AMMAN: The recent discovery of the largest Early Bronze Age copper factory of the Middle East in southern Jordan is helping a team of US, British and Canadian archeologists learn about the rise of early historic states.

Findings of the discovery made at Khirbet Hamrat Ifdan (KHI) in Jordan’s arid Faynan desert were published in the June 2002 issue of the British journal, ‘Antiquity’.

In interviews, the archeologists spoke of a highly specialized people who braved scorching desert heat to produce the “strategic” copper metal.

The archeologists plan to return to the Faynan district in September to search for more evidence, focusing this time on the area of Khirbet al-Nahas (KEN).

“Khirbet al-Nahas is one of the oldest Iron Age copper production sites in the eastern Mediterranean,” said Thomas Levy, professor of anthropology at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD), who led the team of archeologists.

“The Iron Age represents a time when some of the earliest historic states emerged in the Near East. The new excavation will provide a window on the ancient people who worked, organized and produced copper metal,” he said.

UCSD research associate Russell Adams said evidence of mass production of copper at KHI as well as “innovations” in mining, smelting and fuel production show “the growing centralization of power and control in early societies.”

During two field seasons in 1999 and 2000, Levy and Adams led archeology students from the United States, Britain and Canada and local Bedouins in excavating the KHI site, 50 kms south of the Dead Sea.

They unearthed hundreds of clay casting moulds for manufacturing copper ingots, axes and chisels as well as thousands of stone hammers, anvils, crucibles and metallurgical debris.

They had been preserved for over 4,000 years under the rubble of the factory that had collapsed during an earthquake.

This discovery is “much larger than other known contemporary Bronze Age metal production centers in Turkey, Cyprus, Israel, Oman and other parts of the Middle East,” a UCSD press release said.—AFP