Bir Madhkur Project: A Preliminary Report on Recent Fieldwork

Abstract

This report provides an overview of the Bir Madhkur Project and summarizes recent fieldwork conducted at the site. Bir Madhkur lies in the foothills of Wadi Araba, northwest of Petra and along the Petra-Gaza trade route. The site, which was of economic and military significance through most of the Nabataean, Roman, and Byzantine periods, now centers upon the remains of a major Roman fort. As it once was an administrative center in the fairly isolated southern desert of Jordan, Bir Madhkur provided the base for a mixed social environment, where foreign traders, Roman soldiers, and indigenous groups practicing varying forms of economic subsistence interacted. The primary goal of the Bir Madhkur Project is to illuminate these interactions and relationships and to interpret them within their broader social, economic, and cultural contexts.