Aspects of Nomadism and Settlement in the Central Jordan Valley

Palestine Exploration Quarterly 127 (1995)

ASPECTS OF NOMADISM AND SETTLEMENT IN THECENTRAL JORDAN VALLEY

EVELINE J. VAN DER STEEN

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were a period of change in Transjordan. Internationaldevelopments had their impact on a largely rural and pastoral society, changing it completely.The following study looks at these changes and the mechanisms that lie behind them, withspecial reference to the Central Jordan Yalley. A picture is pain ted here of a changing society,which may, to a certain extent, reflect changes that took place in the same region in thetransitional period between the Late Bronze and the Early Iron Ages.

The periods preceding this transitional period and following the Early Iron Age are knownfrom literary sources: Egyptian texts provide information about the social context of the LateBronze Age (Kitchen 1992); the Bible about the social context of the later part of the Iron Age.Archaeological sources amplify and modify this information, and although the picture thatemerges is far from complete or even coherent, we get a general idea about the socio-economicbackgrounds of society in those periods. Ethnoarchaeology relates human behaviour to thesematerial remains, so that 'explanatory hypotheses may be thereby fruitfully constructed aspredictions of the past which can be verified (or falsified) by the recovery of new data or better(more inclusive, parsimonious and internally consistent) explanations' (Kamp and Yoffee1980, 86). The recent history of the Transjordanian Plateau and its interactions with the Yalleymay provide some of these 'explanatory hypotheses' for the mechanisms involved in thetransition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age.

THE NATURAL CONTEXT

The natural conditions, the landscape, climate and soils, oftheJordan Yalley are basically thesame now as they were in the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages (van der Kooij and Ibrahim1989, 10). The Jordan Yalley forms a narrow trough between Lake Tiberias and the Dead Sea.Its length is about 100 km. Its width at Jericho - S. Shunah is 25 km., at Kereimeh 8 km.

The Yalley can be divided into four ecological zones:I. The Zor area: a low-lying, relatively wide flood plain in which the Jordan river flows,40-50 m. below the Yalley floor.2. The Katarrh (badlands): the transition between the Zor and the Ghor, cut by numerousgullies. It consists mainly of mar!.3. The Ghor area: bench-like terraces flanking the flood plain.4. The foothills.

The east Jordan Yalley contains 60,584 ha. of land, of which 42,000 ha. are consideredirrigable and arable. In general the clay and clay loams of the Yalley are calcareous in nature,with a deficiency in nitrogen and phosphorus (Sorenson 1978, appendix 3). Soils are eithershallow or stony, or both. The texture of the soil changes from north to south, from fine-texturedsoil to silt loam and sandy loams immediately north of the Dead Sea. In the Deir eAlla region thetexture is described as 'silty clay loam'.

The different zones in the Yalley have different fertilities. The best soil is found in the Zor,because of the new layers of soil being regularly deposited (Hazleton 1974,9). They consist ofred or greyish-brown marly soil, with up to 6 per cent humus (Bender 1968). A disturbing factor

142 PALESTINE EXPLORATION QUARTERLY

here is the salt-bearing Lisan marl, which underlies and interleaves with the alluvial fans. In theKatarrh the fertile topsoil has eroded away. It is a hilly region, consisting mainly of ratherinfertile marl. The Ghor and the foothills consist of Yellow Mediterranean soil, suitable forpasture and for dry or irrigated farming. At the mouths oftheJordan tributaries wadi-depositsare found: sand, silt and clay with pebbles and boulders of chert and limestone (Naser 199I).

The salinity of the soil is one of the main problems in the Yalley. Plant growth is uneven,because the roots dry out. Native soils tend to be somewhat higher in salt than those which havebeen farmed for several years (llazleton 1978, III, I). When excess water is used in irrigation,natural drainage occurs. 'Efficient' irrigation using a minimum of water, however, increasessalinity, because the water used for irrigation usually contains some salt as well, whileevaporation brings salt to the surface.

The natural vegetation of the Yalley is partly determined by the soil's high salinity:Euphrates poplar and tamarisk have a high tolerance for salt. When there is little or no humaninterference, the Yalley becomes covered with trees: in the sixth century A.D. Bishop Arculfdescribed the Sea of Galilee as surrounded by thick woods (Boggis 1939, 15). Merrill, in 1876,saw that 'For six miles or more, up the valley north of the Zerqa, the plain is covered withtrees ... ' (Merrill 1881, 191). Tristram (1866, ch.22) describes the Zor as 'an impenetrabletangle offorest' with tamarisk, white poplar, willow, with an undergrowth of bushes. Accordingto Tarawneh's informants (1989, 18) until the 1940Sthe Deir C:Allaregion was 'a tropical forestconsisting of huge cedar trees and dense bushes called bolom'.

Average temperatures in Deir C:Allabetween 1975 and 1980 ranged from around 14°C inJanuary to around 32° inJuly and August, with maxima of 47° and minima ofjust over zero. Nofrost was recorded between 1975 and 1989 (Jordan Department of Statistics, StatisticalYearbooks). Frost does occur occasionally, however: between 1990 and 1994 banana crops inthe Yalley were destroyed several times due to night frost.

The Yalley is a rain shadow area: it receives less rain than the mountainous areassurrounding it. The rainy season runs from November to April. Average rainfall in Deir C:Allabetween 1950 and 1970 was 267 mm., sufficient for dry farming on a marginal level. However,the wide variations in yearly rainfall make dry farming risky. Archaeologically speaking theYalley is a marginal zone, compared to the surrounding areas. As a result it will only be settledas overflow from the more favourable areas. It is the first area where settled population willdisappear under changing circumstances, which makes it a good criterion for economicfluctuations in a larger region. MacDonald (1992) has described this process in the Wadi Hasain the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.

