Shaqaret Msiad

When first excavated in 1999, the site was thought to have one occupation phase dating to Middle-Pre-pottery Neolithic B (MPPNB). Located in southern Jordan, near Petra, the site dates to 7000 BCE. The people living there had been hunter-gathers and were transitioning to becoming sedentary farmers, gathering wild crops of plants, grasses, emmer wheat, legumes and wild pistachio. Since then the site has yielded six building phases of continuous modifications. At first most of the predominantly round structures were considered "domestic", but now there are at least four "special buildings" of "non-domestic" character. The houses considered domestic were smaller and did not have central roof-supporting columns, as was the case with the larger special buildings, which are considered to be used for rituals with small groups of individuals. The special buildings are larger where objects used for rituals or magic practices were found. In what is called a "mortuary" house, human burials were found under the floor. Flat rooftops were used for daily activity and work. Some of the houses were intentionally (ritually?) burned to the ground.

Elevation is c. 1000 m ( 3280 ft.) above sea level.

Construction: plastered dry stone walls with mud mortar, plastered floors. Walls incorporated sockets for roof-supporting wooden posts. Larger structures had central roof-supporting posts, while smaller structures did not. Rooftops were flat.

Source of data for CG model:
1. Kunzel, Moritz; 2019; Special Buildings at PPNB Shkārat Msaied; chapter in Nakamura, S; Adachi, T; & Abe, M; (eds.) Decades in Deserts: Essays on Near Eastern Archaeology in honor of Sumio Fujii; Rokuichi Syobou, Japan, 2019.
2. Thuesen, Mette Bangsborg and Kinzel, Moritz; 2018; Stone Beads from Shkārat Msaied; (journal) Neo-Lithics, 2018
https://www.exoriente.org/repository/NEO-LITHICS/e_NEO-LITHICS_2018_Thuesen_Kinzel.pdf