanian archaeology. This will have a major impact for academic research capacity in Jordan, as isotope research is rapidly emerging as an essential growth area in archaeological studies, and is an area of study that has previously been underutilized in Jordan primarily due to restricted access to analytical facilities.
In addition, through the creation of a post-doctoral research associate position, we are aiming to contribute to professional career development for early career academics in Jordan. This position will provide advanced skills training for a Jordanian post-doctoral researcher to participate in the project throughout the entire research process, and will enhance the employability of an early career researcher through hands-on training in analytical and laboratory skills.
The datasets created by the isotope base-mapping effort will also have widespread impact outside academia, as knowledge of underlying geographical variation in isotopic values has a wide range of applications. The data produced can be used for food security purposes through the determination of the provenance of foodstuffs (authentication of food origins; tracking illegal food imports); studies of modern bird and animal migration; hydrological & water quality studies; and for applications in climatology and ecology.
Because isoscape maps of biosphere isotopic variation have such a wide range of applications, the potential impact (both academic and non-academic) of such an important shared resource is very high. As a result, the number of such maps is rapidly increasing as researchers worldwide recognise the need for them to underpin a wide range of investigations. The likelihood is thus high that new applications for the datasets created by the project proposed here will continue to develop in ways that remain unpredictable at present. Furthermore, new data can be integrated into the dataset as it becomes available, so it will not remain a static resource, but one that will be continuously evolving.
In addition, the study of mobility and community at Pella, a site in the Jordan Valley with a long history of occupation, will contribute to ongoing public discussions about the nature and formation of past identities and communities in Jordan. This investigation of the changing patterns of mobility and relative heterogeneity and diversity within the lifespan of an ancient Jordanian community will provide new perspectives to enrich public discourse and popular conceptions of community and identity in the past. The results of this case study will be shared with a popular audience through the creation of a bilingual Arabic-English exhibition to be displayed at Yarmouk University. Exhibition materials will be made widely available, so that they can be used in additional locations throughout Jordan, and employed as teaching resources in schools and other educational settings. This research will thus help to challenge, in both the academic community and the popular imagination, entrenched assumptions about how we view and recognize change in the past, and create a means for alternative possibilities to be heard and explored.