The climate in the Yalley is conducive to malaria, which used to be endemic. Especiallywhen the rains were late in the season, people tended to stay in the Ghor longer, and malariaincreased. There usually was a period of five years between epidemics, because of immunity(Lumsden and Yofe 1950).

The prevailing winds come from the north and north-west. In the spring the khamsin blowsfrom the east. Deir C:Allaand surroundings regularly get eastern winds, because of its position atthe mouth of the Zerqa valley, which acts as a wind-tunnel.

The C:Amman- Wadi es-Sir aquifer system is one of the largest aquifer systems in theregion. Recharge is mainly from rainfall, supplemented by indirect recharge from the basaltaquifer of Jebel el-Arab to the north-east. Discharge is mainly as baseflow through the wadis,especially along their upper courses, and generally along the Yalley escarpment.

The Kurnub sandstone aquifers, below the C:Amman- Wadi es-Sir system, outcrop alongthe lower banks of the Jordan tributaries. Water from these aquifers contains salt(>3000 ppm.), which dissolves out of the sandstone of the Zerqa and Kurnub groups. There is

NOMADISM AND SETTLEMENT

Lakeof

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143

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e Amman airport

o ~abrakAmman

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Fig. I. The Jordan Valley and surrounding areas, showing the region of special study.


very little direct recharge from rainfall (Naser 1991). This salt accumulation renders the Jordanriver below Lake Tiberias of little value for irrigation (Hazleton 1974, 9). All groundwaterwithin a 30 km. long and 3-6 km. wide strip north of the Dead Sea is very saline (Bender 1968).Groundwater in the northern part of the Yalley is of better quality. Sixty per cent of the totaldrainage of the Jordan is formed by the drainage areas of the Yarmuk in the north, and theZenia in the Deir eAlla region. The other forty per cent comes from smaller side wadis on eastand west. The wadis in the Deir eAlla region, W. Kufrinjeh, Rajib and Zerqa all used to beperennial streams. The Zerqa has a drainage area of 3400 sq. km. (I I I and 84 for Kufrinjeh andRajib, respectively). It receives 710 MCM (million cu. m.) rain annually (62 and 41). The Zerqahas an average streamflow of70 MCM (6 and 4) (Hirzalla 1973, table IV.I). Water for irrigationand drinking comes mainly from these wadis.

THE HUMAN CONTEXT: THE PRODUCTION OF FOOD

The human factors involved in change have been subdivided into I) the quest for food; 2) localand international political pressure; 3) population pressure.

In societies where the availability of food is often the key factor for survival the quest forfood is usually the primary motive for human action (LaBianca 1990). Two main strategies areused in the quest for food: direct production and obtaining it from the direct producers. Whiledirect production is only concerned with the primary necessities of life, the second strategy alsodetermines the relations of power in a region.

Pastoralism and nomadismIn the Yalley food production in the second millennium B.C. as well as the second millenniumA.D. was mainly by farming and pastoralism, although hunting and gathering never completelystopped (van der Kooij and Ibrahim 1989,41). Most of the mammals formerly living in theJordan Yalley are now extinct, mainly as a result of hunting.

Pastoralism is often presumed to be associated with nomadism, although the two are farfrom identical (Cribb 1991, 17). Farmers had and still have livestock: sheep, goats, chickens andcows. In the Yalley, however, farmers seldom kept animals for other than private consumption:if sheep and goats (or camels) were a main source of income, they were moved from pasture topasture, on a nomadic, semi-nomadic or transhumance base (see also Cribb 1991, tables 3.laand b), spending only the winter in the Yalley.

In the nineteenth century A.D. the Yalleywas the exclusive territory of pastoral-camel-bedouin. Lynch (1849, 199) describes the lower Ghor as 'a perfect desert, traversed by warliketribes'. According to Tristram (1866,572) the Ghor north of Pella was uninhabited, and in thepower of a bedouin tribe: the S'hoor. Merrill, in March 1876, noticed many bedouin tentsbetween Wadi Yabis and Pella 'scattered at different points'. By the Zerqa he saw 'multitudes ofblack tents, and the fields covered with camels'. This was the Beni Sakhr tribe, who .had comedown to pasture their flocks.

TheJordan Valley, from the sea of Galilee as far south as the Zerka, we have found to be full of Arabs ...flocks, herds and tents ... These people have come from the plains of Moab and the Hauran ... They willsoon, however, begin to move up into the mountains, ascending a short distance at a time, until they reachthe plains again in the early summer. (Merrill 1881, 194)

According to Steuernagel, in 190I the Ghor was 'bedouin territory'. Sedentary population hadvirtually disappeared before 1850, chased away by the bedouin's continuous raiding androbbing. Lewis (1989, ch. I) has described this process for Syria and NorthJ ordan.

NOMADISM AND SETTLEMENT 145Until very recently tribes came to the Valley to graze their flocks every winter. In bad times

they even came from as far as Saudi Arabia (Hazleton 1978, 29). Farmers in the Valley used tobuy all their manure from bedouin (Maandag and Macksoud 1969, ch. 4). One of the problemsthe Jordanian government had to face when introducing education programmes was the factthat in the southern valley 'a large proportion of the population is "semi-nomadic" moving frompermanent houses in villages to temporary shelters on farm lands during the period of plantingand harvesting' (Watson 1961, 74).

