the site

The site of Jebel al-Mutawwaq was surveyed in a complete way first by Hanbury Tenison in 1987. He identified the main period of occupation of the site in the Early Bronze Age I (ca.  3500-2900 B.C.E.), but recognized also surface pottery of the Middle Bronze Age I, unspecified Iron Age sherds and sporadically Islamic pottery. Yet Hanbury Tenison registered all over the mountain more than thousand of dolmen structures.

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The following Spanish excavations to the site investigate mostly the southern slope of the mountain, where the EB I village was identified. Yet the first work of prof. Tresguerres recognized after a first survey the probable coexistence of the EBI village with the megalithic necropolis, that was finally proved by the actual Spanish-Italian mission in 2012. Nevertheless it is evident from the large extension of the megalithic necropolis that dolmens should be used by a larger number of people respect the only population of the village on the southern slope.

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The village of the EB I has different public structures indicating it's proto-urban character, not yet evolved in the mature urban settlement of EB II-III of the Southern Levant, but showing the first signs of an élite management of the social, economical and cultic life of the community. The village of 13 hectare was encircled by a stone fence: the wall was investigated in the past campaigns of Oviedo University, but also in 2013 by the New Spanish-Italian expedition. The fence was built after leveling the bedrock with two rows of stone with an original high of no more than two meter and more than a fortification wall it seems a precinct that ideologically marks the space between the living and the dead, possibly also with the physical function to keep inside the village the sheep and the herds. Inside the fence there are more than three hundred of private houses, some of that were excavated by the past Spanish mission; the houses have circular or apsidal plan, one or two hearth and sometimes also an external connected room or open precinct for storage and keeping animals.

But the most important building discovered in the EB I village is the Temple of the Serpents, an important sanctuary constituted by a stone precinct, a main elongated building with rectangular plan, and other four small rooms connected with it, possibly used also for production activities and storage. Inside the temple lithic tools very elaborated, probably used for sacrifices and cultic vessels with snake application on the shoulder and on the rim were recovered.