Jebel al-Mutawwaq
the necropolis
The Jebel al-Mutawwaq megalithic necropolis is one of the larger dolmen field actually preserved in Jordan. Today more than seven hundreds of monuments are still visible on the mountain.
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Dolmens are simply megalithic funerary chambers, like the Calcolithic stone cists, but built above the ground, known in all the Southern Levant in particular along the Jordan Valley and it's western and Eastern affluents. All the archaeological investigations done in different dolmen field in Jordan, in particular at Damiye, al-Murayghat, Tell el-Umeyri or in Wadi Jedideh, had mostly recovered Early Bronze Age I pottery, fact that, together with the topographical relationship with EB I villages and settlements, dated to this period the first spread of this kind of megalithic tombs.
In our site the topographical and historical relationship between the dolmen field and the EBI village was finally proved by the discovery in 2013 of a network of streets connecting the South Eastern settlement door with the nearest are of the necropolis (see the excavation results of 2013).
The tipologies of Jebel al-Mutawwaq dolmens are mostly the simple A and B types (in the Kafafi-Schelthema 2005 classification), with two or four lateral limestone slabs, a floor slab, one back slab and a large capstone covering all the burial chamber, and some dolmens of D type with two megalithic burial chamber. All the dolmens are encircled in a stone platform, that from the last excavation campaigns of the Spanish-Italian mission, clearly could be interpreted as a retaining wall of a tumulus of small stones and pebbles originally covering all the dolmen till the superior capstone.​
​One feature typical of some dolmens is the presence of a stepped stone corridor leading toward the megalithic burial chamber, till now discovered in dolmens nos. 228, 318, 317 and 316. The use of the Jebel al Mutawwaq dolmens as tombs was proved by the many fragmentary bones discovered together with EB I sherds in many dolmens of the site, mostly emptyed and sealed with different layers of stones at the end of their use. The discovery in the 2013 campaign of a sealed entire human burial (B.25) inside the well preserved dolmen no. 317, proves that, at least in some case, dolmens in Jebel al-Mutawwaq were used undubtely for primary burial.