The most significant aspect of this society, in which the bedouin ruled, was its flexibility.Abujaber et al. (1987, 41) have described the bedouin as exploring a multitude of income-sources. Sheep and goats, but camels especially, gave prestige. Their income came fromcamel-trade, robbing and raiding, caravan-escort etc. When these income-sources dried upwith the coming of the modern state, they became smugglers or cultivators of their land or theyfound employment with oil companies or in the army of one of the new states. Lancaster hasdescribed the same process for the Rwala beduin (Lancaster 1981,97 fr.). This process started inthe second half of the last century, and is, in fact, still continuing (Lancaster 1981, 139 ff.). Thereare several reasons for this shift. First of all the bedouin lost two important sources of income dueto international developments: the introduction of the railway and later the automobilegradually replaced the camel, a main source of income for large groups of bedouin, as the mainform of transport (Hourani 1991,293,334; Abujaberetal. 1987,41). Secondly, around 1858 theOttoman authorities, in an effort to develop agriculture in their struggle to keep up with theindustrial revolution in Europe, introduced the Land Laws (Hourani 1991, 287). These lawsmade the bedouin tribes de facto owners of their territory, with the obligation to pay taxes. Asthey were often their own tax collectors, they gradually entered into formal relations with thestate. At the same time the authorities began to take action against raiding and robbingpractices, which eventually had its effects. Robbing and raiding had been a substantial source ofincome for the bedouin, either directly, or indirectly by providing 'protection' for villages andtra vellers. .

Dry farming and irrigation farmingThe Valley is well suited for farming. Between 200 and 300 mm. rainfall permit dry farming, butwith high risks involved: the amount of land under cultivation varies yearly depending on theamount of rainfall; the risk of crop failure is high. Amongst the varieties of crops grown inrain-fed areas wheat is the most significant. In drier areas barley is grown rather than wheat.There is a maximum of one crop per year. Sometimes crop rotation is practised with wheat andlentils, but a wheat-fallow crop rotation is more common (Aydin 1985,13).

Most farming in the Valley, however, has been irrigated farming. The physical features ofthe Valley are such that small-scale irrigation does not necessarily involve a complicatedhierarchical structure. Tristram (1866,527) found small-scale irrigation farming in Kufrein, inthe southern part of the Central Jordan Valley: ' ... cuItiva tion in irregular patches and a smallparty of semi-nomad dependents of the eAdwan had erected their huts and were reaping andthreshing their barley'. Merrill in 1876 saw wadis between the Yabis and Menadirah divertedinto irrigation canals. The division between the users was such that each user had one day onwhich he irrigated his land. A dam in the Zerqa, constructed somewhere in earlier centuries,was repaired when agriculture was restarted in the Deir eAlla area in the nineteenth century andthree main canals, which also functioned as territorial boundaries, branched offfrom it. Minorcanals branched off from these. Clan leaders gathered daily, to distribute the water, andorganize repairs ifnecessary (Tarawneh 1989,46).


Subsistence-based farming versus market-based farmingSchumacher (1886) described a number of small villages in Hauran and J aulan. Most of thesehamlets and villages were subsistence-based. They were usually small, with about 150inhabitants on average. Most of them had vegetable gardens, beside a spring or stream,sometimes communal, sometimes private. Powell's study comparing a subsistence-basedvillage with a market-based farmers' village shows that in the subsistence-based village all but 6of the families had a haqura, a small vegetable garden e/2-2 dunums in size) near their home.The market-based village had 6 haquras altogether (Powell 1987).

Mundy and Smith have studied a village in Beni Hassan territory (Mundy and Smith1990). In the first half of this century the people lived from agro-pastoral production, on asubsistence basis. After the first rains the land was sown. Until the harvest people lived in caves,and the animals grazed on communal land. After the harvest, which was stored in the caves, theanimals grazed on the harvested land, fertilizing it.

In the Deir CAlla region in the 1930S sheikhs occasionally tried to introduce market-oriented agriculture, sometimes with disastrous results. The production of surpluses resulted inthe destruction of large parts of the harvest, because there was not enough manpower to harvestit before the rains started. The sheikhs tried to trade the surplus on the market in Nablus, butsince the Zor woodlands were full of outlaws, only well-armed expeditions had a chance ofpassing to the west. A large part of the surplus was also spent on banquets and guest-meals, toestablish and maintain the social relations on which the sheikh's status depended. (Tarawneh1989, ch. 3; Lancaster 1981, 140). In the end outside influences related to a capitalist societyeffected the change from this subsistence-based economy to a real market economy. Theseexternal forces were the Palestinian influx, international capital and the intrusion of merchantcapital.

The influx of Palestinians led to an increasing need for agricultural products. New terrainsand techniques were exploited, which needed capital. On the one hand this came from foreignaid, on the other from merchants and moneylenders, who thus acquired large plots of land. Themarket economy proved a vicious circle, the farmer became dependent on the market, as well ason the people who provided him with capital, and got deeper and deeper into debt. Schumacher(1886) tells that already in the nineteenth century some of the larger villages were dependent onmoneylenders from Damascus, which suggests they had been experimenting with market-farming. 'Until the mid-196os usury in the Jordan Yalley worked as a mechanism for landtransfer from fellaheen and their traditional leaders to the merchants' (Tarawneh 1989, 75).

Farming in the ValleyAt the beginning of the nineteeth century tribal lands were already subdivided betweenindividual households, first on the Plateau, but later also in the Yalley, as a result of an incipienttendency among bedouin to start agriculture. This type of division of land is still called tribaldivision (Abujaber 1989, ch. 4). Lynch (1849, 203) noticed cultivated patches of wheat andbarley in the Galilee Zor, almost ripe, although the only occupants of the region he could seewere a number of bedouin tents scattered over the Zor. Merrill (1881, 191) saw large fields ofgrain, between the tents of the Beni Sakhr north of the Zerqa. The bedouin in the Central JordanValley organized their own irrigation agriculture. 'Through cooperation of members ofa tribe,irrigation works were brought back into operation on all the main side wadis. A type ofagriculture appeared which, though still heavily dependent on grazing, included the growing ofirrigated crops.' Where water rights were not clear they were claimed by force (Watson 1961,135)·

NOMADISM AND SETTLEMENT 147In 1942 few people lived in the Yalley throughout the year, carrying out small-scale

cultivation and irrigating the land in summer. Most of the cultivated land was ovvned by peoplein the hills, who came down to cultivate it in spring, and stayed until the harvest in midsummer(Lumsden and Yofe 1950, 65). With the influx of Palestinian refugees new lands were cleared ofbrush. In the Zor and along the banks of the Jordan tens of thousands of dun urns were openedup. Between 1953 and 1965 the area used for farming increased from 280,000dunums to 380,000dunums, mainly at the cost of grazing land, and therefore of sheep and goats.

