The Afterlife of an Oasis: The Petra Garden and Pool Complex from the Third Century Onward (20 min)

Presenters

Sarah Wenner, University of Cincinnati; and Leigh-Ann Bedal, Pennsylvania State University at Erie, The Behrend College

Abstract

By the early third century C.E., the Petra Garden and Pool Complex (PGPC), one component of a monumental palatial complex laid out along the Southern Terrace of Petra’s city center, ceased to serve its original function. Excavation has revealed that the site transformed from an elite pleasure garden to an agricultural field and possible dumping location for architectural debris, material culture, and slaked lime following the Roman annexation of the Nabataean Kingdom and the decline of Petra’s economic status. Due to the function of the site as an open-air, heavily cultivated space, the majority of the excavated material culture is in secondary contexts, primarily washed down from the Ez-Zantur ridge or thrown in as rubbish during postclassical occupation of the neighboring “Great Temple.” Regardless, the multiple layers of soil and debris that fill the monumental pool and its associated architectural features provide evidence for the lesser discussed periods of the late Roman and Early Byzantine periods, when Petra transformed from an “urban oasis to a desert hinterland.”

Consequently, the study of PGPC materials drawn from these critical later strata do not just offer a chronology of the site’s use, but, more importantly, a lens into some of the site formation processes that transformed Petra as the city declined under Roman authority. And as the excavation has produced one of the longest spans of stratified materials in Petra (from the late first century B.C.E. to the sixth century C.E.), analysis also suggests shifts in the production and consumption of locally made pottery over half a millennium. This paper, which centers around PGPC’s ceramic assemblage and is augmented by additional material culture, moves beyond typology to consider how a close study of finds from fills can illuminate the postlife use of a space in a city undergoing dramatic transformations.