Tulul adh-Dhahab

The Tulul adh-Dhahab (also: Tall / Telul edh Dhehab, Arabic: تلول الذهب), Jordan, are two adjacent tells in the Zarqa River valley, an affluent of the Jordan Valley about an hour's drive northwest of Jordan's capital city Amman. The western of the twin hills, known as Tell edh-Dhahab el-Gharbi, was populated at least from Bronze Age to Late Antiquity, and a beginning of settlement in the Neolithic period is also possible. After the collapse of the ancient buildings probably by an earthquake in Late Antiquity, there was no subsequent settlement on the site. Because of the unfortunate name ("hill of gold") there have been extensive recent disruptions.

The double hills (hence the plural 'Tulūl', proper: dual 'Tellan' rather than the singular' Tell 'and' Tall ') are situated - about only 35 km northwest of the Jordanian capital, Amman - in the Zarqa River valley, the biblical Jabbok, at the opening of the southern Wadi Hajjaj. The two twin-like natural hills, both of them bearing ruins, are both app. 120 m above the riverbed and forcing the Zarqa River on a winding course around them. Until the 20th century the twin hills obstructed the way to the Zarqa valley heading east. Ancient hikers had to dodge the way into to the Zarqa valley and head to the Wadi Hajjaj, the shortest way to settlement area of the Ammonites. That is the reason why the Tulul adh-Dhahab had, until the construction of the Roman road at the exit of Wadi az-Zarqa in Jordan Valley near the present village of Abu Zighan, a high strategic importance. Only about 6.5 kilometers west of the Tulul adh-Dhahab there is the large Tell of Dayr 'Alla (also written as Deir Alla), dating to the Bronze and Iron Age.

The research of the late 19th and 20th century was confirmed by the descriptions of the Tulul adh-Dhahab by S. Merrill (1878, 1881), G. Gustav Dalman, C. Steuernagel and others. M. North conducted a topographic surveys by 1955. But it were the American archaeologists Robert L. Gordon and Linda E. Villiers who carried out a major survey in the years of 1980 and 1982. They published the first map of the ruins that were still visible at this time.

A team from the University of Dortmund, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Thomas Pola, investigated in cooperation with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities (DoA) the western of the two hills more closely since 2005. Since 2006 a team of the University of Basle is involved in the excavations. They are engaged in the geomagnetic prospection, the tachymetrical 3D surveying and the production of close-range aerial photographs for photogrammetric purposes of the site. In addition to the work of R. L. Gordon in 1980/82, there is now for the first time a detailed map of the entire excavation site available in which all the visible surface artifacts are measured.

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Wikipedia