Ricerca storico-archeologica in Giordania XVII – 1997

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500 RICERCA IN GIORDANIA undecided. The absence of roof tiles in the fill suggests the building was still roofed. Dividing walls begin to appear and a continuous build up can be identified throughout the church. An initial assessment of the pottery in the build up suggests a date into the twelfth century when the first hand made ware appears, a relatively thin ware containing much short-cut chaff and similar to Robin Brown’s Shawbak Ayyubid painted ware but without the paint. Shortly after standard Ayyubid pottery, painted in red with wavy thin lines and dots, appears at Gharandal, and this occupation phase is marked by further wall construction over the yellow build up. In the Mamluk period domestic occupation intensifies within the church, with many more walls (sometimes built over fallen monolithic columns), numerous tabuns and the prevalence of Hand Made Geometric Painted Wares. Fortunately the stout Mamluk walls sit on the yellow fill and build up so that they have not damaged the mosaics. The Gharandal pottery sequence promises much for increasing our understanding of Byzantine and Islamic ceramics for the south of Jordan. Already links to the firmly dated north Jordan sequence reveal the overriding dissimilarity of southern pottery types, with Byzantine-style light orange to reddish blooms and wavy combing continuing well into the Islamic period. The suspected misdating of southern ceramics (and the purported “decline” in Islamic settlement) seems supported by these initial working conclusions. The Double Compound. The large Double Compound south of the church (Fig. 3), measuring 65 × 25 m, has yet to be investigated. As it clearly predates the church, which abuts the massive north wall of the enclosure, it is either a Nabataean or Roman construct, probably the former. The common occurrence of Nabataean pottery at Gharandal suggests a major presence in this period, and the masonry of the massive enclosure walls of the compound shares features with Khirbat Tannur and al-Qasr to the north. Later structures within the Double Compound attest to its continuing function in the Late Antique and Early Islamic town, and the changing nature of this use is one of the most exciting prospects for future research at Gharandal: how did a Christian(ised) town deal with a large pagan structure in its centre (reuse, neglect?) and, following the change to Islamic hegemony, what further conversions were made to the structure? These issues have yet to be satisfactorily addressed for a major urban centre south of the Wadi Mujib. Alan Walmsley University of Sydney, Australia The Church Mosaics The Gharandal church is extensively paved with geometric mosaics. There is a main mosaic (ca. 12.6 sq. m) divided into three panels in the narthex with a pattern of roundels to the south (ca. 1.2 sq. m), mosaics running alongside the
RELAZIONI DELLE SPEDIZIONI ARCHEOLOGICHE 501 aisles (ca. 2.0 sq. m), and a small mosaic of light brown tesserae, not yet fully excavated, within the raised sanctuary (ca. 5.0 sq. m). The large number of glass tesserae found suggests that there were also glass mosaics on the walls above the colonnades. As a thick yellow chippy layer was laid over the mosaics, probably after the mid-eighth century (see above), the mosaics seem to have survived largely intact. However large parts of the mosaics, specifically on the north side of the narthex and the south aisle, remain to be excavated and it is not possible to comment on their condition. The mosaics were cleaned, photographed, sketched, and in the case of the narthex mosaic, planned, in several stages during the season. The cleaning of the narthex mosaic was the largest job and consequently took the longest time to complete. This task was executed by Noël Siver, Norman Ricklefs and Suleiman Ahmed over a two week period. The task of planning the mosaic was undertaken by Lawrence Pontin, who also provided invaluable advice in the writing of this paper. Although the mosaics, as a whole, seem largely intact there is great variation in the state of repair of different sections. Only stone tesserae were used, (cf. the glass tesserae from the walls, as mentioned above) and measure on average ca. 25 × 20 × 10-15 mm. A limited range of colours were used to make the mosaics. The patterns were executed in deep red tesserae in several subtle shades, brown and an ochre-type yellow, and were set on a background of white stones. The sanctuary section, although only partly excavated, is composed of plain light brown tesserae with no discernible pattern. The Narthex Mosaic. The main feature of the narthex mosaic is three rectangular panels enclosed by a guilloche (Fig. 4-6). The three rectangular panels, each delineated by a continuous frame of red-purple stones, comprise of two identical outer panels and a central panel of a different type. The central panel (Fig. 5) has a vine leaf in each corner, the north-east and south-west being made up of yellow tesserae and the other two of red, with the tip facing towards a central motif. The central motif is a complex geometric pattern of interlacing squares and ribbons forming an octagon around a bunch of grapes. The two outer panels (Fig. 6) are made up of a central motif of a three-stranded ‘Solomonic’ knot in deep red tesserae within a diamond intertwined with a ribbon in a wide open figure-of-eight pattern, which is seemingly unique, at least amongst contemporary Jordanian mosaics. The central motif of each panel is lined on either side (north and south) with three patterned diamonds, consisting of a central brown tessera set within white tesserae and an outer border of yellow and then red tesserae. The three panels of the narthex mosaic are placed within a wide rectangular frame made up from a single line of red-purple stones (Fig. 4). This frame also serves as the inner border of a guilloche, composed of red, yellow and white tesserae. The guilloche is further enclosed by a bold, triple-stranded outer border of deep red-purple tesserae.
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Ricerca storico-archeologica in Giordania XVII – 1997

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