Rise, decline of Faynan's copper industry in Early Iron Age

Jordan Times

20-03-2025

AMMAN — The scholar Piotr Bienkowski studied archaeology at Liverpool University (BA and PhD) before he got involved in Jordanian Iron Age sites in 1980.
The founding director of the British Institute at Amman for Archaeology and History (now the Council for British Research in the Levant),Crystal Bennett, invited Bienkowski to join her excavation in Busayra, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Edom.
Regarding his work in Wady Faynan, Bienkowski said: "Faynan was a major centre of copper production during the Early Bronze and early Iron ages, with a gap for most of the Middle and Late Bronze ages. In the early Iron Age, its copper was exported as far as the Aegean."
The scholar added that the excavations by the professor Tom Levy and his team at Faynan concluded that local nomadic tribes created a complex polity at early Iron Age Faynan at the beginning of the 10th century BC, that was responsible for copper production.
They argued that this was in effect the beginning of the kingdom of Edom, about 200 years earlier than previously thought.
"My review of the archaeological evidence indicates that the sudden change at Faynan at the beginning of the 10th century BC, with an abrupt introduction of sophisticated copper technology at a vastly increased scale, monumental buildings, social hierarchy and sudden appearance of imports, cannot be attributed to the local nomads, as the evidence shows that they were not actively involved in copper production at that time and were unconnected to the industrial developments," Bienkowski explained.
He added that the evidence displays all the attributes of an external take-over of copper production, and points instead overwhelmingly to Tel Masos as the instigator of the industrial boom.
The scenario that best fits the evidence is that Tell Masos, a major site in the Negev, took direct control of copper production at Faynan and developed it as an industrial site to exponentially increase the copper trade – Masos had the resources, technical skills, an architectural tradition, and connections to trade networks that the local nomads lacked, and which transformed Faynan, the professor elaborated.
Bienkowski noted that hundreds of sites in the Negev Highlands were settled by pastoralists who found employment both in production and transport in the burgeoning copper industry. But the early Iron Age copper production at Faynan was short-lived.
It was abandoned by the end of the 9th century BC, and was unconnected to the development of Edomite settlement in the highlands one hundred years later.
There is clear evidence that Faynan copper was exported across the Mediterranean.
"Lead isotope and chemical bulk analysis indicate that the copper of tripod cauldrons at Olympia in Greece, dating c. 950-750 BC, was produced in Faynan, demonstrating a long-standing and well organised trade network from Faynan to the Mediterranean."
"It is likely that the main port for exports of Faynan copper was Gaza. Ingots made of Faynan copper at the Neve Yam shipwreck off the Carmel coast, dated to the Late Bronze Age/early Iron Age, indicates that they had probably embarked from Gaza," Bienkowski underlined.
Also, Egyptian royal figurines of the Twenty-first Dynasty (late 11th century BC), made of Arabah copper, would have been transported through Gaza, traditionally the main centre of Egyptian influence in the southern Levant.
As to the decline in copper exploitation at Faynan: From the late 10th/early 9th century BC at Faynan, there is a long process of regression, with reduction of administrative control, abandonment or re-use of the elite buildings, and abandonment of copper-production sites, and all copper production had ceased by the end of the 9th century BC, Bienkowski said.
The professor noted that this decline in evidence for administrative oversight is undoubtedly linked to the abandonment of Tel Masos in the mid-9th century BC.
"By the late 10th/early 9th centuries BC, Cypriot copper production had intensified and there is evidence of its trade to Phoenicia. This coincides with the reduction of administrative control at Faynan and the abandonment of Masos, and it is likely that they were negatively impacted by this more competitive copper market," Bienkowski emphasised.
A systematic trade network from Faynan to the Levantine coast and then to the Aegean does not organise itself: it requires economic and political negotiation with trade partners and complex logistical arrangements, such as setting and agreement of schedules and deadlines, organisation of production, storage, packing and transport, protection for the trade caravans, and financial transactions.
While there is evidence at Faynan (and at Masos) in the 10th century of an elite, administrative layer that would have been responsible for those tasks – and which initially established the trade network reflected in the finds from Olympia – this disappeared and there is no such evidence after the early 9th century BC, Bienkowski elaborated.
"The evidence suggests that, from the early 9th century BC on, the Faynan copper industry may have lacked the leadership and administrative infrastructure to compete with the renewed Cypriot trade," the scholar said.
"It continued to produce copper, at a reduced number of sites, and probably traded it to established markets, but, lacking the capacity to negotiate and compete in a changing market with new players, it finally petered out by the end of the 9th century BC," Bienkowski underscored.