Researchers studied Murayghat, a hilltop site near Madaba in Jordan, to understand social change around 5,500 years ago as the Chalcolithic gave way to the Early Bronze Age. Excavations recorded more than 95 dolmens and a concentration of megalithic features, with over 70 described, suggesting ritual assemblies and communal burial activity rather than domestic occupation. Carved bedrock, stone enclosures, sparse hearths and large communal bowls support the view that diverse groups gathered here for ceremonies and feasts. The authors propose Murayghat illustrates how communities reorganized socially and ritually in response to climatic and social stress.
5,500-Year-Old Ritual Complex at Murayghat Reveals Societies Adapting to Upheaval
Researchers studied Murayghat, a hilltop site near Madaba in Jordan, to understand social change around 5,500 years ago as the Chalcolithic gave way to the Early Bronze Age. Excavations recorded more than 95 dolmens and a concentration of megalithic features, with over 70 described, suggesting ritual assemblies and communal burial activity rather than domestic occupation. Carved bedrock, stone enclosures, sparse hearths and large communal bowls support the view that diverse groups gathered here for ceremonies and feasts. The authors propose Murayghat illustrates how communities reorganized socially and ritually in response to climatic and social stress.
02:10 PM, 11/10/2025Culture
5,500-Year-Old Ritual Complex at Murayghat Reveals Societies Adapting to Upheaval
The transition from the Copper (Chalcolithic) Age into the Early Bronze Age was a period of major social and environmental change across the Levant. A new study of Murayghat, a hilltop archaeological site near Madaba in modern Jordan, offers fresh insight into how communities responded to that upheaval.
Excavations led by researchers including Susanne Kerner of the University of Copenhagen document a dense concentration of megalithic features at Murayghat dated to the Early Bronze Age—about 5,500 years ago. The team recorded more than 95 dolmens (also called portal tombs) and described over 70 in detail. Although human remains were not recovered within these structures, their form and arrangement closely resemble dolmen fields elsewhere in the region that served ceremonial and mortuary purposes.
Ritual landscape, not village: The hilltop core contains stone enclosures, carved bedrock features and few traces of domestic activity such as hearths. Together with large communal pottery bowls and other artifacts linked to feasting, the evidence points to Murayghat functioning primarily as a focal point for ritual gatherings and communal burial rites rather than as a year-round settlement.
The site's architectural diversity—varied dolmen types and megalithic constructions—suggests different groups may have travelled to Murayghat and brought distinct traditions with them. Kerner observes: "Instead of the large domestic settlements with small shrines typical of the Chalcolithic, our Early Bronze Age excavations at Murayghat reveal clusters of dolmens, standing stones and large megalithic constructions indicating ritual gatherings and communal burials."
Previous research links the decline of many late Chalcolithic settlements to a combination of climatic drying and social stress. Murayghat appears to illustrate one adaptive response: when earlier social patterns and lifeways faltered, people may have reorganized public life through new monuments, shared ritual practices and redefined social roles.
"People had to find mechanisms to deal with a situation in which the traditional values and patterns of behaviour no longer worked. Thus, new ways to organize life (and death) had to be found," Kerner writes.
Many details remain uncertain—especially the precise social dynamics behind visits to Murayghat—and organic traces that could provide more direct evidence of mortuary practice are scarce. Still, the site's unusually rich concentration of megalithic features offers valuable clues about how communities in the southern Levant coped with major disruption.
The study appears in Levant: The Journal of the Council for British Research in the Levant.