Welcome to Insights! Formerly our long-running quarterly e-update, since 2020, Insights has been our blog, hosting essays by fellows, interns, staff, and others.
Decoding Late Neolithic Tools and Technology in the Black Desert of Jordan
by Gary Rollefson In the 1920s pilots flying over the Harrat ash-Sham volcanic fields (also known as the Black Desert) were struck by a landscape that was “rugged and desolate” (Maitland 1927: 198), “like a dead fire — nothing but cold ashes” (Rees 1929: 389), whose “odious flat-topped slag heaps” instilled a “sinister foreboding” and…