Pella in Jordan
Human occupation stretches back over half a million years
Pella is a magnificent ten-hectare site, set in beautiful surroundings beside a perennial spring in the eastern foothills of the north Jordan valley.
Pella Tell looking north
Excavations by the University of Sydney over the past 45 years have already unearthed many important discoveries, including:
- Neolithic housing (ca. 6000 BCE)
- Chalcolithic period storage complexes (ca. 4200 BCE)
- Early Bronze Age stone defensive platforms (ca. 3200 BCE)
- Massive Middle Bronze Age mud-brick city walls (ca. 1800 BCE)
- Middle and Late Bronze Age Temples and Palaces (ca. 1800-1200 BCE)
- a Late Bronze Age Egyptian Governors’ Residence with clay tablets (ca. 1350 BCE)
- large areas of a Hellenistic city (destroyed by war in 80 BCE)
- a theatre, bathhouse and public fountain of the Roman Imperial city (ca. 150 CE)
- three Byzantine churches and a Bishop’s palace (ca. 550 CE)
- an Umayyad Islamic city destroyed by an earthquake (ca. 750 CE)
- an Abbasid caravanserai (ca. 950 CE)
- a Mameluke mosque and administrative compound (ca. 1350 CE)
- a late Ottoman village (ca. 1900 CE) that bring Pella’s history up to the present day.
Daily life on the dig at Pella
