Wadi Faynan landscape project, Jordan

Professor Oliver Creighton

Dr Oliver Creighton is currently involved in collaborative research in the Wadi Faynan, Jordan. The Wadi Faynan Landscape Survey has as its focus the long-term history of desertification and environmental degradation in a region of southern Jordan. Since 1996, the project has involved interdisciplinary collaboration with archaeologists and geographers from a number of UK universities, including Exeter, Leicester and Aberystwyth, and the Council for British Research in the Levant. The project has mapped a complex field system of probable Nabatean/Roman date, with evidence for floodwater farming, and recorded over one thousand archaeological sites in the surrounding catchment. The study will culminate in a substantial monograph that is likely to contribute to major international research issues, including the antiquity of farming and pastoralism and the impact of Roman colonialism in the Levant.