OBTAINING FOOD FROM THE DIRECT PRODUCERS

The bedouin traded with the sedentary population, as is seen in the cases of es-Salt anded-Deraea. Around 1800 es-Salt was a regional market town. The bedouin, the Beni Sakhr andthe Belqa tribes came to the Salt market to exchange their pastoral products for grain and otherthings. They also functioned as middlemen for markets in the Nablus and Jerusalem districts, aswell as for the eastern tribes (Abujaber 1989, ch. 4). Likewise ed-Dera ea, a village of 4000-5000inhabitants, described by Schumacher (1886) as the capital of the region, functioned as theregional market: it was surrounded by the tents of Damascene merchants. So there existed anetwork of markets covering the region, maintained by bedouin merchants.

Raiding and robbing were practised by bedouin as a means to increase their income(Lancaster 198 I, 123, 140). Nineteenth-century travellers in the Yalley have described thepractice. Lynch (1849, 182) describes the ruins of the villages of Delhemiyeh and Buk eah oneither side of the river. Here the bedouin robbed the fellaheen of their harvest, forcing them toleave their villages, or live off whatever they could find, until the next 'harvest and the robber'.Tristram described {he village of Dibbun: 'onc,e a Christian village, now a desolate heap ofmouldering walls ... and so the bedouin are laying waste village after village' (Tristram 1866,546). Even some of the villages belonging to the Beni Sakhr in the South Ghor were robbedoccasionally.

The villages and hamlets in the mountains were better protected against robbing thanthose in the valley, as can be seen by Schumacher's description of the Hauran and Jaulan(1886), because the terrain was difficult for the horse-mounted bedouin (Abujaber 1989,30).Still they always feared attacks, and for that reason the villages were built on hilltops. Peoplealso tended to cluster in larger villages for safety, deserting the small ones. Esh-Shajarah in theJ aulan grew mainly from immigration by fellaheen from other villages, and bedouin 'who maketheir first essays in tQwn life'. The presence of a sheikh from an important tribal familyguaranteed protection against raiding (Schumacher 1886). Tristram (1866,572) described theregion north-east of Pella as a region 'studded with villages, containing from 500-1000inhabitants each, few of which are marked in the maps, and which are utterly unknown beyondtheir own neighbourhood', concentrated around the village ofTibneh. The inhabitants were notbedouin, and all the villages were situated on hilltops for safety.

Abu Obeidah in the central Yalley seems to have had reasonably effective protection fromits wely. The same has been noticed by Merrill for a hamlet a mile south of Wadi Yabis in theValley, around the grave ofa Muslim saint. It was not permanently inhabited, but served as astorage-place for grain, and according to the people it was not robbed, on account of the wely'sprotection. (More examples of the protective power of welys can be found in Sonnen 1952,102 ff.)

Extra income came from 'protection' (khawa) which the bedouin offered the villages,against raiding by themselves or by other tribes. Schumacher describes how the eArabal-eAnazeh, a bedouin tribe, had virtual power in the Hauran until about 1850, where theyeither 'protected' or raided villages (Schumacher 1886). According to Lancaster, however,


khawa was more like a mutual agreement between the bedouin and the villages, 'the necessaryregulatory mechanism for symbiosis in a system where coercion is not possible' (LancasterIg81, 123). The farming clans in Deir t:Alla in the nineteenth century paid khawa to the t:Ajlunclans (Tarawneh Ig8g, 53). Nineteenth-century travellers, as well as caravans, had to pay forguides in every bedouin territory they happened to travel through, in order to be protected fromraiding and robbing, or even murder. Stories about these guides can be found in everynineteenth-century travel account. Boggis (I 939, 2g) describes how refusal to pay thisprotection-money by a traveller on the] ordan river resulted in the plundering and chasing awayof the party in question by the Arab tribe in whose territory they travelled.

Social relations of productionThe social relations of production in agriculture are determined by the extent to which differentparties have an interest in the produce from a certain plot of land. In the case of owner-producers, only one interested party holds the means of production, and it is therefore entitled tothe entire produce. At the other end of the scale is the slave who works someone else's land. Thelandowner owns everything, including the slave's labour, and therefore is entitled to the wholeproduce, from which he only has to give the slave enough to keep him fit to work. The existingagricultural social relations of production are found somewhere on this scale. Means ofproduction are: land, water, mechanical equipment, seeds, fertilizers, insecticides, irrigationmodes, labour (Pollock Ig83, 15). Except in the case of the owner-producer, the landlord ownsthe land; ownership of the other items varies.

In the 1850S the Ottoman government began actively to encourage agriculture in the tribalterritories. The people who worked the land of the tribal owners were farmers, often fromPalestine, or impoverished members of nomadic tribes, people who had fallen out of thenomadic cycle because they had lost their means of production (Barth Ig6 I, 108). In the] ordanYalley the t:Adwan also employed slaves (Abujaber Ig8g, 6g ff.). The Ottoman Land Laws of1858 did not change the existing social relations of production; in the Yalley they were more orless a confirmation of the status quo. Their main effect was that they brought the landowners,the bedouin nomads, into the sphere of influence of the state. Different tribes reacted differentlyto the need to cultivate the land, but the tribal owners usually did not live in the Yalley.Sometimes the land was worked by hired labourers, tenants or sharecroppers. In other casesmembers of the family worked the land. They came to the Yalley in the sowing and harvestingseasons. In some cases this eventually led to permanent settlement in the Yalley (Steuernagel1925,216).

