Early Iron Age Faynan: Revisiting models of trade network

AMMAN — For decades scholars tried to reconstruct the society in Wadi Faynan during its copper boom in the 10th and 9th centuries BC. 

One hypothesis maintained that the local tribes established a hierarchical society with monumental, elite buildings, developed sophisticated, industrial-level copper technology and exerted control over the entire Arabah Valley, the Negev Highlands and the Edomite Plateau.

However, careful studies of the available evidence showed that this evidence is not tenable.

"Between the 12th and 11th centuries BC at Faynan, the evidence shows restricted, small-scale and technologically simple copper production, with no structures or production installations discovered, very little pottery and no imports. At this stage, it seems that the copper was being opportunistically exploited by local nomadic groups," noted Professor Piotr Bienkowski from the Manchester University.

“This activity was contemporary with the development of Tel Masos Stratum III, on the route to the Mediterranean, with a fortress/administrative building, structures, and sophisticated bronze-working,” Bienkowski continued.

The professor added that it is likely that Tel Masos’ prosperity at this time, and probably its very impetus for settlement, as well as the commencement of settlement in the Negev Highlands, were due to taking advantage of and prospering from the availability of Faynan copper, in response to a hiatus in the Cypriot copper trade.

At the beginning of the 10th century BC, there was an abrupt and radical transformation of copper production and society in Faynan, characterised by an industrial boom with more sophisticated technology, expansion of copper working, complex organisation of production, and monumental elite buildings indicating a new social hierarchy, accompanied by huge amounts of pottery reflecting different approaches to cooking, dining and storage, and an influx of imports from the western Negev, Cyprus and Arabia. 

This shift was not created by local nomads as the evidence from a local cemetery shows that nomadic inhabitants of Faynan were not involved with the copper development.

However, a small minority of them was involved but their contribution was not crucial for the industry's boom.

"The tumuli graves found at Nahas, similar to those excavated at WF 40, were not related to the main phase of occupation of the site, rather belonging to post-collapse activities of the local pastoral population," said Bienkowski.

The professor noted that the faunal assemblage recovered from Nahas reveals a subsistence economy not much different from that present in the contemporary northern Negev sites and very much unlike what is found at ‘nomadic’ sites.

Inhabitants of Tel Masos had skills and sophistication necessary for the exploitation of the copper because the site was already prosperous in 12^th and 11^th centuries BC.

Along the trade route from Faynan in the Negev Highlands, hundreds of sites were settled by pastoralists who found employment both in production and transport in the burgeoning copper industry, and whose slag-tempered pottery and architectural parallels link them to Faynan.

"The industrial transformation of Faynan, along with the settlement of Tel Masos and the Negev Highlands sites, was short-lived, and lasted little more than a hundred years.”

“The rapid decline was probably the result of the revival of the Cypriot copper trade, which had begun in the late 10^th /early 9^th century BC, and which was on a bigger scale and with more effective networks than the Arabah copper trade," Bienkowski underlined.

This decline in evidence for administrative oversight is undoubtedly linked to the abandonment of the lead player, Tel Masos, in the mid-9^th century BC, while some activity at the Negev Highlands sites continued until the late 9^th century BC until the supply of copper from Faynan petered out.

"The prosperity and very existence of Faynan, Tel Masos and the Negev Highlands sites were interdependent and rooted in copper production and trade – and, like a house of cards, the whole precarious endeavour collapsed in the face of competition in a changing copper market. It would be a hundred years before the kingdom of Edom developed on the plateau, with different settlement patterns and an economy based on agriculture and the Arabian trade, not copper," Bienkowski underscored.