When imagining the ancient city of Petra, it is the awe-inspiring façade of the monument known today as the Treasury (Al-Khazneh) that first captures the eye and imagination – its ornate classical carvings and grand proportions etched into rose-red sandstone. But this iconic image is only a fragment of a much larger and more complex archaeological wonder.
Petra and the Nabataean world
Petra is set within a rugged valley in western Jordan, and home to hundreds of rock-cut tombs and mausolea that vary dramatically in size, style, and decoration. These differences probably reflect the social hierarchies of the time, with the more elaborate monuments reserved for the elite. Beyond the city’s famed necropolis, traces of earlier, pre-Nabataean settlements and an extensive zone of ancient quarrying speak to the long history and industrial capabilities of the region. It is within this monumental landscape that the authors and their research partners, the Jordanian Department of Antiquities and the American Center of Research (ACOR), explored the building infrastructure that enabled Petra’s rise to become one of the ancient world’s most celebrated urban centres.
Petra was inscribed as an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, in recognition of its exceptional cultural and historical value. Encompassing more than 26,000ha, the site stands as a remarkable testament to the engineering ingenuity and economic prosperity of the Nabataeans, a once-powerful Arab people who emerged as a dominant political and commercial force between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Petra landscape was occupied as early as the Neolithic period, with human activity in the region dating back approximately 9,000 to 11,000 years. This presence is certainly visible at the nearby Neolithic settlement of Al-Bayda, where engraved figurative rock art dating from both this period and the Bronze Age is dispersed around the immediate landscape, along with ceramics, lithic scatters, and quern stones. It is in the environs of this settlement that a large number of Nabataean rock-cut mausolea and shrines are found. The same landscape is also where the team got our first insights into Nabataean ritual activity that was not high status, but largely egalitarian. This involved mausolea that usually comprised rock-cut rooms in which the dead were interred, probably laid to rest in a shroud and left on a rock-cut mortuary table. In this particular area, the tombs appear to have been deliberately cut into large, naturally formed globular geology. In many instances, rock art – in the form of ibex and cupmarks – was engraved on the top of each feature. It is more than probable that these engravings venerate an earlier pre-Nabataean tradition that did not involve the close proximity of burials.