Between the first and second World Wars farming in the region north of Deir t:Alla wasmainly carried out by the owners and their families, with the aid of retainers and employees.Tenant farming was rare (Watson Ig61, 137). In the south most of the land was in the hands ofrelatively few people, mainly tribal families or moneylenders who did not live in the valley.There were few owner-producers.

After the first influx of Palestinian refugees in 1948 the government redistributed the land,creating a large number of family farms, with a minimum size of 30 dunums. Some of thetraditional owners, the tribal families, however managed to keep large plots, which they hiredout.

The Deir t:Alla regionThe Ottoman Land Laws divided the land into a number of categories. The most important inthe Deir 'AlIa region was miri-Iand, leased from the state. By custom it could pass from father toson, although there was no legal right of inheritance. In the Deir t:Allaregion settlements were

NOMADISM AND SETTLEMENT 149raided regularly by the cAdwan until the 1920S.Some of the land was therefore passed back tothe Government by the cultivators, in exchange for protection, changing the producers intostate-sharecroppers (Tarawneh 1989, ch. 2). For the tribal lands the sheikhs, the heads of thetribal families, were given official right of appropriation and expropriation, in the service of thestate. They distributed the land among the producers according to certain rules, and appro-priated the surplus. Redistribution took place every two years, and the land was divided amongthe married males, the size of each plot being determined by the distance to water. The sheikhswere also appointed multazim, state taxcollectors for their territory.

Eventually this resulted in the 'kharrath-economy', a society in which someone's statusdepended on clan membership. There was a basic division into three levels (Tarawneh 1989,ch. 3): Khurr clans, which formed the traditional bedouin clan structure, and had relatively fewmembers, but held most of the land; Ghawarnah clans, with many members, but relatively littleland; and eheed families, descendants of the slaves that had been brought into the Valley from theSudan in the preceding centuries to work in the sugar industry. They had no clan structure, andno land, and were either servants or kharratheen (ploughmen). Only the Khurr had politicalinfluence.

The usual social relation of production in Khurr territory was that of landowner-kharrath.Officially the kharrath was a sharecropper, but since the landowner determined the production,and provided land, water, working animals, and food for the kharrath and his family during theproduction cycle and 3/4 of the produce went to the sheikh, the social relation of production wasone of complete one-sided dependency. Expiring contracts were automatically renewed.

Within the Ghawarnah social relations of production the kharrath was found, as well as thesharecropper. A sharecropper usually h~d kinship ties with the landowner, both were membersof the same clan. His relationship with the landlord was on a much more equal basis: he kepttwo-thirds of the produce, and decided what he wanted to produce .

. The land reforms of the 1950S marked the end of the kharrath economy in the Deir eAllaregIon.

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL POWERS

The nineteenth century was a period of decline for the Ottoman empire. It was the time of theEuropean industrial revolution, the time in which the European nations took over the economicand political power in the larger part of the Ottoman world (see e.g. Hourani 1991, part iv). Theefforts to keep the Europeans at bay and to keep up with the industrial developments wereexpensive, and forced the Ottoman rulers to raise ever higher taxes.

The Land Laws of 1858 were an effort to reform and improve agriculture, and therewith therevenues for the state. They made the direct producers defaeto owners of the land, while the stateremained owner dejure. In the countryside, especially in areas that were mainly used for grazing,the land became registered in the names of the leading families of the tribes in the region. One ofthose regions was the] ordan Valley.

After the first World War Palestine fell under British Mandate. In the 1930S the Britishmandate government turned the defaeto owners of the land into dejure owners.

Large-scale] ewish immigration in western Palestine, which had begun by the end of thenineteenth century, continued and was encouraged by the British. By the early 1940s] ewsowned some 20 per cent of the cultivable land. The end of the second World War saw anenormous influx of] ews. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 was immediately followed bya war, in which two-thirds of the Arab population of Western. Palestine left their homes andbecame refugees, completely upsetting the balance of the Transjordanian population. The 1967


Israeli occupation of the West Bank caused a second influx of Palestinian refugees in to Jordanand a radical change in the division of water sources.

POPULATION PRESSURE

Population pressure can be caused either by an increase in population through immigration ornatural growth or by a diminution of the available space, for which climatic changes are oftenresponsible. According to several sources the settled population in the Valley in different yearswas as follows:

1900:

1940:

1952:1953:1967:1973:1978:

3580 (Steuernagel 1925, 137)8000 (l'arawneh 1989, 19)29833 (Watson 1961,138)33767 (Watson 1961,138)97000 (Hazleton 1978, 24)640 12 (Dept of Statistics 1973)75°00 (Sorenson 1978).

Steuernagel counted the number of houses in the Deir C:Allaregion around 19°° (A = settledArab bedouin):

TABLE I

Zerqa regRajib regKufrinjehGhar

Permanent Temporary Inhabitants

76 23 (IIA) 380131 17 6555II 7 2555

55

He stated that there was a general increase in the number of settled houses between 1885 and1900, although he had no numbers for the Deir C:Allaregion. In the Ghor around Deir C:Allatherewas still no settled population in the 1940S(Tarawneh 1989, 19). The structures that can be seenon aerial photographs from those days (as in Glueck 195I) were used for storage or temporaryshelter.

People had immigrated already in the nineteenth century. Tribes came from the East, likethe Beni Sakhr (Abujaber 1989, ch.4), the Bashatwah, the Balawineh,the Ghabbad, and theDayyat (Watson 196I, 134). From the West came farmers. In the new places where they settledthey were often named after their places of origin. They came from the Nablus region, theJerusalem region and Ramallah (Abujaber 1989,96).

