The work of North American archaeologists in Jordan has, for more than a century, been directed by the quest for a particular desired past, namely that of the history of Israel and its neighbours, such as the Ammonites, Moabites and Edomites. The volumes under review here continue this tradition. But, more significantly, they also demonstrate the current efforts by these researchers to bring archaeology out of its provincial past in the heartland of biblical archaeology and towards an engagement with contemporary issues in anthropological archaeology and, less explicitly perhaps, global history. One volume, New insights into the Iron Age archaeology of Edom, reports on the results of a single major research initiative, the Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP); the other, Southern Transjordan Edomite Plateau and the Dead Sea Rift Valley to the west, synthesises a number of smaller survey projects directed by Burton MacDonald over the past three decades.

ELRAP, a joint undertaking of the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and the Department of Antiquities of Jordan, simply astounds with its extensive deployment of anthropological theory, multi-disciplinary teamwork and the handling of massive amounts of data using cutting-edge cyber-technology. The anthropological problem addressed by the ELRAP team is “how a tribal society, in a marginal desert environment under the push and pull of neighbouring polities and ancient core civilizations, could adapt and grow into a small, secondary state-level society” (p. 994; see also p. 67). To answer this question, the team identified three interrelated processes of particular importance: ethnogenesis, political ecology and a fluctuating tribal segmentary social system. With regard to ethnogenesis, the team relies, with appropriate reservations, on Iron Age potting traditions as a proxy for the identification of Edomite ethnic groups within the study area. Political ecology comes into play in relation to whether or not an outside power (such as the expanding Neo-Assyrian empire) or a local ethnic group (such as the Edomites) were the prime movers in the establishment of a booming copper-mining industry in southern Jordan by the early tenth century BC (the project's results point to this as a local initiative). And finally, when it comes to determining how this local polity was organised, the team posits (along with others before them) a key role for what they call “the nomadic imperative” (pp. 4, 66–67)—that is the organisational role of tribalism in the formation of secondary states in the region. In this presumably Edomite instance, the political centre of gravity was apparently unstable, oscillating over time and space along segmentary lineages, as is well known from ethnographic studies of tribal societies elsewhere in Jordan and beyond.

These intersecting themes are discussed in a number of different places throughout the volume, and the introductory chapter necessarily orientates the reader in this regard. The role of the nomadic populations of Edom in the evolution of complex societies and metallurgical practices are considered in Chapters 1, 7, 8, 9 and 15. The nature of local vs external control of metallurgy during the Iron Age in Faynan is examined in Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6 and 11–13; consideration of whether or not—as indicated in ancient historical texts—small-scale Iron Age polities from neighbouring Cisjordan or northern Arabia had any control of metal production in Faynan during the eleventh to ninth centuries BC, is presented in Chapters 1, 4–6 and 10–12. The trade routes along which copper ore, processed metal and other goods moved within and beyond the Faynan district are explored in Chapters 1 and 6; and the ways in which local social structures changed as the area came under Neo-Assyrian influence, during the eighth to seventh centuries BC, are discussed in Chapters 3, 5, 6, 10, 12 and 14.

With the publication of the ELRAP results, Thomas Levy, the leader of the team, sets a new standard for collaborative research and publishing in Near Eastern archaeology and farther afield. It is Levy's bold vision that animated the project in the first place and that successfully brought about multi-institutional support for it. Levy has also pioneered the deployment of computers in the field, in the laboratory and in the publishing process; he has, further to this, recruited students from UCSD and other universities to help realise his vision, culminating with this publication.

Much of Burton MacDonald's career in Jordan has been dedicated to conducting archaeological surveys in southern Jordan along the Edomite Plateau and in the Dead Sea Rift Valley. For more than 30 years, he has organised and completed 5 surveys in this region: from 1979–1983, the Wadi al-Hasa Archaeological Survey; from 1985–1986, the Southern Ghors and Northeast ‘Arabah Archaeological Survey; from 1999–2001, the Tafila-Busayra Archaeological Survey; from 2005–2007, the Ayl to Ras an-Naqab Archaeological Survey; and from 2010–2012, the Shammakh to Ayl Archaeological Survey. The methodology used for each of these surveys consisted of a mix of purposive and random pedestrian survey. The latter involved intensive sampling of randomly selected squares (of unstated size) that together represent about five per cent of the total area covered by each survey. In the volume under review, the results of these five surveys are presented, alongside the results of other researchers’ archaeological investigations of the area. The stated aim of the work here is to present “a ‘story’ of the people who lived in the area from the beginning of the Bronze Age to the end of the Islamic period” (p. 1).

The story that emerges from this integration of survey and excavation data is that of the ‘filling up’ and the ‘emptying out’ of the settled landscape. In the brief Final Comments section, MacDonald points to climate as a key factor in accounting for changes in settlement activity over time. Other factors include deterioration of land resources; improvements in technologies for ‘harvesting’ natural resources such as copper, manganese, bitumen and salt; advances in the mechanisms for the distribution of such minerals; and “a stable government—for example, in the form of the Assyrians, Romans, Byzantines and Ottomans” (p. 100).

With the publication of this volume, MacDonald has provided a most useful synthesis of his 30-plus years of engagement with survey research in Jordan. Although not particularly groundbreaking in its approach, the volume nevertheless fills an important gap in terms of the geographical region covered by the surveys reported. Given the rapid rate at which Jordan's archaeological heritage is being destroyed due to development and looting, the sites described in this volume will now have been preserved for posterity—not only in this publication, but also in the form of the hundreds of records that MacDonald has supplied to the Jordanian Department of Antiquities electronic database of sites.

In different ways, each of these publications hints at efforts by projects led by North American teams in Jordan to move beyond the quest for a particular desired past and towards an engagement with the concerns of global history. By global history, I mean here the nascent branch of history that seeks to understand the role of humans in the cultural construction of the Anthropocene—that epoch in human history when the activities of humans became a major factor in altering the Earth's ecosystem operations. Hence, while ELRAP adds to our understanding of the role of technological innovation in this case, the rise of industrial-scale copper mining in the southern Levant, the MacDonald surveys provide a long-term perspective on the complex interaction of climate and other factors in the cultural production of a particular Levantine landscape over the past five millennia. Even though I suspect that neither of these projects were undertaken with the explicit goal of advancing understanding of the Levantine contribution to the cultural production of the Anthropocene, this concluding observation is included here as a modest suggestion for a way forwards for Near Eastern archaeology in its struggle to move beyond a century-long obsession with the biblical past. This is not to say that such a past is no longer important—but rather to suggest a new lens for the biblical past, one that views it as part of a bigger, global history.