5,000-Year-Old Jordan Site Reveals How Ancient Societies Responded to Collapse

Around 3,500 BCE in central Jordan, people built over 95 stone burial monuments (dolmens) and standing stone structures on hilltops, creating a ceremonial gathering place that remained active for roughly 200 years.

These monuments appeared during a crisis period when the Chalcolithic way of life was ending: large settlements had been abandoned, trade networks collapsed, and climate data shows a severe drought around 3,400 BCE.

Unlike typical residential sites, Murayghat had no hearths or permanent housing—instead, excavations found massive 27-liter pottery bowls (suggesting communal feasts), ritual grinding stones stained with red ochre, and animal horn cores.

Researchers propose the site served as a meeting place where scattered groups could gather to negotiate resource access, maintain social bonds, and create shared rituals when old power structures and symbols no longer worked. When pieces of a community or society collapse, humans need places to gather. Research from a 5,000-year-old ceremonial site in Jordan shows ancient people faced this challenge too.

Archaeological evidence from Murayghat, a site perched on a steep slope in central Jordan, shows a community responding to massive upheaval. Across the southern Levant, the end of the Chalcolithic period (Copper Age) unfolded unevenly; material culture and social organization shifted in different ways by region. Large settlements were abandoned in some areas. Long-distance exchange likely frayed. The elaborate copper prestige items that once helped people negotiate their social positions became less visible. Shrines known from Chalcolithic sites fade from the record, and temples return later.

People responded by creating something new: visible monuments built from massive limestone slabs. Dolmens, or structures resembling primitive stone tables, began dotting the hills around Murayghat. Standing stones, some over 2 meters tall, were erected in rows and circles. Walls were constructed from orthostats, large upright stone slabs that required tremendous communal effort to move and place.

Susanne Kerner, an archaeologist from the University of Copenhagen who has been studying the site since 2014, argues these structures served a specific purpose during uncertain times. “The evidence presented in this paper leads the author to hypothesize that the site of Murayghat was mostly a cultic meeting place, a place where people were buried, but, just as importantly, a place where people also came together for discussions and meetings, events that were necessary in order to structure and organize a society without, at that moment in time, a clear hierarchy and direction,” she writes in the study, published in Levant.

Over 95 dolmens have been documented at Murayghat, though surveys from the 1880s recorded 150 or more before earthquakes and modern quarrying destroyed many. These burial monuments weren’t hidden. Builders deliberately positioned them along natural terraces where they’d be visible from key vantage points. Some sat on carefully constructed platforms. Others were connected by low walls that terraced the hillsides.

Excavations at the site’s central knoll revealed structures that don’t match domestic buildings. Rooms contained no hearths for cooking. There’s little evidence of roofing—though this remains uncertain. One grinder showed ochre staining; together with the non-domestic architecture, this suggests ritual activity. Researchers discovered horn cores from gazelles and goats. Massive pottery bowls, each capable of holding 25 to 27 liters, likely point to communal feasting based on vessel size and distribution rather than individual household meals.

One circular room contained a standing stone over a meter tall, positioned in its center. Another structure featured cup-marks and shallow rectangular depressions carved into exposed bedrock. Their purpose remains unclear, but their deliberate creation is unmistakable. Kerner notes how builders worked with the natural properties of the local limestone, using stones as they broke rather than extensively shaping them.

Understanding why Murayghat emerged when it did requires looking at what came before. During the Chalcolithic period, roughly 4500-3800 BCE, society had developed considerable organization. Large settlements flourished. Artisans created elaborate copper objects using sophisticated alloy techniques. Temples and shrines served as focal points for religious life. A system of symbols and prestige items helped people establish and communicate their identities and social positions.