The two main flows of immigration came after 1948 and 1967. Until the mid-1960s lack ofirrigation limited the population of the Yalley to about 37,000 people. The construction of theEast Ghor Canal, combined with a malaria control programme increased the population toabout 90,000 people, in 53 settlements (Dajani et al. 1980,20). The present population of theJordan Yalley can be divided into two different groups: 1. 'members offormerly nomadic tribeswho gained legal title to the land in the valley during the British Mandate'; and 2. 'individualsorganized along family lines who migrated to the Yalley after 1948. The first group consists

NOMADISM AND SETTLEMENT 151

largely of landowners, the second offarmers (tenants and owner-producers), and commerciallyactive individuals' (Hazleton 1978, 24).

Nomadism and tribalismAspects of nomadism and tribalism can still be found in the Yalley. Layne (1984) has studiedthe l:Abbad bedouin, who live in the Zerqa region. They form a confederation of tribes, \vhoduring the last hundred years used the Yalley to pasture their sheep and goats, on asemi-nomadic basis. Only with the new land division in 1952, when they became the officialowners of their pasture lands, and under pressure from the government did they settle and startfarming. They settled in four villages along the south bank of the Zerqa, Mul:addi being thelargest. According to Layne the houses built by the l:Abbadi bear a strong likeness to thetraditional bedouin tent, especially in its functional division: the basis is a rectangular unit, towhich identical units are added according to functional need. The l:Abbadi still use the bedouintent for official occasions and rituals. The tent has a higher status than the house, as anexpression of tribal, bedouin background. Tents are also considered more comfortable insummer (Layne 1984).

The l:Abbadi still see themselves as tribal bedouin, as can be seen in their system of customsand customary laws. Lineage, for example, has priority over domicile: 'Today Yalley Bedouinrecord their tribal name as their place of birth on their birth certificates' (Layne 1984, n. 10).They move up into their tribal territory, the foothills, each summer, although they now usuallyleave their flocks behind in the valley.

Settlement patternsThe farmers who came from the west in the nineteenth century settled mainly in the highlands,among the local fellaheen and those former slaves from the Sudan who had settled here. Ingeneral villages were homogeneous, each village consisting of people from one region.

When in 1948 the first influx of refugees came, eleven refugee camps were built byUNRWA workers, but this was not enough. People began to squat in the Yalley. In the early1960s an agricultural irrigation scheme was planned, in order to settle the refugees. However,no housing schemes were planned. There was much illegal squatting on private and govern-mental land. It was clear that the squatters avoided good agricultural land; on the other hand,they wanted to be close to water and roads. This resulted in a linear settlement pattern, which ischaracteristic of the Yalley housing: people 'squatted linearly along the main valley highwayand parallel to the canaP (Grava 1985, I). When the East Ghor Canal was extended to thesouth, so was settlement. Settlement maps (Grava 1985, map 2) also show linear settlementpatterns on the badlands between Ghor and Zor, especially in the southern half of the Yalley,and along the banks of the Zerqa.

In 1967 another influx of refugees came, and six new refugee camps were built, the largestnear Kereimeh (25,000 inhabitants). After 1967, when the Yalley was the scene of frequentfighting, most people fled to the mountains, and 60 per cent of the dwellings were destroyed,either by the war itself, or by the results of abandonment. Less than 5000 people remained in theYalley. After 1970 most of the people returned (Grava 1985, I).

Until 1948 settlement was primarily in the north and south of the Yalley. Between 1947and 1951 people settled equally throughout the Yalley, but after that there was again a tendency,~osettle in the north and south (Watson 1961, table 45). A survey carried out at the end of the1950Sshows that in the south of the Yalley the tendency was to a less 'settled' way of living thanin the north: few stone or cement houses, more wooden huts, tents and caves (Watson 1961,table 50). Houses of mud brick or mud/stone were divided more or less equally over the Yalley.


In the Deir 'AlIa region settlement tended to be dispersed, not concentrated in villages (Watson1961, 74)·

In 1985 89 per cent of the Yalley population lived in recognizable settlements. The otherslived on farms, scattered over the countryside.

In the highlands villages are found on the windward-facing slopes, where rainfall cansupport cultivation. Smaller villages (100--500 people) are often found in fairly close proximityto larger settlements. 'On the whole, the distribution of village settlements in Jordan empha-sizes the fact that water supply is the major factor behind their location. Furthermore, the size ofvillage settlements generally decreases eastward at the same time as their density declines'(Aresvik 1976, 30)'

A village consisted of a core of dwellings, surrounded by garden plots for fruit trees andvegetables; around those were the orchards; still further away the cultivated fields; and on theperiphery the grazing fields. These tendencies can also be seen in Schumacher's description ofthe Hauran and theJaulan in the 1880s (Schumacher 1886).

GENERAL FACTORS

Because of its climate the Ghor can be considered a marginal area, in relation to the surroundingareas. That means that in times with little agricultural settlement, the Ghor w~llbe the last to bepermanently settled. Its climate is, however, very suitable for a (semi- )nomadic or transhumantway of living: in winter it is mild compared to the highlands. Nomadic pastoralists used to visitthe Yalley in winter, returning to the highlands in spring. Coexistence offarmers and pastoralnomads is rare in the Yalley, whereas it is encountered in the highlands (Mundy and Smith1990, Abujaber 1989, ch.4). The Plateau and places like the Baqeah valley are ideal foragriculture, which means that at most times pastoralists and farmers shared the land andcooperation would be profitable for both groups (Lancaster 1981, 99ff.).

Since the Yalley is a marginal area, it is only densely settled in periods that see intensivesettlement in general. These tend to coincide with a decline of pastoralism, so coexistence ofboth modes of life would rarely occur in the Yalley. Only when both modes of life wereperformed by one and the same tribe, does a certain amount of cooperation seem to have beenpossible. That means that either some members of the tribe became agriculturalists, or that partof the tribe engaged in seasonal farming, being pastoralists during the rest of the year.

