Directors:

Dr. Walter Rast - Valparaiso University
Dr. R. Thomas Schaub - Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Publication Editors:

Dr. Walter Rast - Valparaiso University
Dr. R. Thomas Schaub - Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Meredith S. Chesson - University of Notre Dame

Cities of the Plain: Life and Death on the Shores of the Dead Sea
One of the most important transitions in human history involved the establishment of the world’s first cities approximately 5,000 years ago in the ancient Middle East. In the eastern Mediterranean region (Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan), people built the first walled cities during a period archaeologists call the Early Bronze Age (EBA, c. 3500-2000 BCE). In the EBA on the southeastern Dead Sea Plain (Map 1), people began burying their dead in extensive cemeteries, creating a landscape of the dead. Interestingly, they soon built two walled towns next to the cemeteries that they had used for a few centuries. In these settlements, called Bab edh-Dhra’ (pronounced “bob-ed-draw”) and Numeira (pronounced “new-mere-a”), people established the way of life that we read about in the Bible. In fact, for the writers of the Bible, the desolate nature of this stretch of shore along the Dead Sea and the visible ruins of Bab edh-Dhra' and Numeira  may have helped them to identify this area with the stories of the ill-fated sites of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Over the last forty years, the Expedition to the Dead Sea Plain (EDSP) has investigated the way people lived and died in these settlements and cemeteries. Like the ancient site of Jericho, these sites are the only other walled settlements with extensive cemeteries from this time period that allow archaeologists to study the earliest cities in the region, by excavating their cities, and their inhabitants, by investigating the skeletal remains of individuals who lived in these settlements. The EDSP currently involves scholars from several prestigious research institutions and universities, including the Smithsonian Institution, Carnegie Institute, Yale University, and the University of Notre Dame. Throughout the history of the project, we have been supported by several endowments, foundations, and research agencies, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Geographic, Smithsonian Institution, American Schools for Oriental Research, the Wenner Gren Anthropological Foundation, Harvard University’s Semitic Museum, Valparaiso University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, the British Museum, and the Shelby White-Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications (please contact us for full list of supporters).

Current Fieldwork:
• Field season to survey and perform final checks at the walled town of Numeira (November 2004)

Contact the EDSP Publication editors:

Dr. Meredith S. Chesson
Department of Anthropology
611 Flanner Hall
University of Notre Dame, IN
Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA
Tel: 574-631-3775
Email: mchesson@nd.edu

Dr, R. Thomas Schaub (ND ’53, Emeritus professor Indiana University of Pennsylvania)
25 McKelvey Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15218 USA
Tel: 1-412-242-1219
Email: rtschaub@voicenet.com