But this system fell apart in different ways across regions. Climate proxy records from Soreq Cave, about 80 kilometers northwest of Murayghat, suggest a drier period toward the Chalcolithic’s end, with precipitation reaching a low point around 3400 BCE. Dead Sea levels, which had risen dramatically, suddenly dropped. Some regions, like the central Negev desert, show reduced occupation. Environmental stress alone doesn’t explain the scale of change. The symbolic language expressed through copper objects, distinctive pottery, and religious items simply stopped. Temples disappeared from many places for a time. The ways people organized their political and economic lives shifted fundamentally. Agricultural land and pasture, along with questions of ownership and access, became more important. Burial practices changed dramatically. Chronology and causation remain debated.

Why Communities Built New Gathering Places Kerner compares the situation to the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, when the breakdown of political, economic and social frameworks led to tremendous changes in material culture and daily life—all connected to identity formation. “It certainly left different people feeling enthusiastic, lost, desperate and in dire need of new forms of organization,” she writes.

When old symbols and structures no longer function, people must negotiate new ones. They need spaces to discuss rights to pasture and passage, resolve conflicts, find marriage partners, and collectively make sense of their changing world. Murayghat, with its dolmen fields and standing stones, may have served exactly this purpose.

The site sits about 12 kilometers southwest of modern Madaba, in an area less fertile than the rich agricultural lands closer to the city. It occupies a dramatic location: a knoll at the edge of Wadi Zerqa Main, with sweeping views across the landscape. Hills to the north, northwest, and west are covered with dolmens.

Excavations revealed three distinct building traditions, all emerging during the Early Bronze Age IA. Some structures consisted of large standing stones erected on bedrock but not connected to each other. Others combined rows of orthostats with double-faced walls made from smaller stones. Still others mixed these techniques, creating curved or circular structures.

Building 1, still under excavation, shows this hybrid approach. Its northern wall consists of rectangular orthostats of varying sizes, up to 1.3 meters tall. Other walls use large boulders arranged in double-faced construction. Two curved walls attach to the main rectangular structure, creating spaces that don’t resemble typical dwellings. Room 5, a circular space within this arrangement, contains a large upright stone in its center and a bench-like formation of bedrock along one side.

This architectural variety goes beyond functional necessity. Different groups may have brought different building traditions to Murayghat, each contributing to shared structures. Alternatively, the site may have grown incrementally, with additions made periodically when groups gathered, without attempting consistency.

What Dolmen Distribution Tells Us About Ancient Society Dolmen distribution shows intentional clustering patterns. Area 4, west of the central knoll, contains over half the surviving dolmens, all distributed across natural terraces with most visible from the central area. Area 5’s dolmens occupy the northeast flank of their hill, again maintaining sight lines to the central knoll. Only a few dolmens lack visual connection to the site’s ceremonial center. Distribution and orientation analyses are ongoing, and there are some exceptions to these sightlines.

Dolmens at Murayghat come in two sizes: smaller structures 2-3 meters long, and larger ones around 4.5 meters. All follow a similar design. A floor slab, side stones on each long side, and a capstone often triangular in cross-section. The stones came from the immediate surroundings, where limestone naturally breaks into large, thick slabs. When built directly on bedrock, some dolmens used the bedrock itself as flooring.

Two excavated dolmens revealed careful construction techniques. Builders set stone slabs on prepared ground with smaller packing stones underneath and beside them for stability. One dolmen sat on a large constructed platform, possibly the base of an earthen mound that once covered the structure. Small walls connected some dolmens, both linking burial monuments and creating terracing on sloped ground.

Parallels exist at other Early Bronze Age sites in the region. Mount Nebo, about 20 kilometers north, has dolmen fields showing similar characteristics: earthen mounds, connecting walls, and positioning along contours. Jebel Mutawwaq, further north, features a road connecting settlement and dolmen field. But Murayghat differs in one key way. To date, no clearly vernacular domestic buildings have been found.

Pottery from Murayghat suggests periodic gatherings rather than daily occupation. Storage jars appear frequently, alongside serving vessels including those massive 25-liter bowls. But the distribution points toward food preparation and consumption in specific contexts rather than routine household activities. Fragments of smaller individual bowls indicate communal meals where people ate from personal dishes.