Agriculture and settlement was one of the bedouin's answers to a changing society.Salzman recognizes this adaptive strategy as 'the assertion of societal continuity in changing ornew circumstances' (1980, 6), a general mechanism that allows for any strategy or mode ofexistence that is the most profitable in specific situations. The circumstances that triggeredsettlement in the Yalley in the nineteenth century were pressure from the government, andpopulation pressure in the highlands. Territorial divisions in the Yalley that had been created inthe previous period remained intact in this process of settlemen t.

Although rain-fed farming is possible in the Yalley, the risk involved is high. On the otherhand, the structure of the Yalley is such that small-scale irrigation is easy and can be donewithout complicated hierarchical structures. Small-scale irrigated farming would result in alinear settlement pattern along the wadis. A more highly organized society would be able to digand maintain larger irrigation systems, resulting in a more dispersed settlement pattern, butstill concentrated on the wadis, as can be seen in the case of Deir eAlla, where the canals thatwere reopened were the remnants of an earlier, more organized society. Its maintenance alreadyinvolved a relatively complicated organization, which developed consequently.

NOMADISM AND SETTLEMENT 153THE JORDAN VALLEY IN THE LATE BRONZE - EARLY IRON-AGE TRANSITION

Until the building of the Ghor Canal, which made large-scale irrigation in the Valley possible,the ecological context of the region was basically the same as in the Late Bronze and Early IronAges. The Late Bronze Age settlement pattern in the region ofDeir cAlla and Sa Cidiyeh suggeststhe presence of an organized society. Settlement here was low when compared to the sameregion in the Early Iron Age (Figs. I and 2), but high compared to other regions in the sameperiod (Leonard 1991). With the exception of the satellites of Tell Mazar and Deir cAlla, sitesare spread fairly evenly over the plain. If we take these sites-plus-satellites as one site, andconduct a nearest neighbour analysis, the result is R = 1.3. (For the Early Iron Age R = 0.98. Anearest neighbour analysis is a descriptive statistic, used here to measure the distribution of sitesin a region. R = I means a random distribution, ifR > I the distribution is relatively even, andR < I points to clustering of sites. For the exact description of the method see Earle in Flannery1976, 195 ff.) Most of the sites are found in the Ghor. One lies in the Ka tarrh, Ka taret es-Samra,but this was basically a burial site according to Leonard (1985). Kereimeh sits in theborder-zone between foothills and Ghor. Only four sites out offourteen are found immediatelyalong wadis, and Meidan is the only Late Bronze site on the Zerqa. The Egyptian presence,manifest in the Egyptian fortress at Sa Cidiyeh, and in many Egyptian finds in the Deir CAllatemple, resulted in a network of settlements dependent on those main sites.

In the Iron Age the situation is the other way round: 17 out of 24 sites are found along thewadis, most of them along the Zerqa. They are distributed more or less equally over theecological zones, with a preference for the Ghor.

Pastoralists and farmersThe Valley used to be a winter station for pastoralists, because of its mild winter climate andfertility. The nineteenth-century bedouin considered their winter pastures in the Valley part oftheir territory - which was acknowledged by the Ottoman and British authorities in their landdivisions. The bedouin of the nineteenth century had managed to drive away most of thefarmers. The few that were left were regularly robbed, and the bedouin themselves alsopractised some agriculture, on a small scale. This situation was made possible becausegovernment was weak, and did not interfere with the affairs of the bedouin. The same situationmay be found in the Late Bronze Age, north and south of the area of study, where (apart fromthe city state of Pella) virtually no settled occupation was found. It is difficult to findarchaeological arguments for the existence of nomadic robber bands in this region, apart fromthe apparent need of Egypt to protect the trade route by erecting a fortress (Sa Cidiyeh).Historical sources suggest that Pella was a centre of rebellion against Egypt (EA 255, 256, BethShan stelae, ANET 253), and it may well have been a base for robber bands that terrorized theregion. At the same time a different kind of pastoralism may have existed in the area studied.McGovern (1986, 6) mentions the spring migration that until recently took place between theJordan Valley and the Baqcah Valley, through the Wadi Zerqa, and assumes the existence atthe end of the Late Bronze age of a symbiotic relationship in the Baqcah Valley between thesettled population and a semi-nomadic population, which migrated to the Valley in winter.

The settlement pattern that evolved in the Early Iron Age shows some of the samecharacteristics as that of the period after 1948: close to water (Wadi Zerqa, Wadi Rajib andWadi Kufrinjeh all used to be perennial streams) and close to fertile soil, but not on it. It seemsthat, after the Egyptians left the region at the end of the Late Bronze Age and consequently thenetwork disintegrated, the inhabitants of the region moved to sites closer to water, whichresulted in the new settlement pattern. The ethnographical material, however, suggests that agroup of newcomers from elsewhere were partly responsible for the new settlements. So does the

11


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Fig. 2. Settlement map of the Central Jordan Valley in the Late Bronze andEarly Iron Ages,

NOMADISM AND SETTLEMENT 155fact that the number of settlements in the Early Iron Age is much larger than that in the LateBronze Age. The settlement pattern indicates that these newcomers practised farming.

One of the most conspicuous facts is that 10out Of13 new Iron-Age sites are found along theZerqa alone. The Zerqa valley is one of the main routes from the Yalley into the highlands andthe very fertile Baq'ah valley. Comparison of Deir 'AlIa final Late Bronze and Early Iron Agepottery with that of the Baq'ah region shows a similarity in household vessels that stronglysuggests a relation between the two regions (van der Steen 1994, 78).

Reasons fOr settlementSedentarization of (semi- )nomads may have different causes. There is the basic differencebetween 'falling out of the nomadic cycle' at the top and at the bottom (Barth 1961, 105 ff.;Cribb 1991, ch. 4). Examples of rich tribe-members that fell out 'at the top', because of too muchwealth, are given by Abujaber for the process of sedentarization on the highlands in the lateeighteenth and the nineteenth century. They still had much influence in the dealings of the tribe.Falling out 'at the bottom' because of lack of resources also leads to settlement, as shown above,but in the marginal areas, and/or in the service of the rich pastoral nomads.

