Highlands and Lowlands: Problems and Survey Frameworks for Rural Archaeology in the near East

Since the 1970s, much archaeological work in the Near East has shifted from investigations of "urban" sites and monumental architecture towards analysis of economic systems and study of smaller rural sites. An increasing use of regional surveys to collect primary archaeological data has accompanied this shift. These surveys have encountered many methodological and theoretical problems but at the same time they show promise for addressing previously unexamined questions in the history and prehistory of the Near East. With a focus on applications of regional survey to studies of rural settlement and economy in the dryfarming areas of the southern Levant, this article defines some problems in exploiting the potential of archaeological survey in the southern Levant's physical and cultural environments. Archaeological surveys in other parts of the Near East suggest some ways to do this, but are not necessarily appropriate in the Levant. The article discusses some ways to take advantage of spatial structure in the landscape to design the sampling frame of a survey, with an example from the Wadi Ziqlab Project in northern Jordan.