An inportant spin-off of the Jebel Qurma Archaeological Landscape Project was another research project (2014 – 2018), funded by the Dutch Science Council (NWO), entitled: Landscapes of Survival – Pastoralist Societies, rock art and Literacy in Jordan’s Black Desert, ca. 1000 BC – 500 AD.

This multidiciplinary research programme, which started in 2014, brought together rich, new datasets from the Jebel Qurma region (settlements, burials, rock art, inscriptions) in a single interpretative framework, which had not been done before.

It focused on the social, political, economic and ideological strategies which allowed the local peoples to successfully exploit their inherently marginal landscapes from the Iron Age to the Early Islamic period. The programme investigated pastoralist lifeways and the treatment of the dead in the desert, the role of rock art in signing the landscape, and the implications of widespread literacy among the local desert peoples.

The results of the Landscapes of Survival Project have been published in a number of open access books and articles. You can find links to these publications on this website, under ‘Publications’.