Paths towards urbanism in Early Bronze Age Jordan

In the last decades, the study of the origins of the urban phenomenon in the 3rd millennium BCE Southern Levant has seen Zeidan Kafafi mastering the discussion about its features and historical meaning (Kafafi 2011; 2014, 145). The contribution given by Zeidan, a scholar and an archaeologist with a long and extensive field experience, including direct knowledge of almost all sites illustrating such a cultural development, has inspired many to re-consider their interpretive paradigms to the benefit of more dependable and coherent insights. The debate stemmed from the interpretation of some major EBA sites of Jordan, whether they could be considered examples of urbanism like similar sites in Syria-Palestine or not. This was part of an overall assessment of early urbanism in the Southern Levant, opposite to that of the coast of Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Anatolia which nurtured the “earliest cities” intended as socio- economic and cultural models of human organisation (Frangipane 2018). The discussion sometimes was terminological (Nigro 2020a, 183–184) but had to deal with sound archaeological evidence. This debate made it visible that also beyond the Jordan River there were fortified sites exhibiting a rather high range of complexity and interconnections. Hereby, a summary of most interesting experiences is attempted as a homage to the scholar who strongly defended the possibility to label “urbanism” the variety of cultural developments observed in EBA Jordan.