The first excavation and survey campaign at the site of Ba'ja has recently been completed as part of the special educational project GeoLithics, led by Niccolò Mazzucco and Adriano Ribolini from the University of Pisa. The project was designed to involve students from the University of Pisa in the study of this significant pre-pottery site.
Ba’ja is a Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (LPPNB) settlement dating back to the late 7th millennium BC (approximately 9,000 years ago). It occupies a naturally fortified position north of Petra, in southern Jordan. Nestled among the mountains, the site is accessible only via a narrow gorge, leading to a plateau hidden between towering rock walls.
The Neolithic settlement is characterised by multi-level stone houses and terracing, arranged on steep slopes. These structures, entirely built from stone, were likely at least two storeys high and constructed in close proximity to one another.
The investigation of the site is part of the Ba’ja Neolithic Joint Project (BJNP), an international research and excavation initiative co-directed by Niccolò Mazzucco (Department of Civilisations and Forms of Knowledge, University of Pisa, Italy), Hala Alarashi (UMR 7264, CEPAM, CNRS, France), and Bellal Abuhelaleh (Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Jordan), in collaboration with the Jordanian Department of Antiquities. The ongoing BJNP aims to deepen our understanding of pre-pottery communities and their decline, offering new insights into the development of early proto-urban societies.
The GeoLithics project focused on documenting buried structures and mapping their layout using Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR), a non-invasive geophysical survey method. The results, which have been highly promising, confirm the presence of a dense urban network, with numerous multi-level rectangular buildings. These findings will be crucial in planning future excavation campaigns and directing research towards the most significant areas of this extensive village. In particular, the surveys may help verify the existence of a central area—potentially a collective space or meeting place—situated at the heart of the settlement.