13/09/2026
Dear Colleagues and Friends,
we cordially invite you to a lecture at our institute on 17th of september.
Dr. Stefan Smith will talk about his research project in the Badiyat al Sham:
"Archaeological investigations of Northern Arabia have traditionally been focused on the Levant and Mesopotamia, with little research away from the fertile river valleys or plains. One region that had long gone particularly unexplored is the North Arabian Desert (Badiyat al-Sham). This has now changed, and for the past three decades numerous projects have taken place there, particularly in the Harra of north-eastern Jordan, as well as more recently in north-western Saudi Arabia. These investigations, which include the author’s co-directed “Western Harra Survey”, have uncovered a plethora of prehistoric structures of various types, pointing to intensive human use of the region’s landscape as well as past social complexity and technical know-how. Interestingly, these phenomena continue further east in the deserts of western Iraq, where the author is part of the first large-scale archaeological survey since 2024. These results, as well as data from extensive satellite image mapping, indicate a degree of connectivity across the Badiya that suggests migratory populations and trade, while the complexities of some of the structures point to more settled communities with some amount of permanence. This lecture will investigate these topics through the lens of the author’s fieldwork, connecting Jordan and Iraq to showcase the human-made features of this desert and the interpretations they offer.
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