Tall Zira'a - Special Importance

Special Importance

In the Wadi el-'Arab, one can find traces of human activities and settlement places from all periods, dating back to the Paleolithic. Tall Zira'a – the most important site in this area – was used for settlement from the Early Bronze Age up to 1900 CE.
Its importance stems from four facts:
First, its particular position in the middle of an area covered with fertile soil and surrounded by two freshwater-bearing wadis (Wadi el-'Arab and Wadi az-Zahar). Both are the prerequisites for intensive agriculture, which could guarantee not only the adequate supply to the tall but also certain economic wealth.
Second, there is an active freshwater artesian spring on top of the tall. Being an interesting and surprising aspect today, it must also have been an attractive, beneficial and wondrous phenomenon in the past. It would also have been a very important factor from a strategic point of view.

The third fact is the talls strategic position along an ancient and highly important trade route. The tremendous ascent from 290 metres below sea level in the Jordan Valley to the Irbid-Ramtha-area and the hills west of Bait Rās at c. 560 metres and 612 metres above sea level can be surmounted via the Wadi el-'Arab without steep or narrow passages. This makes the Wadi el-'Arab an ideal route, connecting the trade routes along the Mediterranean via the Jordan valley with Transjordan and, further to the north-east, with Damascus and Mesopotamia. Just as important is the shortcut via Hauran to the east and the centre of Mesopotamia, used since the 5th millennium B.C.
Finally, the tall is enormously important from an archaeological point of view, because it contains evidence of over 5000 years of continuous settlement – and that almost without large cultural gaps. It means it is possible to observe not only all the different cultural periods in one place, but also the transitions between them.
The excavations are part of the “Gadara Region Project” – an interdisciplinary study of the regional history of Gadara. The long-term archaeological project (2001–2015) investigates the Wadi el-'Arab region, which extends over 25 km².