Although used by bedouin as winter pasture in the nineteenth century, the Yalley was onlysettled by people who had fallen, or rather, been driven out of the nomadic cycle on thehighlands, usually in the service of those bedouin. The scale of these movements was neverlarge: the settled population in the Yalley around 1900 was still only about 3600 people. It waspopulation pressure in other areas, the highlands and western Palestine, that led to maximumsettlement in the Yalley, only limited by the available amount of water, and this not exclusivelyby settling nomads, but by a mixed population of settling nomads, farmers and artisans.MacDonald (1992) has demonstrated that population pressure is usually the main reason forsettling in a marginal zone. Reasons for the shifts into the Yalley of settlers were territorialstruggles, in the nineteenth as well as the twentieth century, which were the result of populationpressure.

The same development is being suggested here for the beginning of the Early Iron Age inthe Deir ~Alla region. The reasons for population pressure in the transitional period must mostprobably be sought in the international developments which also caused the Sea Peoples tomove north, together with the breakdown of the Egyptian empire. The archaeological recordsuggests that in the Amman region and the Baq'ah valley in the Late Bronze Age a complexsocial structure existed, possibly a city state structure (Hiibner 1992, 159; McGovern 1986). Ithas been suggested, on the basis of the archaeological record, that (trade) relations existedbetween the Amman region and regions in Syria. Among other things the pottery repertoirestrongly points in that direction (Dornemann 1983, 3I fI). The Amman region, as a tradecentre, had a complex socio-economic sttucture, and a high population. When internationaltrade was disrupted, the social and economic structure of the region collapsed. According to themechanisms described in Renfrew's 'Dark Age model', which is used by McGovern to describeand explain the events in the transitional period, the collapse of this structure would lead to:'The establishment of small outlying village communities ... a transference of Late Bronzetechnologies (notably coil building of large vessels and iron industry) to the Early Iron Agefrontier villages' (McGovern 1986, 343 ff.). As the areas were already in contact, these outlyingvillage communities may well have formed in the Yalley, along the lower course of the Zerqa.

Tribalism and territorialityTribalism, although well attested in the recent history of the region, as well as in contemporaryliterature of the Bronze and Iron Ages, is hard to detect archaeologically. It has been stated


repeatedly that tribes (or, as Kamp and Yoffee prefer to call them, ethnic groups) are not bydefinition nomads or pastoralists, but can be found in all socio-culturallevels in society, and,secondly, that membership of an ethnic group is on pragmatic grounds, for political or militaryinterests, sometimes around a strong leader. Groups can attach themselves to tribal commu-nities, or detach themselves from them. Kinship relations are then formulated to 'legitimize'membership and strengthen loyalty to the tribal group (e.g. Kamp and Yoffee 1980; Cribb 199 I,52 ff.). Historical sources stress the importance of this legitimization: Rowton (1973) hasextensively analyzed the Mari texts relating to Amorites; Egyptian and other texts concerningShasu have been analyzed by Giveon (197 I); numerous passages in the Bible show theimportance of ethnicity for Israelite ideology in the Iron II period.

Kamp and Yoffee do not want to relate ethnicity to any territorial contiguity; however,Cribb lays a clear link between territory and tribalism, defining a tribe as an organization for thecontrol of territory, a territorial system. In times of unrest territorial fights can occur, resultingin shifts in territory, which are consolidated in the following period.

The history ofJordan in the nineteenth century, as well as the historic sources that concernthe Levant seem to confirm this link with territory, at least in situations where the tribe has areasonably strong pastoralist component. Kamp and Yoffee have suggested a method to detectethnic groups archaeologically, which should identify '( I) behavior concerned with symbolizingethnic identity, (2) behavior learned as part of the socialization process through association,\lith members of the ethnic group, and (3) behavior reflecting economic and/or politicalstrategy based on ethnic group membership' (Kamp and Yoffee 1980, 96). As each of thesecategories may have different implications in itself, only the combination of the three shouldpoint to ethnic affiliation, and then only statistically speaking.

In the case oftheJordan Yalley in the transitional period the archaeological evidence is stillvery sketchy. Still some suggestions can be made. It has been suggested above that a group oftranshumant pastoralists from the Baqeah Yalley used the region around the Zerqa as winterpasture in the last phase of the Late Bronze Age. With the decline of the social structure in theBaqeah valley they came down the Zerqa, possibly with other people from the Baqeah Yalley,and settled along the Zerqa, and possibly the Wadi Rajib as well. They may have alreadyconsidered this region part of their territory. The earliest Iron Age phases at Deir eAlla showthat the new settlers here were pastoralists in the process of settling (Franken 1969). Thesettlement pattern (see above) as well as the material culture suggest a mixed society:pastoralists, farmers and artisans (the pottery repertoire has similar traits to that from theBaqeah Yalley, see also Franken 1969,20; there were metallurgists, as shown by the excavationsat Deir eAlla). If they still formed one group, in order to survive in their new environment, theywould form a tribe, or ethnic group, according to the definitions given above, and they mayactually have seen themselves as one.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am obliged to the staff of the Department of Anthropology ofYarmuk University, Irbed, for giving meaccess to the archive of the Jordan Yalley Project. This archive contains publications, published andunpublished reports, photographs and newspaper clippings, maps etc., that provide information ongeologicalf geographical, agricultural and climatological issues concerning the Jordan Yalley, many ofwhich have ch-anged dramatically in the past fifty years, as well as ethnographical and demographicaldata. '

NOTES

1The recent high prices for all kinds of meat in Jordan at privately kept animals of all kinds, chickens, geese, goats,the end of 1993 immediately resulted in an increase of rabbits etc., in the village ofDeir <AlIa.

NOMADISM AND SETTLEMENTBIBLIOGRAPHY

157

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