Another Dolmen at Murayghat in Jordan. (Credit: Susanne Kerner, University of Copenhagen)

The site remained active through Early Bronze Age IA, roughly 3500-3300 BCE. By Early Bronze Age II and III, new systems had emerged across the region. Cities developed. Temples and shrines returned, starting with a structure at Megiddo. Agricultural intensification supported larger, more stratified communities. Clear hierarchies developed where none had existed before.

During that earlier transitional period, scattered groups needed to maintain social connections. They needed to negotiate access to resources without established authorities to settle disputes. They needed to create new shared meanings and identities after old symbols lost their power. They needed to deal with death and remember the dead in ways that made sense in their changing world.

Transforming the natural landscape into a cultural one served these needs. The hard limestone at Murayghat naturally fractures into large slabs, making megalithic construction feasible without metal tools. But choosing to build visible monuments from these stones, positioning them carefully across the terrain, and investing enormous labor in structures that served non-domestic purposes represented a collective decision.

These monuments claimed the landscape, marking it as belonging to a human community even as that community’s organizational structure remained fluid. Five thousand years ago on a Jordanian hilltop, people facing the collapse of familiar systems found ways to maintain connections and create shared spaces where necessary conversations could happen. The monuments they left suggest that creating gathering places helped communities navigate periods of upheaval. That’s a sentiment that still resonates today.

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen conducted surveys and excavations at Murayghat between 2014 and 2018, documenting over 95 dolmens around a central knoll and recording them through measurement and photography. Work on the knoll included 11 trenches that exposed standing-stone architecture; two dolmens were examined in detail, one small structure missing its capstone and a larger example on a constructed platform. Pottery analysis established an Early Bronze Age IA timeline; the team also studied basalt grinders for residue, identified animal bones, recorded bedrock carvings, and used a geomagnetic survey to locate additional features.

Excavations point to a non-domestic, ritual landscape with three building traditions on the central knoll: isolated orthostats on bedrock, mixed orthostat rows with double-faced walls, and hybrid forms that create curved or circular spaces. No hearths or clear roofing were found. Artifacts included basalt grinding tools—one with ochre staining—horn cores from gazelles and goats, flint tools such as Canaanean blades and tabular scrapers, and spindle whorls. Pottery was dominated by storage jars and very large serving bowls (about 25–27 liters) with triple sets of double ledge handles. In the dolmen fields, builders favored terraces with visibility to the central area, prepared foundations with packing stones, and in one case a large platform; carved cup-marks and shallow rectangular depressions appear deliberate but their purpose is unclear. The site dates to Early Bronze Age IA, around 3500–3300 BCE, based on pottery typology.

Only two of more than 95 dolmens were excavated and both were empty, so functional interpretations lean on parallels; preservation is poor due to quarrying, earthquakes, and farming since the 1889 survey, and many dolmens lost capstones or end stones. Roofing remains unproven; carved features may pre- or post-date nearby walls; attempts to date orthostats using optically stimulated luminescence failed because the limestone lacks sufficient quartz, leaving chronology to ceramic typology.

The paper does not explicitly mention funding sources or conflicts of interest. The research was conducted under the auspices of the University of Copenhagen as part of the Ritual Landscapes of Murayghat Project.

Kerner, Susanne. 2025. “Dolmens, standing stones and ritual in Murayghat.” Levant 57(2): 128-143. DOI: 10.1080/00758914.2025.2513829. Published online July 28, 2025 by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Karen Blixens Plads 8, Copenhagen 2300, Denmark.

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procrastination has paid off again

Thank you two for your never-ending efforts to ferret out and post this material. It really does beat the living crap out of a steady stream of politics and crime.

Thank you two for your never-ending efforts to ferret out and post this material. It really does beat the living crap out of a steady stream of politics and crime.

I second that!

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