Ian W. N. Jones

Anthropology Ph.D. Candidate

 
 

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at UCSD. My primary research interests include “provincial” elite strategies; labor and daily life; the Southern Levant during the Early (600-1000 AD) and Middle (1000-1400 AD) Islamic periods; Islamic period ceramics; systems of production, distribution and consumption; and the relationship between digital archaeology and archaeological theory. I have also conducted research and published on satellite remote sensing in archaeology, and maintain an active interest in this field.

I am affiliated with the UC San Diego Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP), a “deep-time” study of settlement and copper exploitation in and around the Faynan region of southern Jordan, about 150 km southwest of ‘Amman and 30 km north of Petra. My doctoral research focused primarily on the copper industry in the Faynan region during the 12th and 13th centuries AD (6th and 7th centuries AH), or the Ayyubid period. As part of this project, I supervised excavations of five areas at Khirbat Nuqayb al-Asaymir (Arabic: Ruin of the Small Black Pass), a Middle Islamic period copper smelting village, and of a Middle Islamic period copper slag mound (Area 15) at Khirbat Faynan (the Classical town of Phaino and Biblical Punon). My dissertation research also includes analysis of the material collected during ELRAP excavations at Khirbat al-Mana‘iyya, an Early Islamic period copper smelting “camp” in the southeastern Wadi ‘Araba, about 30 km north of ‘Aqaba. I have also analyzed selected Late Antique and Early Islamic material from ELRAP excavations in Areas 16 and 18 at Khirbat Faynan.

I am currently preparing a publication based on analysis of Middle and Late (1400-1900 AD) Islamic period material from the Wadi al-Fayd Expedition, an intensive archaeological survey of the hilly region west of Shawbak, in southern Jordan, in 2009. One goal of this project has been the identification of sites dating to the 11th century AD, which has been notoriously elusive in southern Jordan. Once published, my new project will begin more detailed mapping and test excavation at several of these sites to test this proposed dating and investigate life in southern Jordan during this period.


E-mail: iwjones@ucsd.edu

 

About me