Archaeologists find more than 90 monuments used for ancient ceremonies

Archaeologists working in central Jordan say an Early Bronze Age ritual landscape has come to light at Murayghat, a hilltop site near Madaba. The team reports a cluster of monuments that points to ceremonies rather than everyday living.

The scale is striking. More than 95 burial structures made of stone sit within sightlines of one another, with larger megaliths marking a hilltop that seems designed to be seen.

What they found at Murayghat

Lead archaeologist Susanne Kerner of the University of Copenhagen coordinated the fieldwork and analysis at Murayghat. The project documents stone enclosures, carved bedrock, and lines of uprights that frame gathering spaces.

More than 95 dolmens, flat stone burial structures assembled from large slabs, have been documented at the location. The central knoll also preserves bedrock cuts and stone-built features that lack clear domestic traces.

Rows of uprights appear alongside free standing markers. One prominent class of building stones are orthostats, upright slabs set into the ground to form walls or enclosures.

The arrangement emphasizes visibility across neighboring ridges. It reads less like a village and more like a place to gather, honor the dead, and renegotiate ties.

Why Murayghat matters

These monuments sit where paths converge above a deep wadi. That vantage suggests a shared meeting spot that different groups could reach without crossing crowded settlements.

Architecture at the knoll blends standing stone lines with curving enclosures. The mix suggests repeated building episodes, as if people returned to add parts over time.

Most features lack hearths or hard floors. The evidence points to intermittent use rather than continuous residence. That pattern fits a site built for ceremony and discussion, not kitchens and courtyards.

Markers of identity in a shaky era

Murayghat rose after the Chalcolithic, a Copper Age between the Neolithic and Bronze Age. The social rules and symbols of that period were changing.

Climate may have added stress. A long speleothem, cave mineral deposit formed by dripping water, from Soreq Cave tracks mid Holocene dry pulses that align with shifts in settlement, show data.

In unsettled times, visible monuments can anchor identity when leaders and trade networks falter.

Big stones serve another purpose. They claim territory without a palace or fort. They also make memories public, inviting people to return and remember together.

From home sites to meeting grounds

“Instead of the large domestic settlements with smaller shrines established during the Chalcolithic, our excavations at Early Bronze Age Murayghat show clusters of dolmens, standing stones, and large megalithic structures that point to ritual gatherings and communal burials rather than living quarters,” said Kerner.

Those choices seem deliberate. Monument lines create paths for processions, while open enclosures can host councils and rites.

Stone presence matters in itself. When small shrines fade, tall markers make belief local and legible again. They also place the dead within view of the living, letting ancestors witness decisions.

Feasting bowls and grindstones

Excavations recovered large serving vessels, grinding stones, and horn cores alongside a few copper pieces. The pottery includes huge V shaped bowls sized for many hands.

Those bowls hold about 6 to 7 gallons when full. Shared food at scale can turn a ceremony into a compact social contract.

Archaeologists argue that building and gathering reshaped the landscape into an anthropogenic setting, shaped by human action rather than geology. That act of reshaping is part of the ritual itself.

Ritual feasts and public burials often travel together. One feeds the living, the other binds them to their past.

How Murayghat fits the map

Parallels across central Jordan strengthen the case for regional ceremony. Mount Nebo preserves survey evidence for dense dolmen fields near Early Bronze Age activity.

Farther north at Jebel al Mutawwaq, archaeologists describe megalithic tombs and a great enclosure that link burial, ceremony, and early urban life within a single setting.

Together, these sites show that monumental building was not an exception but a shared strategy for shaping community order.

Murayghat adds a missing piece. It skews heavily ritual rather than residential, which clarifies one end of the spectrum. Seen that way, the site is a meeting place during a century of experiment. People tried new forms before cities took hold again.

What it says about crisis and change

When old symbols fail, new ones must be built. Murayghat shows that communities solved problems with stone as much as with speech.

They did not withdraw into isolated hamlets. They came together to mark ground, honor the dead, and sort out rules.

Monuments are slow statements. They promise future returns without spelling out who is in charge. That is a practical way to get through a rough patch, one season and one gathering at a time.

“Murayghat gives us, we believe, fascinating new insights into how early societies coped with disruption by building monuments, redefining social roles, and creating new forms of community,” said Kerner.

 That framing treats ritual as infrastructure. It turns shared memory into a public good. It also explains why the site is so visible from afar. Visibility itself is part of the message.

In a world without strong central authority, a skyline of stones can hold people together.

Lessons from Murayghat

Archaeology often catches societies mid shift. Murayghat freezes one such moment and preserves the choices people made.

The site helps scholars distinguish settlements from stages. It also shows how burial grounds could anchor fragile communities.

Its lessons travel well. Public rituals still turn crowds into neighbors. Stones do not move, which is the point.

The study is published in Levant.

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